On the subject of the HIV travel ban
An article from a college paper was posted here, which quite amusingly instructed us to read history books, that claimed that Clinton signed a travel ban on HIV infected people and that one should vote for Sanders due to this. There are sadly some problems with this.
We tried to get rid of it in the 1990 immigration bill by mandating that the list would henceforth be maintained by the CDC, and that it would include only conditions with a solid medical justification. To his credit, President Bush (41) signed it into law, and his CDC issued a rule in 1991 knocking everything off the list except tuberculosis. There was a revolt in the Republican Conference in the House, led by then Rep. Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA). The CDC pulled the rule and the INS kept the old list in place.
Clinton campaigned on a promise to remove the ban. Shortly after he got to the White House, in February of 1993, Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK) offered an amendment to the NIH reauthorization to keep the old list. Ted Kennedy tried to offer an alternative, but it failed 42-56. The Nickles Amendment then passed 76-23.
(All 23 “no” votes were Democrats. Notably, Joe Lieberman was one of the “yes” votes one of the many early examples of his cozying up to Jesse Helms on gay rights and AIDS/HIV issues.
When the House and Senate went to conference on the bill, then-Rep. Tom Bliley (R-VA) offered a motion to instruct conferees to agree to the Nickles Amendment. It passed 356 to 58. Again, all 58 who voted “No” were Democrats (plus Bernie Sanders). At that point, both chambers of Congress had voted to block Clinton's planned executive order by veto-proof margins. When Congress sent Clinton the NIH authorization in June of 1993, he signed it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2006/12/the-hiv-travel-ban/232005/
Now here's the kicker. Sanders voted for the bill that Clinton signed.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/103-1993/h178
In short, Sanders and Clinton both did the same thing. Both favored an ending of the travel ban, both fought the amendment that added it to the NIH appropriation in 93, and both wound up supporting the final bill after being beaten back. And both made the correct decision at every step of the process. That NIH bill was vital to all people but especially those with HIV. It funded both care and research. That research is why the writer of that editorial doesn't have to fear AIDS as a deadly disease like I did when I was his age. Read history books indeed.