The Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act (called, with unintended irony, the CLASS Act) is a humongous entitlement program representing just a bit of the waste, fraud and irresponsible spending that is packed into Obamacare. It's a very bad deal, a graceless bit of fraud that promises care to America's senior citizens that it just can't deliver.Even the Dems see through it. And they're saying so.
But that doesn't mean they're confessing any wrongdoing about forcing this convoluted and massively expensive mess onto the shoulders of working Americans. No, indeed. These Democrats remain as devoted to ObamaCare as ever.
Here's an example: North Dakota's Democrat Senator Kent Conrad called the CLASS Act “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” And then Conrad turned right around and voted for it! It was a move that prompted Barack Obama's cousin Dr. Milton Wolf to quip, "I suspect Bernie Madoff would be proud of Kent Conrad."
Similarly wacky moves have been made by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius who admitted to a Senate Finance Committee last week that the CLASS Act was “totally unsustainable.” But she still wants it.
Mrs. Sebelius agrees with the Medicare chief actuary that the program “is at a significant risk for failure” with or without the accounting gimmick but - channeling the spirit of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez - she claims the law gives her “administrative flexibility” to bypass Congress and the American voters and rewrite the law to her liking. Such power.
In separate testimony last week, the HHS secretary admitted to double-counting Obamacare’s cooked books. The question posed was whether a $500 billion cut in Medicare should be counted toward preserving Medicare or funding the new law. Her own actuary previously acknowledged they must choose one or the other. Mrs. Sebelius‘ reply? “Both.”
I suggest you read the whole of Dr. Wolf's penetrating op/ed column, one that effectively debunks the administration's desperate myths about the boondoggle that is ObamaCare. It's actually a quite hopeful article and it's right here in the Washington Times.
