[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15677-15678]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             THE CLASS ACT

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, late last week the American taxpayer got 
some very good news, and that was that the administration announced 
they were not going to move forward with implementing the CLASS Act. It 
was a stunning end for something many of us have believed is a fiscal 
timebomb for our country. They acknowledged it is simply not workable. 
In fact, HHS Secretary Katherine Sebelius said, ``Despite our best 
analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS 
implementation at this time.''
  The Washington Post went on to say that ``the Obama administration 
cut a major planned benefit from the 2010 law on Friday, announcing 
that a program to offer Americans insurance for long-term care was 
simply unworkable.''
  The Hill reported that ``HHS officials acknowledged that CLASS fell 
apart simply because it was too flawed to salvage.''
  From Politico: `` . . . a stunning end to a financially troubled 
long-term care insurance program and a major setback to the health care 
reform law.''
  Even the New York Times editorialized that ``it was too costly and 
would not work.''
  This is good news for the American taxpayer. This is something many 
of us argued was the conclusion that inevitably people would come to, 
when this was discussed and debated as part of the health care reform 
bill over a year ago. In fact, on December 4, 2009, I offered an 
amendment to repeal the CLASS Act.
  It was then offered as one of the pay-fors for the President's health 
care reform bill. At that time, it was said it would generate somewhere 
on the order of $70 billion in additional revenue that could be used to 
pay for the health care bill. More recent estimates of that number are 
somewhere in the order of $86 billion that would be generated in the 
first 10 years. One of the reasons for that was, of course, people 
would begin to pay premiums even though they would not start demanding 
benefits until later. Even at that time, there was tremendous concern 
that this would run up deficits, blow up deficits in the outyears when 
you got outside of that 10-year window; that after people were through 
paying their premiums and started demanding benefits, this would get 
into sort of a downward death spiral and would never pay for itself. 
That was a conclusion many people were drawing already, at the time, 
that there was such a rush to pass health care reform through here and 
to come up with ways to pay for it, that this ill-fated program was 
included. It was interesting because that amendment I offered back in 
December 2009 actually had pretty broad bipartisan support. At that 
time, every Republican voted for the amendment and 12 Democrats as 
well. We had a majority of Senators--51 Senators said in December 2009 
that we ought to repeal the CLASS Act from the underlying health care 
bill simply because it was not workable and it was going to run up 
deficits in the outyears and everybody knew it. Instead, we proceeded 
and plowed forward, and the health care bill was going to be passed 
irrespective of concerns that had been raised by many of us but, more 
importantly, also by people who really study these things, people in 
the Congressional Budget Office, the Actuary at the Health and Human 
Services Department. There were a lot of warnings going forward about 
this program and what a bad idea it really was.
  It is time that we be honest with the American people about this 
particular budget gimmick. I can't help but think that if we had come 
to this conclusion a long time ago, we would have saved some money when 
looking at whether this could be implemented, whether it could actually 
work. The inevitable conclusion is that it would not.
  I want to read for my colleagues something that was stated by the 
Actuary at the Health and Human Services Department way back in 2009. 
In fact, this goes back to July 2009, well before the final vote 
occurred on the health care reform bill, particularly

[[Page 15678]]

the vote on the amendment that would have stripped this provision from 
the health care reform bill. The Actuary at the Health and Human 
Services Department, Mr. Richard Foster, said:

       I'm sorry to report that I remain very doubtful that this 
     proposal is sustainable at the specified premium and benefit 
     amounts . . . 36 years of actuarial experience lead me to 
     believe that this program would collapse in short order and 
     require significant federal subsidies to continue.

  That was from the Actuary at the Health and Human Services 
Department.
  Later that year, in the August-September timeframe, he said:

       As you know, I continue to be convinced that the CLASS 
     proposal is not actuarially sound.

  I believe these are statements by somebody who had looked closely at 
this program and had come to the right conclusion way back then--that 
it flat was not going to work. Yet, because of the mad rush to pass 
health care reform and to argue to the American people that somehow it 
was going to be paid for, this particular program was included. It 
clearly was a colossal mistake. Fortunately, it looks as though the 
administration has concluded the same. Hopefully we can get this killed 
once and for all so that it doesn't become a drain on our children and 
grandchildren, which it, of course, would when the bills started to 
pile up in those outyears and the deficits started to mount.
  If you think about the fact that every American today owns about 
$48,000 of the Federal debt--I mean, for most Americans the Federal 
debt is like having a second mortgage or, for that matter, a first 
mortgage on their homes. They have an enormous amount of debt for which 
they are responsible. Instead of looking at ways to reduce that debt, 
reduce the size of government, and get spending under control, 
Washington, DC, continues to look for ways to expand government and to 
add to the amount of debt we are passing on to our children and 
grandchildren.
  Last week, when the announcement was made by the administration that 
this program is simply not workable and they are not going to implement 
it, it was a huge victory for the American taxpayer and a huge victory 
for our children and grandchildren--future generations of Americans who 
would end up having to pay for this. If you think about the fact that 
we already have somewhere along the lines of $60 trillion in unfunded 
liabilities in other entitlement programs, piling on yet another one 
seems to be digging the hole ever deeper than it already is. What you 
do not want to do when you are in a deep hole is keep digging, and this 
plan, the CLASS plan, would have kept digging that hole even deeper for 
our children and grandchildren.
  Interestingly enough, this was the analysis that was done by Health 
and Human Services when they came to the conclusion that it should not 
be implemented. Now, as you can see, this is a volume that is several 
inches thick, so obviously they looked very carefully at this. 
Unfortunately, they came to that conclusion 19 months later than they 
should have. But this is what they came up with in terms of concluding 
that the CLASS program would not work. So, having done that analysis, 
one would think the next logical conclusion would be, let's repeal this 
piece of legislation. Let's get this off the books. Yet the 
administration is still talking about and still somehow wedded to the 
idea that somehow this might work, so they are saying they don't want 
to see it repealed.
  Well, Senator McCain, my colleague from Arizona, was down here 
earlier today talking about this program and this report, and he is a 
cosponsor, as I am, of a piece of legislation we put forward to repeal 
the CLASS Act. We will work as quickly as we can to put together 
legislation, now that we have this report from HHS, that will actually 
move forward with the intention to repeal this. But it strikes me that 
this is something most of my colleagues, given what we know now, should 
be willing to support, and especially given the fact that there were 12 
Democrats who voted with the Republicans back in December 2009, to 
constitute a majority here in the Senate. There were 51 Senators who 
voted to repeal the CLASS Act from the health care bill back in 
December 2009 before all of this analysis came out. So now that we have 
this analysis in front of us, it seems to me that the logical thing we 
should do is to move forward with repealing this piece of legislation.
  It is interesting; when we were debating in the Senate back in 
December 2009, many of my colleagues in the Senate said things about 
the CLASS Act that were very supportive; that they actually, I guess, 
believed this was going to work. I will not mention names to protect 
the guilty, but they called it a breakthrough. Some referred to it as a 
``win-win.'' Others referred to it as ``critical.'' One of my 
colleagues said: So we get a lot of bangs for the buck, as one might 
say, with the CLASS Act that we have in this bill. Another one of my 
colleagues said: One of the critical pieces of the bill is the 
Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, or the CLASS 
Act. Another one said: The CLASS plan is a win-win. One went so far as 
to suggest that certain colleagues on our side of the aisle who argued 
that the CLASS plan would lead to a financially unstable entitlement 
program that would rapidly increase the deficit--he went on to say that 
was simply not accurate.
  There are many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who at 
the time believed wrongly this was going to work. I hope, now that we 
have this voluminous copy of the analysis done by the Department of 
Health and Human Services, they will join with us in repealing this 
really bad piece of legislation and get it off the books once and for 
all. We have 32 cosponsors on a bill that would do that. I hope that 
we, at the very first opportunity--and perhaps that will be even 
sometime this week--in the legislation we are considering now, could 
have an amendment that would repeal the CLASS Act so we can put this 
issue to bed once and for all for the American people.
  It seems to me, with the kinds of year-over-year deficits we are 
running--$1.3 trillion, $1.4 trillion deficits--the very least we can 
do is take something we know is not going to work and focus on those 
things that actually will work. We ought to be talking right now about 
that which will reduce government spending, make the Federal Government 
smaller, expand the private economy, and look at what we can do to 
create jobs.
  I am not suggesting for a minute that the issue of long-term care is 
not important; it is. There are right ways and wrong ways to deal with 
that. The CLASS Act represented the very worst way to deal with that; 
that is, to come up with a program that has been described as a 
downward death spiral and actually add to the debt we are going to pass 
on to our children and grandchildren, knowing full well this program 
would not pay for itself. It is a farce. It was never going to reduce 
the deficit. We now have that demonstrated in this analysis that has 
been done. So I hope my colleagues here in the Senate on both sides of 
the aisle will come together and recognize that and repeal once and for 
all this very bad piece of legislation.
  It was good news when the administration recognized they couldn't 
implement it, it was not workable. It would be better news for the 
American taxpayers and for future generations of Americans if the 
Congress would repeal this legislation and do it soon.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the 
conclusion of the remarks of the Senator from Tennessee, I be 
recognized in morning business. What I am going to do is try to clear 
up some of the misunderstanding about the troops who have gone into 
Uganda and other areas on the LRA, Lord's Resistance Army.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Tennessee.

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