(Adds hospital, WHO comments)

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) - U.S. senators sought $300 million in U.S. spending to combat tuberculosis on Tuesday, as new tests confirmed that the U.S. man at the center of an international TB alarm is not highly infectious.

Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas introduced legislation to accelerate efforts to develop new drugs, diagnostic tests, vaccines and other steps.

"It's possible to eradicate TB in the United States," Brown told reporters.

The bill would authorize more money for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and local health authorities. Another bill to increase TB efforts, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Gene Green of Texas, was introduced in the House of Representatives in March.

The Senate bill comes after federal authorities imposed a rare isolation order on Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta lawyer with a hard-to-treat kind of TB, after he placed fellow airline passengers at potential risk of infection during May flights to and from Europe for his wedding and honeymoon.

A Senate panel is due to hear from CDC and Customs and Border Protection officials in a hearing on Wednesday on the government's actions relating to Speaker.

The CDC and health authorities in other countries are tracking down anyone who sat near Speaker on the flights lasting eight hours or longer.

"The unfortunate situation of Andrew Speaker has brought the whole TB issue a little more in focus for the Congress," Brown said.

TB is a sometimes fatal bacterial infection usually attacking the lungs. Annually, about 9 million people worldwide get TB and it kills about 1.6 million, with the highest toll in developing countries, particularly in Africa.

The bill would authorize $300 million in TB spending in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and unspecified spending through 2012. The government currently spends about $130 million per year on TB control efforts, Brown said.

GLOBAL EFFORTS

The United States also gave $724 million this year to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which combats those diseases globally.

TB has become less common in the United States, with about 14,000 cases in 2006.

Dr. Paul Nunn of the World Health Organization said the U.N. agency and the Stop TB Partnership organization this month will release recommendations to countries on combating TB that does not respond to standard or second-line drugs.

These steps would cost $2 billion but could save 134,000 lives worldwide over two years, Nunn said.

Speaker is being treated at National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR TB, invulnerable to most antibiotics.

The hospital said a third consecutive sputum smear test, which assesses if there are large numbers of tuberculosis bacteria in a patient's sputum, had come back negative. The test can help determine how sick and contagious a patient is.

CDC guidelines indicate patients on treatment with three straight negative sputum smears may be considered non-infectious in most settings, the hospital said.

Dr. Charles Daley, his doctor, said other tests are needed before Speaker can be declared non-infectious and released. Daley said no decision has been made on surgery to remove infected lung tissue.

"We've got a ways to go before we can say 'absolutely zero chance (of infectiousness).' We're not there. It is several weeks away," Daley said.

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