On the recordMarch 24, 2010
Mr. President, this amendment would strike the CLASS Act from the bill. The CLASS Act, as we all know, is a new entitlement program. We have two entitlement programs that are already destined to be bankrupt that have unfunded liabilities in the neighborhood of $60 trillion. It does not make a lot of sense to add a third one. Here is what everybody said about this. One of our Democratic colleagues has called the CLASS Act ``a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would be proud of.'' Even the Washington Post described it as a ``gimmick . . . designed to pretend that health care is fully paid for.'' The administration's Chief Actuary said ``there is a significant risk of failure, there is a significant risk that the problem of adverse selection would make the CLASS program unsustainable,'' and the CBO said the additional deficit increases would amount to ``the order of tens of billions of dollars for each 10-year period'' after 2029. We know what this is. This is a gimmick. It is a budgetary gimmick used to make this bill look like it is paid for when it is not. We ought to strike it from the bill, and I hope my colleagues will support this amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
