Moral and Legal Authority
Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.
--Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.
Political Shenanigans and Deceit
Seldom does America experience the shenanigans and deceptions of government in real time. The CLASS Act is deceit, deception and mendacity perpetrated over the last 18 months.
The CLASS Act is long-term care insurance included in the ObamaCare bill. At the time, Democrats deemed to keep the cost under a trillion dollars and the CLASS component was a major part of the deception in "reducing" the costs of ObamaCare. According to the plan, CLASS was to begin collecting premiums in 2012 and not disperse benefits for five years. Therefore, the CLASS receipts were “scored” as revenue. However, the payment of benefits were not "scored.” This is blatant deceit. The WSJ reports:
Class was added to the bill because it was among the budget gimmicks that Democrats needed to create the illusion that trillions of dollars of new spending would somehow reduce the deficit.
Deceit is immoral and so is the misuse of the revenues received. Just like many other government programs, most notably Social Security and Medicare, Congress put off payment to the future. As reported in the WSJ:
So the people who sign up begin paying premiums immediately—money that Democrats planned to spend immediately on other things, as if the back-loaded payments to Class beneficiaries would never come due. The $86 billion or so that would have built up between 2012 and 2021 with the five-year lead is supposed to help finance the rest of ObamaCare. The Class program would go broke sometime in the next decade, but that would be somebody else's problem.
This is immoral manipulation. Worse, presently the CLASS Act is being abandoned because of the future debt. However, the original revenue “scoring” fraud continues. The WSJ:
Since the CBO says Class's front-loaded collections cut the deficit to the tune of that $86 billion, HHS (Health and Human Services) has to pretend that the program is still alive to preserve these phantom savings.
Government must behave with moral authority for a free society to thrive. Therefore, We the People must expose government’s moral transgressions by communicating with our friends and neighbors. Only the power of We the People will alter the immoral distortions of government. As Thomas Jefferson said, “…the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree.”
