On Friday, the Obama administration made it official: CLASS is dismissed.
“CLASS” stands — or stood — for “Community Living Assistance Services and Supports.” The idea was simple, or seemed to be: a voluntary insurance program that would cover home health-care options for adults who become disabled.
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up. He really likes graphs, and is on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. E-mail him here.
It was the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s brainchild, but the White House was cool to it in public and hostile in private. “Seems like a recipe for disaster to me,” wrote one aide in a subsequently released e-mail.
The problem with CLASS was that it front-loaded its savings and back-loaded its costs. As the Congressional Budget Office wrote in November 2009, “the cash flows under the new program would generate budgetary savings (that is, a reduction in net federal outlays) for the 2010-2019 period and for the 10 years following 2019, followed by budgetary costs (an increase in net federal outlays) in subsequent decades.” No mystery there. The surprise was that it made it into the bill at all.
But that was less a legislative coup than an unintended consequence. Then-Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) was chairing the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) absence, and he didn’t think he had enough Democratic support to hold the line on CLASS.
Sen. Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican who left office earlier this year, proposed to weaken the program by replacing its premium with instructions for the secretary of Health and Human Services to develop an “actuarially-sound premium” at a later date. Much to Gregg’s surprise — much to everyone’s surprise — Dodd accepted the amendment.
Gregg’s attempt to underscore the financial weakness of the program led to its inclusion in the bill. After that point, removing it would have required 60 votes and a willingness to effectively betray Kennedy. CLASS was in.
Now it’s out. And the reason, again, was Gregg’s proposal. The mandate to develop an “actuarially-sound premium” gave the Obama administration a lever with which they could remove CLASS from the final law.
One way of looking at the administration’s decision is that it shows a commitment to fiscal responsibility. “What happened here is that government worked exactly the way it ought to,” wrote Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. “Even though it was a liberal program promoted by a longtime liberal icon, HHS analysts eventually concluded that its conservative critics were right and the program as passed was flawed. So they killed it.”
At the Atlantic, Megan McArdle says the truth is just the opposite. “The problems with CLASS were known from day one, but no one listened, because it gave them good numbers to sell their program politically.” The experience with the CLASS Act, she says, just goes to show how much of the bill is likely to prove flawed in practice.
Both sides have a point. The Obama administration did the right thing here, and did it at high political cost. Killing the CLASS Act was always going to open up a flood of criticism. They could have fudged the numbers. They could have tried to delay the inevitable. They didn’t. Instead, they proved themselves committed to a financially sound health-reform plan.
The Post Most: BusinessMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
World Markets from
Other Market Data from
Key Rates from
Loading...
Comments