Updated CBO Score of Senate Bill — H.R. 3590 Now Raids Social Security and CLASS
The Congressional Budget Office released its updated score of H.R. 3590 as passed the Senate today; the document can be found online here. The score now states that the bill would reduce the deficit by $118 billion, instead of the $132 billion initially estimated. These changes stem largely from technical corrections to the cost of the insurance subsidies that raised their costs by about $10 billion, changes to the Medicare Improvement Fund (a portion of which was utilized to pass the two-month temporary “doc fix” in late December) that reduce offsets by about $5 billion, an increase in revenues from the cap on FSA contributions generating an additional $1 billion in tax revenues, and effects of the Mikulski and other amendments increasing spending by $1 billion.
It’s worth noting first that CBO still has NOT released an estimate for the discretionary appropriations associated with passing the Senate bill; however, some estimates have pegged that cost at more than $100 billion over ten years.
Second, the reduction in projected savings in the updated CBO score means that the legislation’s accumulated 10-year savings ($118 billion) would NOT exceed the combined new revenue generated by the Social Security program ($52 billion over ten years) and the CLASS Act ($70.2 billion). If the bill’s new revenues to the Social Security and CLASS programs are intended to be used for those purposes and not to fund new health care entitlements, the bill RAISES rather than lowers the deficit. Thus the bill either “raids” the Social Security Trust Fund or the new CLASS Independence Fund for revenues to spend on a massive new health care program. This would thus violate the “Sense of the Senate” language included in Section 1563 (page 392 of the bill) that the Social Security and CLASS Act revenues should be dedicated to those programs “and not spent in this Act for other purposes.”
(b) SENSE OF THE SENATE.—It is the sense of the Senate that
(1) the additional surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund generated by this Act should be reserved for Social Security and not spent in this Act for other purposes; and
(2) the net savings generated by the CLASS program should be reserved for the CLASS program and not spent in this Act for other purposes.