Efforts by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to protect San Francisco from major cuts in funding for Ryan White AIDS programs hit a roadblock in the Senate on Oct. 23. As a result, the city is likely to lose $8.5 million rather than $2.5 million in federal money in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.

Reauthorization of the Ryan White programs last year changed the funding formulas to better reflect where the HIV epidemic is moving, particularly within communities of color and in the South. The hope was that with sufficient new money added to the pot, no jurisdiction would suffer an actual loss in funding.

But new money proved to be scarce this year during the appropriations process and Pelosi engineered a “stop-loss” provision in the House bill that would minimize loss of funding to 11 cities that would actually lose money. San Francisco would be the hardest hit.

Some HIV/AIDS advocates and politicians have charged that money was being diverted from other parts of the country to benefit San Francisco. Pelosi said that those areas where the epidemic continues to grow will receive large increases in funding regardless of whether or not the “stop-loss” provision is included.

The Senate did not buy that. It passed an amendment to the appropriations bill, put forward by Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the ranking Republican on the health committee, prohibiting use of funds to modify HIV/AIDS funding formulas. The vote was 65 to 28, with 7 Senators not voting.

All but two Republicans supported the measure, and they were joined by nearly a third of the Democrats. There was no real pattern to the Democratic votes; liberals such as Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., joined with the Republicans, while conservative Robert Byrd, D- W. Va., voted no.

Among the seven Senators not voting were presidential hopefuls Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, and John McCain. Sen. Ted Kennedy was recuperating from recent surgery.

Speaker Pelosi said, “AIDS continues to be the city’s second leading cause of premature death and nearly 23,000 San Franciscans are currently living with HIV/AIDS, more than at any point in the history of the epidemic.”

She vowed to continue to oppose the amendment when it comes to conference to reconcile differences in the legislation passed by the two chambers.