Today’s Agenda
Today, Senator Lee has an Energy and Natural Resources hearing on offshore drilling and will meet with representatives of Draper City and the UTA Board of Trustees. He will also hold a Utah tele-press conference in the afternoon.
From the Senator’s Desk
How Liberals Would “Fix” CLASS: Another Mandate
From Republican Policy Committee
Most readers have probably already seen this morning’s Congressional Budget Office blog post indicating that CBO would not score a budgetary impact of repeal of the CLASS Act, given the Administration’s announcement last Friday that it was suspending program implementation.* But you may not have seen an article by the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, who starts off by eating at least a little bit of proverbial crow by admitting that he and other liberals “ignored” CLASS’ fiscal flaws:
[Senator] Thune has a point – in part. The official budget estimates for CLASS suggested it would save money in the first ten years, accounting for about half of the deficit reduction that the Affordable Care Act was supposed to yield during that time. But the estimates for CLASS were never that reliable. More important, after those first ten years, CLASS was likely to pay out more in benefits than it collected as premiums. For these reasons, conservatives like Peter Suderman who criticized CLASS as unsustainable were right to raise alarms, while liberals like me were wrong to ignore them.
But Cohn goes on from that welcome concession to argue that what would “fix” the CLASS program is requiring every American to purchase long-term care insurance:
The sustainability of CLASS would not have been in such question if everybody had to sign up for it. In other words, if long-term care insurance were subject to an individual mandate, old and sick people would not have been the only people enrolling.
Cohn makes the point that the rest of Obamacare, unlike CLASS, is not in fiscal danger precisely because it has an individual requirement to purchase health insurance. But in many respects, that’s the point – the mandate IS in jeopardy, because multiple federal courts have ruled the unprecedented requirement unconstitutional. And if one mandate is unprecedented – and constitutionally dubious – why include a second mandate to boot?
For months, conservatives have asserted – just as they asserted CLASS would be proven insolvent – that if the individual mandate is ruled constitutional, there is little the federal government could not require from its citizens. Peter Orszag first referenced the idea of mandatory participation in CLASS over the summer. The Justice Department likewise conceded in a Pennsylvania courtroom that mandatory long-term care insurance would be constitutional. And the blithe way with which the left has been willing to suggest additional mandates – even before the Supreme Court rules on Obamacare’s individual mandate – proves that conservative concerns about proliferating requirements on individuals to obey liberals’ manifold (and multiplying) commands may soon prove as prescient as those concerns raised about CLASS two years ago.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
I agree with @senjohnthune that the CLASS Act should be repealed. Keeping this law on the books is dangerous.
SenLeeComs
Reid: #stimulus2 should pay for school supplies http://on.msnbc.com/pHrCQJ | Where does it stop?
SenLeePressSec
Congrats! Very well-deserved MT @KSLSheryl: #KSL‘s Murrow award winners @kslbbruce @kslmrichards @RJEnews @grantandamanda @AndrewAdamsKSL
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10 insanely overpaid public employees: http://bit.ly/oyqqWd #tcot #bureaucracy #spending
Around the Water Cooler
Where Barack Obama’s independent problem began
If there was any state that announced that something very big had happened in American politics with Barack Obama’s election in 2008, it was the state he will visit on Tuesday. Virginia had not voted for a Democratic president since 1964 when it went for Obama.
And if there was any state to warn Obama that the independent voters who gave him his historic victory were deeply disaffected, it was again Virginia.
Obama, Congress consider cutting deductions for donations to charities, churches
Some people needed a place to sleep, some needed to see a doctor and some needed help finding a job. But all those needs were met in the same way: through the generosity of good-hearted Americans.
Tuesday, United Way leadership stood before a Senate Finance Committee to plead for those people. Under pressure to deal with the face of burgeoning national deficit, Congress has been considering more than a dozen different proposals to reduce or do away with tax deductions for donations to charity. If the government does away with tax breaks for charitable contributions — the lifeblood of organizations like United Way — many worry donors will give less and needy people will go without. Under the most notable proposal, President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget, estimates are that charitable gifts could drop by as much as $5.6 billion.
Looking Ahead
Tomorrow, Senator Lee will attend a Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and will host his weekly Jello Bar event at 3:30 PM. The senator will also attend a dinner hosted by Taiwanese Ambassador Jason C. Yuan.