FAUCI DIARY ARCHIVE — Wednesday, December 18, 2002
https://faucisdiary.com/diary/2002-12-18

Text below is verbatim from the released PDFs, with the original line breaks.
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DIARY ENTRY — Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Source: Diary Prequel, p. 66 of 2026.07.27_Diary-Prequel-.pdf
Words: 595
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Another exciting day at the White House. Clearly, Scooter Libby and
the VP are in favor of pushing for the Vaccine Trust Fund. OMB and the WH economic
advisors have a problem with the concept of a trust fund. As usual, Carol Kuntz has been
very supportive. Was called down to a meeting at the WH with OMB people (Jim
Capretta), the VP staff (Carol K., Seth Carus, Noreen Hynes), DHS people (Richard
Falkenrath, et al), Kristen Silverberg, Ken Bernard, Stew Simonson, Phil Russell, Bill
Raub. We had to discuss the vaccine research plan. Again, must concern as to why we
need a trust fund instead of an appropriation. I explained that one (the fund) is
mandatory and the other (appropriation) is discretionary. Jim Capretta came up with the
idea of a “Permanent and Definite Appropriation” that would be mandatory and multi-
year. In the middle of the meeting, Scooter Libby called me on my cell phone and said
that he was going into a meeting with the VP and the President at 1:00 PM (it was now
11:30 AM) and he needed for me to write a ½ pager on the concept of a mandatory fund
for vaccine (he said trust fund, but we subsequently hashed out a Perm. And Def. Appr.
He also wanted a microbe by microbe breakdown with time-lines and costs – all by 12:55
PM. In addition, he wanted me to meet with the CEOs of “Big Pharma” to determine if
they would support this. I rushed to the DHHS with Stew, Kerry Weems, Phil Russell
and Bill Raub and put together a great package to e-mail and FAX to the VP’s office
(Carol K.) arriving a few minutes before 1:00 PM. They loved it. We will wait to see
what happens.

Dec. 19-22, 2002 – Still much activity with the VP continuing to push to help us get a
Permanent and Definite Appropriation for purchase of countermeasures, particularly, but
not exclusively for vaccines. There is much concern about botulism and acquiring
botulism anti-toxin. Many phone calls and meeting with Stewart Simonson with whom I
now speak with and/or meet at least several times per day. Carol Kuntz and Noreen
Hynes are trying to help us. They asked us to put together a programatic assessment of
our procurement needs for countermeasures without consideration of budget constraints.
We had previously put together a $4.2 billion package concentrated mostly on MVA and
rPA (anthrax) with only about $450 million over 10 years for other countermeasures. We
presented this several days ago to OMB people in the presence of Kristen Silverberg (see
above). OMB was miffed that they had not seen these numbers before, when in fact the
numbers were contained in our budget submission for ’04, but were not specifically
designated as purchase. Clearly OMB is resisting the VP’s attempts to get this fund
through. The new “no budget constraint” package that we put together was
approximately $15.0 billion over 3 years (FY04 – 06) with considerable amount now to
other countermeasures such as botulism, plague, Ebola, tularemia, Rift Valley Fever,
EEE/VEE/WEE, Staph. Enterotoxin, antibiotic resistance, pandemic flu, WNV, etc.
Even though this was put together by Phil Russell with help from DMID, the VP wants
me to defend it to OMB since they are cashing in on my reputation and scientific
credibility. The VP has set up a meeting for Dec. 23 at the WH with himself and Scooter
Libby teleconferenced from Jackson Hole and me, Mitch Daniels, Nancy Dorm (OMB
Deputy Director), Tommy Thompson, the VP’s staff, etc. (see below).