AIDS activists press Hillary, Obama on needle exchange stance

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0707/A_needle_exchange.html Hillary on needle exchange: "As much spine as we possibly can" There are few differences between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on details of domestic policy, but previously unreported exchanges at recent New York meetings revealed one. Obama favors federal funding for needle exchange programs; Clinton doesn't, according to their comments at the video-taped events, which included a tense, revealing exchange between Clinton and a veteran AIDS activist, Charles King. When King reminded Clinton, cuttingly, that she'd called for a president with "spine," Clinton promised to show "as much spine as we possibly can" in response to the political sensitivities around AIDS funding. King, the director of the AIDS housing group Housing Works, posed similar questions to Clinton and Obama during their private appearances sponsored by the Community Service Society of New York and the big building service workers' local, 32BJ, of the Service Employees International Union. Obama was quick to say at his July appearance he supports lifting the ban on federal funding for needle exchange. Clinton, by contrast, performed what King called "an interesting waffle" at her April 23 event. The differences in their answers reflect their different relationships to a hot-button issue of the 1990s, which has since cooled and faded from the public debate. Clinton linked herself to her husband's 1998 compromise between public health activists and anti-drug crusaders, while Obama sided solidly with the advocates of what are seen as "preventive" services. In the unusual 1998 compromise, Clinton Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala announced that the administration's scientific review had found needle exchanges safe and effective -- but that the administration would nonetheless maintain a federal ban on funding them. Clinton responded to King's question (1:10:40 in the video above), after some prodding, by saying, "I want to look at the evidence on it" to see whether needle exchange would prevent the spread of HIV without increasing drug abuse. Shalala, King responded, had "certified" the safety and effectiveness of the programs. "And then she refused to order it, as you remember," Clinton said.King replied that that had been her husband's decision. "Well, because we knew we couldn't maintain it politically," Clinton said, and went on to discuss the trade-offs in that dispute with Congress. "I wish life and politics were easier," she said. King then referred back to Clinton's opening remarks. "You made a great comment earlier about how our next president needs to have some spine," he said."We’ll have as much spine as we possibly can, under the circumstances," Clinton responded. Needle exchange seems unlikely to emerge as a decisive issue in the Democratic primary, though the group AIDSVote has ending the needle exchange funding ban an element of its platform. But the gap between the candidates', and Clinton's response to King's questions, offer a glimpse at a rare difference between the Democratic frontrunners, and at the ways Clinton is informed and bound by her husband's administration.