The Congressional Budget Office sent out an e-mail to Hill staffers this morning stating that, “beginning immediately, legislation to repeal the CLASS provisions in current law would be estimated as having no budgetary impact.” This clears the way for a repeal of the law, as no offsets will be necessary to compensate for the elimination of CLASS’s mythical $86 billion of deficit reduction.
This is huge for the effort to repeal Obamacare via reconciliation, because it eliminates $86 billion of PPACA’s alleged $210 billion in deficit reduction from the 2012–2021 time-frame. Here is the text of the e-mail (emphasis added):
To Interested Hill staff:
On Friday, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the department does not plan to implement the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) long-term care insurance program under current law. Therefore, in its next baseline budget projections (which will be issued in January), CBO will assume that the program will not be implemented (unless there are changes in law or other actions by the Administration that would supersede Friday’s announcement).
Furthermore, following longstanding procedures, CBO takes new administrative actions into account when analyzing legislation being considered by the Congress—even if it has not published new baseline projections. Beginning immediately, therefore, legislation to repeal the CLASS provisions in current law would be estimated as having no budgetary impact.
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