• funding for HIV prevention at the Centers for Disease Control would be cut by $64 million;

• the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which provides care to low income people with the disease, would be cut by $196 million, including $77 million in cuts from the AIDS Drug Assistance Program;

• AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health would be cut by $251 million;

• and the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS, or HOPWA, program would be cut by $27 million.

One consolation is that funds for Medicare and Medicaid would largely be immune from cuts. Medicare would only be reduced by 2 percent — and those cuts wouldn’t come from programs for patients, but providers. Medicaid, under which 50 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS receive care, won’t see any cuts.

The Washington Blade reported in August 2011 at the time President Obama signed the Budget Control Act that the legislation could impact HIV/AIDS programs, and again reported on the issue when the congressional supercommittee established by the legislation failed to provide an alternative to across the board cuts, but cost estimates for reductions weren’t previously known.

But the cuts wouldn’t only affect domestic programs aimed at providing care to people with HIV, but global programs as well, including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, and U.S. contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Chris Collins, director of policy for amfAR, said the sequestration — commonly referred to as the “fiscal cliff” — would have a “devastating impact” on programs aimed at confronting HIV/AIDS overseas.

“It would undercut multiple aspects of the global AIDS response from treating people, which we know has a potential for saving lives, but also to preventing infection, as well as programs to help kids who are vulnerable,” Collins said. “Sequestration sets us up for seriously backtracking in response to global AIDS just at the time when we have the ability to really accelerate progress.”

In a brief published Sept. 25, amfAR provides details on the problems that reductions to global AIDS initiatives would cause. As a result of projected decreases to U.S. government bilateral support, HIV/AIDS treatments for 276,500 people wouldn’t be available, potentially leading to 63,000 more AIDS-related deaths and 124,000 more children becoming orphans. The decrease in U.S. contributions to the Global Fund would result in an additional 100,000 people not being treated for HIV/AIDS.

In addition to HIV/AIDS programs, federal initiatives that more generally serve the LGBT community would also face cuts under the sequester. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which earlier this year interpreted federal law to allow it to protect transgender workers from discrimination, would face cuts as would the Justice Department’s community relations service to fight hate crimes.

Laurie Young, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s director of aging and economic security, said the sequester could have an impact on local LGBT community centers that rely on funds from the federal government.

“Any programs … that are funded out of the Older Americans Act — community health programs, community health centers — any of the programs that receive any kind of federal support could be affected by it,” Young said.

Young said the cuts could also affect U.S. governmental efforts in research, including data collection efforts for LGBT people on health surveys, which the Department of Health & Human Services began to implement last year upon requests from LGBT advocates.

HIV/AIDS advocates expressed dismay that the pending defense cuts under the sequester — which would reduce the Pentagon’s budget by an estimated $54.7 billion in 2013 — have received attention in the media, but other programs haven’t received significant attention.

Crump said big ticket items like defense and Medicare have greater “political clout” behind them, which makes other programs such as HIV/AIDS more vulnerable to cuts.

“It makes the non-defense discretionary budget more vulnerable to cuts when these other big ticket items have their champions talking about fencing off or protecting them,” Crump said. “That means we’re going to have to cut more steeply into these other annually funded programs.”

Government agencies that operate programs for people with HIV/AIDS referred the Washington Blade to the White House Office of Budget & Management, which issued a report on Sept. 14 detailing the extent of cuts to government programs.

“As the administration has made clear, no amount of planning can mitigate the effect of these cuts,” the report states. “Sequestration is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument. It is not the responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction.”

Amid this fear, observers were generally optimistic that Congress would institute an alternative to the Budget Control Act to avoid the cuts to HIV/AIDS and other programs.

A Senate Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an agreement to avoid the sequester would likely be reached after campaign season has concluded.

“As much as we like to piss on each other’s boots and do nothing, when there’s a gun to our head, we know it’s time to do something,” the aide said.

The aide predicted a proposal similar to previously proposed bipartisan debt reduction plans — those from the Simpson-Bowles Commission, the Domenici-Rivlin Task Force or the “Gang of Six” — would be enacted.

But even if an agreement is reached, concerns persist that Congress could enact a plan that would cut into HIV/AIDS funds even more so than the Budget Control Act — especially because another agreement on the debt ceiling must be reached in February when the limit will likely be reached.

Schmid said an alternative plan that Congress might come up with could reach into currently protected programs of Medicare and Medicaid to pay for budget reduction.

“We still have to come up with these cuts, and so they are looking at different ways,” Schmid said. “But Medicare and Medicaid will be back on the table again, and we are concerned about that as well.”

Young predicted that any plan Congress would enact for deficit reduction would cut funding for government programs, but it remains to be seen where those cuts would fall.

“There’s going to be some pain somewhere because the whole reason that the sequestration was enacted and passed was because of the rampant fears about the outrageous federal deficit,” Young said. “Now I could get on my soap box with you, but the reason that the deficit is the way it is today is because we’ve had 10 or 12 years of tax cuts, and in order to pay our bills we have to have money coming in.”

And Crump said if the election results in wins for Republicans, they may feel emboldened to pass a plan similar to what House Budget Committee Chair and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan has proposed, which she said would “cut even more deeply” than sequestration.

“There’s a looming series of threats to the whole health care environment that could very much impact the hope that the Affordable Care Act held for improving HIV care and access to care for people with HIV,” Crump said.