The CLASS Act’s Untold Story
The report of the CLASS Act Working Group was publicly released this morning, and can be found online here. The report analyzes internal HHS [Health and Human Services] documents showing the problems with CLASS that the Administration ignored in the rush to enact Obamacare:
- Senior HHS officials publicly pronounced the CLASS program solvent in the fall of 2009, at the same time career officials were calling CLASS “a recipe for disaster”;
- In January 2010, HHS raised serious concerns that the CLASS program created in PPACA would be unsustainable – yet Secretary Sebelius and HHS staff never expressed those concerns publicly prior to the bill’s passage; and
- Secretary Sebelius and other HHS officials have claimed through much of 2011 that the Department has sufficient authority to modify the CLASS program to make it solvent – yet internal HHS documents from January 2010 show that HHS drafted a legislative “fix” (which was never adopted) precisely because they were worried that the Secretary did NOT have sufficient authority to change the program.
Unfortunately, the damage associated with CLASS will extend not just to the federal government, as the report reveals that states will be saddled with massive new mandates. As a reminder, states already face budget shortfalls of $175 billion, and mandates from Obamacare’s new Medicaid requirements of at least $118 billion. On top of all that, states are about to get hit with separate new requirements under the CLASS program that, in the words of HHS officials, will “create significant new burdens on the states” trying to comply with “fatally flawed” deadlines.
Businesses could also face massive new mandates as a result of CLASS; the report demonstrates a strong desire by Administration officials to pass the costs of the program on to employers. To raise participation, HHS officialsrepeatedly proposed imposing mandates on businesses requiring them to participate in CLASS. At a time when the economy remains sluggish and employers are reluctant to hire, these new requirements could saddle businesses with additional fiduciary responsibilities, leading to potential lawsuits for large and small employers alike.
In March 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously claimed we had to pass the bill so the American people could find out what was in it. Today’s report finally allows the American people to find out what is in the CLASS Act – and examine the damage created by Democrats’ headlong rush to enact Obamacare.
RPC Analyst Chris Jacobs
Thank you for sharing information with the public about federal mandates. it is important to now about mandates, so that we can assess whether or not we find them appropriate or not. Of course, unless you advocate armed rebellion, citizens and residents in a civil society must work through legal means. And, moral citizens and residents must not rely solely on the law for their analysis, but must discern the guidance of sound moral theory and sound moral practice.
We know – without doubt – that political awareness, legal assessment, and moral assessment are historically bound, and so, sound moral guidance qualifies human assessment by awareness of human limitations/ignorance/failures of human kindness/failures of human justice.
The words used in the piece – harm from ‘federal mandates’, ‘massive new mandates’, ‘burdens on the states’, – and arguments often heard from TEA Party about resistance to federal mandates because of 10th amendment privilege retained by the states – were explicitly used by Virginia thought-manipulators, and political-manipulators to justify campaigns to resist treating Blacks as human beings. e.g read sections from Google Books at http://books.google.com/books?id=PyNb6NvqzEIC&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=virginia+massive+resistance+10th+amendment&source=bl&ots=KgVEmXuazD&sig=3t5KDctKjke3H5eEjN0qi_pS2_E&hl=en&ei=Z951TsanEurg0QHT2_G6CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=virginia%20massive%20resistance%2010th%20amendment&f=false
“US Senator Harry F Byrd was the most influential political figure in the state [sic, should be Commonwealth] of Virginia. Sen Byrd was the chief supporter and developer of the state’s massive resistance policy. He believed that the federal government had no right to interfere with the state and local issues, and he utilized the 10th amendment to the constitution … He referred to the 1954 Brown decision as ‘the most serious blow that has been struck against the rights of states’ … reflected the view that African American and European American students should not be mixed, he strategically developed plans of massive resistance that would keep Virginia’s public schools segregated”.
So, in human humility, TEA Party must be aware that arguments used frequently by TEA Party, as the same arguments used by overt racists, who were also Democrats.
The roots of TEA Party arguments, arguments of Republican leaders in Virginia, and others who use these arguments, have deeply rooted in Virginia history, and in living memory, in arguments of racist Democrats.
And, TEA Party, in humility should be aware that anti-immigrant statements and anti-gay statements , and support for anti-immigrant, and anti-gay, laws made or supported by TEA Party leaders, are deeply rooted in deep bigotry and prejudice in Virginia history, and living memory. Virginia’s eugenics programs that operated in Virginia through most of the 20th century – that made state control of sexuality, state control of the human body, state control of procreation legal – that authorized forced mutilation of young men and women, and forced incarceration in ‘colonies’ – were used by Hitler’s National Socialist (NAZI) government to write NAZI laws authorizing forced incarceration, and then forced killed of mentally ill persons, that then lead to all manner of forced incarceration and forced killing – as we well know from WW2 history (unless the TEA Party harbors Holocaust deniers?!).
So, when TEA Party summons up its arguments against ‘federal mandates’ and summons up the 10th Amendment, TEA Party should remember with humility that these arguments have been well used in Virginia history, and in living memory, to spawn a wide variety of atrocities and mutilations against Virginians, and became the legal framework – explicitly used by Hitler and the NAZIS – to spawn countless millions of atrocities, and mass murders ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell ).
Just as we agree that the Obama Administration had too little humility in governance, and as we know from recent interviews with VP Cheney that Bush Administration had too little humility in governance, the TEA Party and at Party(ies) must exercise great humility in its arguments for governance. Humility is well discussed in religious philosophies. And, in secular moral philosophy we find such descriptions of necessary humility: “truth without humility is as arrogant, and doomed, caricature of truth” (Gandhi); humility is required for a ‘proper perspective of oneself, while capable and dignified by reason, also flawed and corrupt in other ways’ (Kant).
Dear TEA Party: speak up with reason, and remain humble. Telling the truth, and governing properly, requires humility.