Obama Throws Good Money After Bad

Taxpayer-funded PR for Unsustainable CLASS Act

“We very much share the concerns that have been expressed that, as written into the law, the framework of the program was not sustainable.”

—Secretary Sebelius, 2/16/11

At a time when the federal government is running trillion-dollar deficits, the Obama Administration has proposed spending yet more taxpayer dollars to launch a PR campaign aimed at promoting the CLASS Act—a new Obamacare entitlement that even HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admits is at risk of becoming “immediately insolvent.”

·         Non-partisan experts and actuaries have consistently warned that the program could become unsustainable without a massive taxpayer bailout.

·         The independent Medicare actuary concluded that there is a “very serious risk” of the CLASS Act becoming unsustainable, and the President’s own Fiscal Commission recommended that the “financially unsound” program be significantly reformed or repealed entirely.

·         Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad famously called the program “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.”

·         Senators Shelby and Thune wrote last week to Secretary Sebelius to express concern that the Administration plans to “use federal resources on television ads in an effort to mislead Americans that the CLASS Act is fiscally sound.”

The Administration has provided no details about how it believes it can turn a totally unsustainable entitlement into a solvent program, yet it already has plans to spend more taxpayer funds for a PR campaign to promote the program. It’s just another sign that Obamacare will prove to be a budget-buster for the federal government.