Tell Your Representative to Vote YES on H.R. 1173 to Repeal the CLASS Act

Dear FreedomWorks member,

As one of our million-plus FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to vote YES on H.R. 1173, the Fiscal Responsibility and Retirement Security Act of 2011. Introduced by Rep. Boustany (R-LA), the bill would repeal the Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) Act. The CLASS Act is a key component in ObamaCare that presents a massive taxpayer bailout risk. President Obama has said he would veto H.R. 1173. Voting to repeal CLASS at this time advances the larger goal of full ObamaCare repeal.

CLASS creates a new government entitlement program to pay for nursing home and home health care costs. The voluntary program is entirely funded by individual participant’s premiums. It is poorly designed and actuarially unsound since it will mainly attract older, sicker people who would take out a lot more than they put into the program. South Dakota Democratic Senator Kent Conrad has even described it as a “Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” CLASS will inevitably collapse, making it a taxpayer bailout waiting to happen.

In 2010, Democrats claimed their health care takeover “wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime.” The new CLASS entitlement was one of several budget gimmicks added to ObamaCare to make this claim seem true. CLASS was purposely crafted to look like a revenue-generator during its first 5 years of operation, when the government would be collecting premiums from participants but not yet paying out benefits. This made the federal books look better by some $70 billion. But in the long run, CLASS will in fact cost taxpayers hundreds of billions.

Recently disclosed documents reveal that, before ObamaCare was passed, President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, knew that CLASS was unsustainable but purposely hid the information from Congress. If the American people had been told about the bailout risk, ObamaCare would very likely not have become law. This information was covered up until Congress forced Sebelius to disclose it. This is an outrageous abuse of power. Congress should hold immediate hearings on the CLASS Act cover-up to find out: What did the White House know and when did they know it?

ObamaCare is already costing the nation billions, with premiums rising and some economists blaming the law, which doesn’t take full effect for another two years, for continuing economic uncertainty and poor job growth. If not fully repealed, ObamaCare will cost us trillions of dollars, and more important, our freedom to control our own health care.

I urge you to call your representative and ask him or her to vote YES on H.R. 1173, the Fiscal Responsibility and Retirement Security Act of 2011. We will count their vote as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2012. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the Jefferson Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe
President and CEO
FreedomWorks
[Click here to see a PDF version of this key vote notice.]

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