Budget office gives Republicans cover to repeal health reform program

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Monday gave a boost to Republican efforts to eliminate the healthcare law's CLASS Act by saying their repeal bills would not add to the deficit.

CBO had scored the long-term-care program for people with disabilities as saving $86 billion, or 40 percent of the reform law's $210 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years. In a new blog post, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf clarified that last week's decision by the Obama administration not to implement the program means those savings are now moot. 

"Following longstanding procedures," Elmendorf wrote, "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."

The Department of Health and Human Services on Friday announced that it had not found a way to make the voluntary benefit sustainable "at this time" and wouldn't be working further to implement it. For CBO, the program is as good as dead. 

New baseline budget projections due out in January, Elmendorf wrote, "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)."

In the Senate, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) has a bill to repeal the CLASS Act that has attracted 32 Republican co-sponsors. In the House, Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) has a similar bill with 48 co-sponsors, including Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois.

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