Did the CBO Just Clear the Way For the Repeal of ObamaCare's Long Term Care Benefit?

The Congressional Budget Office may have just cleared the path for the legislative repeal of ObamaCare's long-term care benefit.

Last week, the Obama administration dumped the news that the Department of Health and Human Services would not be implementing the CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports) Act. After months of bad news about the program—including the firing of the program's actuary following the revelation that its Democratic backers in Congress were warned well in advance of its passage that it was likely a fiscal disaster—the administration finally admitted that they'd given up on trying to make the program work.

That puts the program down. But it doesn't quite kill it, because the program remains on the books—and it will until Congress repeals it. Legislative repeal, however, has posed a problem for both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill for roughly 86 billion reasons: each one a dollar of deficit reduction that the program is scored to produce between 2012 and 2021. Even though just about everyone admits that the program's long-term finances an unworkable mess, legislators still don't want to be seen voting for a bill that increases the deficit.  

But in a blog post this morning, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said that it wouldn't score a repeal of the CLASS Act as a increasing the deficit. Here's why: The CBO automatically assumes administrative decisions about program implementation into its budget baseline. So when HHS announced that they weren't going to go forward with CLASS, the program's scored deficit reduction disappeared; in other words, CBO's budget baseline now already assumes that the deficit has increased by $86 billion because the program is a no-go.

That means that a legislative repeal wouldn't result in an increased deficit. And more importantly, it means that legislators in both parties who might have been nervous about casting a vote that results in an increased deficit, even though everyone understands that the program's deficit reduction is just an accounting artifact, no longer needs to worry about opponents tarring them with accusations that they voted for a bill that raises the deficit by $86 billion.