WASHINGTON – In reaction to the State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs (SFOPS) Appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2014 in the U.S. House and Senate, Tom Hart, U.S. Executive Director of The ONE Campaign, said:

“We are very pleased with the Senate bill and want to commend the bipartisan leadership of Subcommittee Chairman Leahy (D-VT) and Subcommittee Ranking Member Graham (R-SC) for drafting it.

The Senate bill reflects the best in American values, and continues to support bipartisan, effective programs that are fighting extreme poverty and preventable disease.  We are especially pleased that ONE’S global health priorities received continued support from both sides of the aisle. We also commend Senators Leahy and Graham for supporting vital measures that tackle hunger and extreme poverty like Feed the Future and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

“Despite a significantly low allocation, Chairwoman Granger (R-TX), with the support of Ranking Member Lowey (D-NY), was able to provide robust funding to key global health programs.  Programs like PEPFAR, the Global Fund and GAVI are critical in the fight against preventable disease, and the bill makes a strong bipartisan commitment to this fight.  We thank Chairwoman Granger and Ranking Member Lowey for their hard work on this bill and look forward to working with them moving forward.”

While we are delighted that global health is now strongly funded, we know that the allocation necessarily made funding other important programs more difficult.  We are concerned about deep cuts to other priorities like the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which was cut by 18% from last year, and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, which was essentially defunded.  These and other programs are critical to the fight against poverty and hunger, and we will continue our work to make sure these vital programs receive appropriate levels of funding.