Washington, D.C. ? A House committee on Wednesday voted to more than triple spending for a global AIDS program that has proven to be one of the Bush administration’s most successful and popular foreign policy initiatives.

The Foreign Affairs Committee’s voice vote on the plan to approve spending of an average $10 billion annually over the next five years came hours after lawmakers and the White House reached a compromise on some of the policy issues, including spending on abstinence programs, that had held up action on the legislation.

The bill extends the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which authorized spending of $15 billion total for five years for prevention and care programs in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions hit by the epidemic. That act, passed in 2003, expires in September.

Every day another 6,000 people are infected by HIV, said committee chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif. “We have a moral imperative to act decisively.”