Tuesday, January 28, 2003

One of the most amazing and important days of my life! Spent the entire day (11 hours) at the White House. I arrive at the White House and Gary Edson and Jay Lefkowitz inform me that the President has decided to adopt our AIDS Implementation plan – the full version!!! $15 billion over 5 years starting with $2 billion in FY2004. $10 billion will be entirely new money including $1 billion to the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria. Peter Mugyenyi will sit next to Laura Bush in her box at the Capitol for the speech. I spend the whole day at the WH proofing the SOTU, fact checking, preparing and proofing Qs and As with Jay and Gary. The WH personnel are all congratulating me for pulling this off. Josh Bolten told me that I am his hero; Karl Rove and Andy Card are generously congratulatory towards me. Gary, Jay, Kristen, Josh, et al ask me to stay at the WH to have pizza with them and watch the SOTU address. I had to leave at 7:00 PM to prepare for my Senate Hearing on Smallpox the next day. The SOTU was fabulous. He rolled out BOTH Project BioShield and the AIDS initiative – 2 things conceived of and planned by me (with obvious help from many, particularly with BioShield). This has truly been an historic day!