Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor, as I do week after week, as a physician who practiced medicine in Wyoming for a quarter of a century to give a doctor's second opinion about the health care law.

I was thinking last week, while sitting in the House Chamber when the President was giving his State of the Union Address, about something he said. He said:

We will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt, and phony financial profits.

Repeating, he promised not to go back to an economy weakened by phony financial profits. That is why today, in the next hour or so, the House of Representatives will answer the President's call. They will agree. They will vote to repeal the CLASS Act--a program that is the perfect example of phony financial profits.

Let me explain further. President Obama's health care law established the CLASS Act--a brandnew Federal long-term care entitlement program. CLASS pays a stipend to individuals enrolled when they are unable to perform daily living activities, such as dressing, bathing, and eating. The issue is that to qualify for the CLASS benefit, an individual would have to pay a monthly premium for 5 years before the Federal Government starts to pay out any benefits. Well, that sounds great, but not so fast. It turns out that the math for the program doesn't add up and it will not work.

The worst part about it is that the administration has known from the very beginning that this CLASS Program--and the President's entire health care law--was built on phony financial profits. Specifically, the Obama administration hid behind a Congressional Budget Office estimate showing that this program would reduce the deficit by $70 billion over a 10-year period. These savings are entirely mythical, and they come from premiums collected over the first 5 years. During that time, the program isn't required or even allowed to pay out individual benefits. Over its first 10 years, this program, the Congressional Budget Office estimated, would collect $83 billion in premiums but would only pay out $13 billion in benefits. But then instead of holding on to the $70 billion in excess premiums collected to pay out future expenses, the Washington Democrats used it as an accounting gimmick, a budgetary trick to pay for the President's health care law. Adding insult to injury, Washington Democrats then tried to claim that the same $70 billion could also be used to pay down the deficit. Talk about phony financial profits. This is the very practice used by the President that the President now objects to.

The good news is that the administration finally admitted late last year that the CLASS Act was a complete failure and they could not make it work. The bad news is that the phony financial profits continue.

Just because the program won't go forward doesn't mean that the costs of the President's health care law don't go forward, because they do. Now the American people are stuck with the bill, and it is a much more expensive bill than the one they had been promised and the one they had expected. In fact, just yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the health care law is now likely to cost $54 billion more than expected between 2012 and 2021.

As Politico says:

The big change that makes the law more expensive is the Obama administration's decision not to implement the CLASS Act, which means the government will not collect $76 billion in premiums over the next 10 years.

I applaud the House for taking the lead and voting to repeal the CLASS Act. I call on President Obama and my colleagues in the Senate to do exactly the same. Senate majority leader Harry Reid should bring H.R. 1173, the Fiscal Responsibility and Retirement Security Act, to the Senate floor for a vote. This bill will repeal the CLASS Act so that the American people have a clear understanding of the cost of the President's health care law.

It is time to end the phony financial profits in the President's health care law that continue to burden our economy and our Nation. It is time to finally find out if the President truly does believe in fairness because if he does, he will repeal the CLASS Act and make it clear that he has the same accounting standards for Washington as he has for the private sector. Washington should not be able to cook the books and to make the President's health care law look more financially sound than it really is.

The American people are sick of phony financial profits, and they are demanding fairness in the public sector as well as the private sector. That is why I will continue to come to the floor and fight each and every day to repeal and replace the President's broken health care law--replace it with a patient-centered plan, a plan that allows Americans to get the care they need from a doctor they want at a price they can afford.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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