Representative Mike Kelly Votes to End CLASS Act, Continues Efforts to Repeal and Defund the President’s Health Care Law

Representative Mike Kelly Votes to End CLASS Act, Continues Efforts to Repeal and Defund the President’s Health Care Law

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Representative Mike Kelly (PA-03) issued the following statement on his vote tonight in support of the Fiscal Responsibility and Retirement Security Act of 2011 (H.R. 1173), which repeals the controversial Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) program, the long-term care entitlement program that was included in the health care law but that the Obama Administration this past fall decided not to implement, yet has refused to permanently repeal:

“Last October, the Obama Administration announced it would halt implementation of the CLASS program, admitting that the program was unsustainable and had no path forward for solvency. This should have come as no surprise. During the health care debate,

the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services warned the White House that the CLASS program would ‘collapse in short order,’ and internal administration emails revealed that the program was ‘a recipe for disaster.’

“In fact, Senator Kent Conrad, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called it ‘a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would be proud of,’ and a bicameral Congressional investigation found that the CLASS Act offered illusory ‘savings’ that were ‘crucial to garnering support for passage of the health care law.’

“The CLASS Act, which members of both political parties believed from the beginning was nothing more than a budget gimmick used to dupe the American people, needs to be repealed immediately, and I urge President Obama and the Senate to help us right this wrong and ensure that this failed program gets taken off the books permanently.”

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