Word: budgeters
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Tucked deep inside the Senate health reform bill - beginning on page 1,926 - is a plan for a new federal insurance program. Average premiums could be as high as $180 per month and could be automatically deducted from the paychecks of some American workers. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts this new program would "add to budget deficits ... by amounts on the order of tens of billions of dollars." This is not, however, the so-called public option that is the focus of much heated debate on Capitol Hill. It's an entirely different Democratic plan...
...Senator Ted Kennedy, a chance to improve the current options available to the elderly and disabled who need care (Medicare does not cover long-term nursing-home stays, and Medicare funding for home health care would be cut under health reform); to critics, it's a fiscally unsound budget gimmick, "a classic definition of a Ponzi scheme," as Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota described it late last week. (See 10 players in health care reform...
...CLASS Act - which would begin collecting premiums in 2011 but wouldn't begin payouts until 2016 - appears to generate $72.5 billion in savings between 2010 and 2019. On paper, these savings are used to offset spending in the bill, which even CLASS Act supporters admit has the appearance of budget gimmickry...
...opponents are just as guilty of fiscal shenanigans. It's true, as Thune pointed out, that the CBO says the CLASS Act will increase budget deficits in the long term, but that's only because of the peculiar way the deficit is calculated. Premiums collected would be invested in federal securities, and when the interest earned is transferred back to the CLASS Act trust fund, the transaction would be recorded as an increase in the deficit. The Senate bill also requires that the CLASS Act trust fund be solvent over a 75-year period, and the bill would give...
...sought to reduce its budget for 2010 by $12 million, even though expenditures have risen due to the falling dollar and increasing subscription prices. But the letter says Harvard’s libraries have been strained by a “period of neglect” stemming back to the 1990s...