Word: long
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...October, seven Democrats wrote to Senate majority leader Harry Reid urging him to exclude the CLASS Act - already included in the passed House health reform bill - from the Senate's legislation, saying they had "grave concerns that [the CLASS Act would] create a new federal entitlement program with large, long-term spending increases that far exceed revenues." The chief actuary for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wrote that the CLASS Act provisions in the House bill "face a significant risk of failure...
...major change is in eligibility. The original CLASS Act would have allowed nonworking Americans to enroll in the long-term-care plan if their spouse worked, which could have led to "adverse selection," attracting people to the program who were too disabled to hold a job and therefore sure to file claims. Of course, excluding these people also means that spouses who stay at home just to care for their children (or for other reasons) are excluded from eligibility. The House bill also did not include the 75-year solvency requirement. (See "The Year in Health...
...half of talks with North Korea. But to hear experts in Washington and East Asia tell it, whatever optimism the Obama team may have carried into office in January has already dissipated. Over the summer, the North's second test of a nuclear bomb, followed by the launch of long-range missile (on the very day Obama was in Prague making a soaring speech about a world free of nuclear weapons) has seen to that. Bosworth's trip to Pyongyang, says a diplomat in East Asia, has "very low expectations, and is really about one thing only: seeing whether...
...this week to get some form of nuclear diplomacy going again. But the fact that, privately, the Administration is already so skeptical - "those who still believe in direct engagement are now a fringe element," says Klingner - shows that the reality of dealing with North Korea didn't take long to assert itself. What a difference a year makes...