I think most of us knew that Obama wouldn’t be able to make good on everything he discussed during the campaign or that it would take him longer to get to some things accomplished than he (and us) would like.  Nonetheless, it is still disappointing to hear about promises being broken.

The latest thing that Obama appears to have changed course on is money for AIDS/HIV education and poverty reduction schemes.  According to the Global Aids Alliance:

A pledge to spend £4.3 billion on bilateral Aids programmes under the Mr Obama’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) has been shaved back to £3.3 billion. Mr Obama had also promised to contribute about £1.8 billion on the Global Fund to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, but his budget request fell short by £1.2 billion, the GAA said.

This is of course disappointing on paper and also in practice (underfunding AIDS programs means “that one million people will not receive treatment for HIV, and 2.9 million women will miss out on services to help prevent passing the virus to their unborn children.”) but I am not surprised.  Our country is not doing so well and there is only so much money to go around.

I don’t know the details of Obama’s budget enough to cite particulars but it seems to me that when thinking about how I budget my own money, months where I have less money I give less.  I don’t like it, but you can’t give what you don’t have.

Of course it is upsetting to think about all the banks and bigwigs getting bonuses off of stimulus money but the economy is going to take awhile to work out and in the meantime I think we all need to invest more of ourselves in our world and our communities.  Remember it doesn’t cost any money to give ones time and there are AIDS groups all around the country.

Every little bit helps.