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Bush closing White House offices on AIDS & race relations

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February 8, 2001 

WASHINGTON-(AP) - President George W. Bush has decided not to keep White House offices on AIDS and race relations created by his predecessor, shifting the issues to other White House offices.

AIDS policy is to be handled by a new AIDS coordinator in the Domestic Policy Council, a panel established by Bush and run by top aide John Bridgeland. It includes Cabinet secretaries who deal with domestic policy.

Race relations will be handled by the Office of Public Liaison, which acts as a go-between for the White House and several political constituencies.

"AIDS is an in important policy and that's why the president will have an AIDS coordinator working out of the White House as part of the Domestic Policy Council," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "We take this issue seriously." He noted that Bush supports doubling the funding for the National Institutes of Health, which conducts AIDS research.

Officials said the shift was part of a general restructuring of the White House staff.

"The presumption that a White House bureaucracy looks the same from administration to administration is a myth," White House chief of staff Andrew Card told the newspaper USA Yesterday, which first reported the development.

The administration signaled on Jan. 25, five days after Bush took office, that it was thinking about closing the offices, along with some others, as part of the new president's organization of his White House.