No Human Can Spin This Fast

Ezra Klein tries to spin the CLASS debacle as a monument to Team Obama's candor and credibility but he can't spin fast enough to keep up with Barry:

The mandate to develop an “actuarially-sound premium” gave the Obama administration a lever with which they could remove CLASS from the final bill. On Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was killing the program.

...The Obama administration did the right thing here, and they did it at high political cost. Killing the CLASS Act was always going to open them to 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.

Which is why Obama is Ezra's hero.  Unfortunately, doing "the right thing" does not seem to actually include repealing the CLASS act.  HHS Secretary Sebelius has announced that she can't implement the plan and make the numbers work, but her boss is opposed to repealing it.  And it makes sense to kill it and keep it alive because... I have no idea, but I know Ezra will be back with an explanation as soon as someone comes up with one that doesn't sound as if it were written for Jon Stewart.  My guess is that "fiscal responsibility" will be a key theme, as will blaming Bush.  Or maybe Sarah Palin.

Meanwhile, it almost looks as if Team Obama, or some faction therein, is trying to delay the inevitable.  Baffling.

 

Comments

[Ranger]

The politics of this are kind of interesting. Repeal of CLASS is a win/win for the Dems across the board. All the Dem Red State Senators up this cycle would love to cast that vote. And by signing it, Obama would reap a huge "pragamtist" card to be played for the next 13 months.

By vetoing it, all Obama would be doing is re-enforcing in the minds of the electorate that the only way to be sure to get rid of Obamacare is to get rid of Obama.

[NK]

TM-- this is a surprise to you because-- why? Apparently, the HHS wonks/acturaries refuse to lie about CLASS and Bam is pissed. Bam is pissed because this is a huge blow to Obamacare because CBO confirms repealing CLASS won't 'cost' the taxpayers, but repealing CLASS requires the Obamaniacs to patch up Obamacare budget nonsense. The House should repeal CLASS asap, McConnell needs to get 4 vulnerable Dems to co-sign a Senate Bill to get to 51, and demand harry reid schedule a reconciliation vote to repeal CLASS. Harry will of course say NON, a beautiful issue to slam the vulnerable Senate Dems and Bam. Oh the irony.

[Clarice]

This was assclownery from the outset and now is as narciso noted earlier "beyond parody". I hope in a fn or something (cause it's not part of the official record) one of the parties opposing Obamacre in the SCOTUS makes sure they aware of this. The supposed savings from CLASS was supposed to be the financial underpinning of the entire Obamacare carp. Everyone knew from the outset it was carp--except maybe Pelosi who's too stupid.

Anyway there was a rider in the Act by Gregg which REQUIRED HHS to prove the claims of the proponents which is why HHS went thru the exercise at all.They couldn't, but great poker palyer that he is Obama chooses not to fold but to up his bet. Nitwit,

[bgates]

They could have fudged the numbers. They could have tried to delay the inevitable.

Admitting the numbers don't add up is an even bigger testament to their integrity than spending the past two years saying the numbers would add up.

[Jack is Back!]

But he got Osama.

[Danube of Thought]

I don't know how they allowed the Gregg language to survive in the final bill, but thank God it did. Attaboy, Judd.

[Danube of Thought]

Thirty-eight percent at Gallup today.

What Obama needs is some more OWS.

[Captain Hate]

I don't know how they allowed the Gregg language to survive in the final bill, but thank God it did. Attaboy, Judd.

Wasn't that part of the aftershocks of the Scott Brown election; that they couldn't make any changes in the bill when the House voted on it because then it would go back to the Senate where they lost the 60th vote?

[Jane]

Anyway there was a rider in the Act by Gregg which REQUIRED HHS to prove the claims of the proponents which is why HHS went thru the exercise at all.

I heard that horrid Lindsay Graham on Greta last night take credit and he never once mentioned Gregg's brilliance. Too bad Gregg didn't make that a requirement of the entire bill.

[Jack is Back!]

From an Iowahawk tweet:

"I want to know (I want to know) who hid (who hid) her medications (her medications)"

[jimmyk]

They could have fudged the numbers.

Hey, if we want to make them look really good, why stop at that?

"They could have murdered their opposition."

"They could have made off with the gold in Fort Knox and escaped to Abu Dhabi."

There's just no limit to how extraordinarily good they are compared to how bad they could have been!

[Charlie (Colorado)]

From this I infer you do think Ezra is human.

[mark l.]

i don't get it...

the hhs secretary can end a piece of obamacare.

no congressional vote, against the wishes of the president.

same deal with the waivers. hhs secretary decides who gets them. there was even a story a while back about the specific waiver program being ended.

how much power is vested in hhs? a lot, right now. i imagine that would be subject to change, in ezra's world, should the gop win in 2012.

weirder...reid uses the nuclear option. seeing that obamacare was passed on a reconciliation maneuver, how hard would it be to give the cbo a different set of data points, showing that the repeal would prove to be a candidate to pass a gop reconciliation effort, with 51 votes?

the lexicon is very confusing...
the class act was considered a mandate. the individual, mandatory enrollment is also being called a mandate.

does the next hhs secretary have the power to repeal obamacare, sans the wishes of the president?

hypothetically, does the next hhs secretary have the ability to change the cost/penalty of obamacare?

[pagar]

"I don't know how they allowed the Gregg language to survive in the final bill"

Not one single one of them read the bill.

[Porchlight]

Another Iowahawk tweet from a few days back combines the best of hit and run and bgates sagery:

@iowahawkblogDavid Burge

President Goldman Sachs has now started 2 new wars for every one of his Nobel Peace Prizes.

14 Oct via web

http://twitter.com/#!/iowahawkblog/status/124916332016828417

[Clarice]

mark, As I understand it, the Act says CLASS will not be funded unless HSS can demonstrate the savings the Act's proponents claimed. Sibelius had no choice on this--there's simply going to be no money for her to proceed.

[Frau Steingehirn]

Who's in charge these days? We know it isn't Pres. Clueless.
btw - Ezra is a small rodent of a man.
Pfui!

[jimmyk]

So with this bit of cancer excised from Obamacare, could it be harder to get the votes to repeal the whole thing? One could make a case that if CLASS were an integral part of the bill it would have forced Congress's hand. Or will this or the next Congress correctly realize that the cancer is everywhere and they need to euthanize it?

[Sue]

I thought this was going to be a thread about how Cain was joking about the fence he wasn't really joking about.

[Jane]

The stated point of CLASS was to make Obamacare deficit neutral (until the ponzi scheme exploded 10 years down the road) so I doubt that argument will work. Of course that doesn't mean they won't try it.

[Sue]

My to do list for the week:

1. Watch the Rangers win Game 1
2. Watch the Rangers win Game 2
3. Watch the Rangers win Game 3
4. Watch the Rangers win Game 4

[Threadkiller]

Ezra, the numbers guy. Less than 100 years ago, after the constitution was written, Ezra wrote this:

" Republicans are learning an unpleasant lesson this morning: The only thing worse than having no health-care reform plan is releasing a bad one, getting thrashed by CBO and making the House Democrats look good in comparison.

Late last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its initial analysis of the health-care reform plan that Republican Minority Leader John Boehner offered as a substitute to the Democratic legislation. CBO begins with the baseline that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won't have health-care insurance in 2010. In 2019, after 10 years of the Republican plan, CBO estimates that ...17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won't have health-care insurance. The Republican alternative will have helped 3 million people secure coverage, which is barely keeping up with population growth. Compare that to the Democratic bill, which covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population to 4 percent.

But maybe, you say, the Republican bill does a really good job cutting costs. According to CBO, the GOP's alternative will shave $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. The Democrats, CBO says, will slice $104 billion off the deficit.

The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan. And amazingly, the Democratic bill has already been through three committees and a merger process. It's already been shown to interest groups and advocacy organizations and industry stakeholders. It's already made its compromises with reality. It's already been through the legislative sausage grinder. And yet it saves more money and covers more people than the blank-slate alternative proposed by John Boehner and the House Republicans. The Democrats, constrained by reality, produced a far better plan than Boehner, who was constrained solely by his political imagination and legislative skill.

This is a major embarrassment for the Republicans. It's one thing to keep your cards close to your chest. Republicans are in the minority, after all, and their plan stands no chance of passage. It's another to lay them out on the table and show everyone that you have no hand, and aren't even totally sure how to play the game. The Democratic plan isn't perfect, but in comparison, it's looking astonishingly good."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/11/congressional_budget_office_th.html

Maybe Ezra will rerun the numbers if the GOP doesn't.

[Captain Hate]

I never tire of Ezra beclowning himself. It's like he's testing the limits of what it takes to be fired by the WaPo.

[Thomas Collins]

Did John Kerry advise Obama to kill it before keeping it alive, or to keep it alive before killing it?

[Clarice]

Capt. I've been thinking it's time for you and I to put on our protest clothes, go to WS and persuade the gang to disrupt the World Series.Surely it's chauvinistic to suggest we are the "World"..

Of course, others are needed and invited, but somehow I think Capt will know just how to best communicate communicate communicate ..........

[Thomas Collins]

Clarice, you and CH could protest in Boston. Occupy Boston may be protesting at my building this week.

[lyle]

I never tire of Ezra beclowning himself. It's like he's testing the limits of what it takes to be fired by the WaPo.

They're waiting for him to get through puberty first.

[mark l.]

clarice-

so it is an 'if...then' policy?

this is where it grows hazy. congress votes to give the authority to hhs secretary to enact a program, or not?

as i understand it, poorly, a law is a direct order from congress. a mandate is optional to the implementing authority.

how much of obamacare is actually a law, and how much is a mandate?

ex. romney has offerred that he would grant a waiver from the program to every american.

it seems the power to do so rest within the hhs secretary, not the potus.

[Publius from Idaho]

"I don't know how they allowed the Gregg language to survive in the final bill".

Per Pelosi, "You've got to pass the bill to know what's in it".

Oh, the irony!

[matt]

speaking of team obama's candor and credibility, ace has a nice pic of issa holding up a fast and the furious, subpoenaed email/doc that's been fully redacted, as in a big black rectangle.

http://minx.cc/?post=322723

[Jane]

TC,

Shout out if you need to be rescue. I'll get Rocco and we'll be on the case!

[MarkJ]

"By vetoing it, all Obama would be doing is re-enforcing in the minds of the electorate that the only way to be sure to get rid of Obamacare is to get rid of Obama."

Obama is now in full "apres moi le deluge" mode. He can't let go of CLASS without a fight because:

1. He'll be openly admitting his critics were right all along and, more importantly, he was wrong. Narcissists hate being wrong, y'know.

2. ObamaCare is Obama. Obama is ObamaCare. His entire Weltanschauung is wrapped up in his "accomplishment." Successful repeal of even part of ObamaCare means he's failed. And narcissists hate being failures, y'know.

[Threadkiller]

Klein interviewed Paul Ryan in March on 2010:

" EK: There are two things worth saying about that. First, to cover the uninsured, if we believe we need to do that, there'll always be at least a one-time increase in expenses. And two, it's hard to say that government spending is the problem when the countries you're saying spend half as much all do much more of their spending through the government. But let's get into the double-counting issue. If I understand your argument right, you're not saying the Congressional Budget Office is double-counting this money. You're saying the administration and other Democrats have made arguments in which they double-count the money. I agree with you on that. But just so we're clear, CBO's number are still solid.

PR: CBO just scores what's in front of them. So let's just go through it point-by-point. When you raise Social Security's tax revenues, you also raise benefits. More coming in taxes says more benefits are being obligated CBO says you can only count that money once. If you're counting it as offsets for this bill, you're increasing unfunded obligations for Social Security. CLASS Act is another example: These are premiums for a benefit. You're counting these premiums for this benefit as offsets for another spending project, you're creating unfunded benefits. That's double counting. We're increasing obligations and we're not setting aside those dollars for those programs.

So when I hear Sebelius and others say that we're extending the life of Medicare with this, that can't be claimed if you're also using these premiums for offsets. That's disguising the true fiscal picture that's being painted here. The American people are hearing that if we pass this legislation it will improve our deficit situation. I'm saying that's not true because we're increasing these obligations and spending that money elsewhere."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/the_true_cost_of_the_health-ca.html

[JM Hanes]

Jonathon Cohn goes Klein one better, and claims that the CLASS Act debacle is the very vindication of Obamacare.

[Pofarmer]

News reports have been saying that the CLASS part has been stripped from the bill. Can they actually do that without re-voting on the whole thing? I mean, it's in the legislation as passed.

[JM Hanes]

Yeah, Po, they can do that. They just add an amendment to Any Old Bill amending Any Other Old Bill any old time they wanna. I believe the Stimulus Bill, for example, was officially an amendment to a mundane little bill providing for something like an upgrade of certain kinds of military housing.

Huge parts of any big bill are devoted to amending everything from adding and subtracting whole sections and paragraphs, to substituting "or" for "and" in other in previously existing bills. Trying to make sense of it all is not for the faint hearted!

[Captain Hate]

C, I just saw that invitation and I'm honored. Plus I met up with a long time internet friend from St Loo this summer (strangely enough in NYC) and, even though he's relocated to NC, he'd be able to advise us about the best way to get the OWS vermin in trouble, particularly in a baseball way.

TC, I'd be up for that too, work permitting of course.

[Captain Hate]

2. ObamaCare is Obama. Obama is ObamaCare. His entire Weltanschauung is wrapped up in his "accomplishment." Successful repeal of even part of ObamaCare means he's failed. And narcissists hate being failures, y'know.

The funny thing is that he had less to do with the content of the bill than anybody. Every time he tried to sell it at town halls he sounded like a 7th grader who was unprepared for a presentation. And every time he did that public support for it declined. But his narcissism always dictated otherwise.

[Andrew_M_Garland]

Insane Budget Savings

=== ===
Official One:  The CLASS Act was intended to provide long-term care insurance to everyone. I'm sorry to report that we will not be implementing it. It is too expensive.
Official Two:  Even worse, we won't be able to save $86 billion by implementing it.
Mike:  Too expensive, but it was going to save money. Are you nuts?
=== ===

The CLASS act was a budget gimmick from the start. Enrollees had to pay five years of premiums before they could make a claim, unheard of in private insurance. This guaranteed that there would be early cash surpluses to decrease the cost scored by the CBO. But, it would not decrease the eventual claims coming due after the 10 years used by the CBO to evaluate costs.