have today because current cpi does not fully adjust for it. the implications by the way for the chain cpi on the ssi program are more deleterious because it would cut benefits in the beginning before people get benefits and be cutting their benefits after that. whether implemented in 2011 art 2001 and m-1 the chain cpi would promise members of congress and the president made that there would be no changes to social security benefits affecting people 55 and over. it's bad policy and it's also terrible public relations. social security is a promise. to promise americans expect their government to keep and this is true across all political spectrum's, across the political spectrum true for tea party households in union households. americans are not easily deceived and if the congress

chooses to implement the cp -- cpie ultimately they will understand in terms of social security over 10 years it will take $121 billion directly out of the pockets of social security beneficiaries. they will understand that their government says let me down so it is very important you are casting light today on this issue and very appreciated that you put this panel together and we are delighted to assist in any way possible. >> thank you. >> thank you very much dr. kingson. our second witness is gail ruggles. gail is a resident who lives in a very rural part of northeastern vermont and what she is going to be talking about are some of the struggles that she has had over the years, which i think reflect the struggles that millions of people her age have had and also she is going to talk about the benefits that an older american

act program has had in turning her life around. ms. ruggles thanks for being with us. >> good morning and thank you for inviting me to testify. it's a pretty important issue to me too. my name is gail ruggles and i'm 51 years old. i'm currently the administrative assistant for a medical technology which is a growing research and development firm in northeast vermont. for the first time in many many years i'm beginning to feel economically self-sufficient. three years ago, not so pretty. my life was deftly different story. i never plan to be broke. i never planned to be get out of work. i've been gainfully employed since i was 16 years old post the lower-level jobs. when i turn 50 hours divorce. is raising a fifth and seventh-grader on my own and i decided i'd like to be a better world bottle for them and do something better with my own life. i met with a financial aid rapid

lyndon state college and went back to school. took me a while but i graduated with a bachelor's degree in liberal studies. i was to sit -- and i was ready to get back into the working world full-time. something weird happened in those five years. somewhere along the line people started looking at me and saying this thing called at your age. it has this gritty feel like i was used up, like i was a has-been. i was still me. i was worried that going back to school hadn't been such a good idea. i was deeper in debt because even though i participated in work-study i maxed out my student loans to help pay my monthly bills. asserts the papers for jobs the one i saw something i considered answering i started to think, yeah at who would want me at my age? i lost weight. i turn the thermostat down we were coal. we ate cheaper and cheaper food. i told the kids sometimes i was hungry and i gained weight from poor eating. i knew i look back. that made me feel that. my chances of getting a job got

worse. the worst thing was i felt like it was a failure to my kids to go within six months of graduating i was working five part-time jobs. i did substitute teaching whenever i was called. i picked out books in the town dump and sold them on half.com and i brokered auto parts for a friend on ebay. i did freelance writing and tax work in taxis and. i didn't know what else i could do. the slumping economy hurt me like it hurt so many others. my car was on it's last leg. is getting behind in my mortgage and except for an understanding banker i was afraid of foreclosure. in three months it would be springtime, big deal. than the electric company could shut me out for late payment. once i went to the local food pantry. ape prominent lady from my time was ticking off names and i was so mortified it took my bag of groceries, got in my car and cried all the way home and never went back. at this point i was 59.5 years old and i read my social security earnings statement like it was the holy grail. all i wanted to do is make it to

62, pick up that little chunk of social security and combine with my five other jobs and maybe make ends meet. as afraid of what would happen to me if i couldn't support, what would happen to my kids if i couldn't support them. all i wanted to do is get them through school and then i didn't care what happened. i knew i needed help but had no idea where to get it. the turning point for me came in janjaweed 2000. and chipra store to get a winter coat and i told the girl at the register i was looking for work. i made a joke about being someone at my age and she said how old are you? i told her and she handed me this little brochure from vermont, so c. is returning in development. the program sounded too good to be beach be chu but i called for an apartment anyway. i have to tell you i don't like public aid offices and i don't like having to defend my life's failures in exchange for handouts. the people at vermont associates were different. they really care. they wanted me to make a better life for myself. they took the time to explain to

me the duality of the senior community service employment program. they play senior workers and paid training positions in 501(c)(3) organizations. firstly i thought that was brilliant. community people helping each other. is assigned to train at the office of the native american nonprofit group. this is a 20-year-old organization run by volunteers. i set up their files and put their finances in order and started to catalogue their library and museum holdings in noveck siemens the chief started to commie the secretary. i looked around and i thought hey i'm pretty good at this. i told vermont associate supervisor would like to learn to write grants to help fund the library. it is kind of way but we work together to make it happen and i took an amazing two-day grant workshop in boston. it was a key addition to my resume. as part of this program vermont associates holds monthly

training and employment meetings. the special is come to these meetings to teach us to rewriter rewrite their massa me for today's employers, a really new skill. they taught us interviewing skills how to create a portfolio. at one meeting we were asked to make a list of skills we had and i found i could do a lot of things from sewing on a button to cleaning a septic tank. i realized i had a lot of skills that could be used in a real job situation. in early november i was helping a friend deal with the tax issue that he had incurred and i met him once and made where he worked. one day his boss let us use his office while he was out to lunch. i looked around and i saw stacks of mail piles of folder and papers everywhere and i thought this guy could use me. my training i was confident that i knew how to take care of an office. after all i've been doing it for eight months so i gathered my courage and asked for an interview with the owner of -- he didn't know he needed extra help but he was in convincing you to hire a new staff employee. i had an ace up of my slate

called oja incentive program that stands for on-the-job experience. as it turned out the combination of skills i honed during my training and incentive together landed my job. of course it was up to me to keep it that was december 2009. i got a raise in january. i had insurance benefits, vacation time and investing in a 401(k). being a participant gave me things welfare programs never could. it gave me occupational skills and special training to obtain lasting employment. gave me company is in my abilities. it ultimately gave me the skills to become economically self-sufficient. i'm not even thinking about collecting social security because i don't have to. i'm building a stronger retirement. vermont help me turn my life round and it's a program that works. thank you. >> thank you very much. our third witnesses dr. heidi hartmann the president of the washington-based research for

policy research which he founded in 1987. dr. hartmann is research professor at the george washington university and we thank her very much for being with us today. >> good morning mr. chairman. it's a pleasure to be here. >> a little bit closer to that might please. >> turn it on. good morning mr. chairman it's a pleasure to be here and i thank you for this opportunity to testify. in addition as you said to being present at the institute of women's policy research i'm a labor economist with a ph.d. degree from yale university. i want to share with you findings from recent research and i would like to acknowledge the support of the ward foundation and the rockefeller foundation and supporting our work. to put it briefly our study show that seniors have been hit hard by this recession. their income from assets and pensions have fallen and they are trying to make up for that by working more. fortunately social security is there for them and is make it up a larger share of their income.

at the same time other sources have been connected. among all age groups only the elderly did not seen increase in poverty during the recession and its aftermath and this income stability is almost certainly a result of the universality of social security and its important protective features such as the lifetime guarantee and its cost of living adjustments. as a result of the recession more americans colleges are worried about having enough funds for retirement in fewer feel they are saving enough for retirement and many are borrowing from their retirement funds are withdrawing money from savings to deal with the slow recovery from the recession. i am skipping through my testimony and i will be summarizing it. the severe loss in assets as a result of the recession should increase policymakers concerns that those who are 45 to 59 years old who are beginning to enter retirement now and will continue to do so for the next 20 years will need social security benefits even more than the current generation of retirees. these older workers are also

experiencing disproportionate share of long-term unemployment and therefore are programs that create jobs such as the american jobs act are especially important to them and as we have just heard from the poignant testimony of mrs. ruggles the assistance with job training and finding employment is also critically important as his continued long-term unemployment insurance benefits. i would like to illustrate some of the major points in our research. first, older americans are relying more on social security. first in the full testimony with all the figures, the gears 2.5 show women's income from all sources is lower than men's income and women therefore rely on social security more than men do. this graph which is figure 6 in the testimony, shows for all women 65 and older to share relying on social security for 80% or more of their income has grown four percentage points since 1999 to 50%.

in other words half of all women 65 and older are getting 80% or more of their income from social security. forum and the increase has been even greater in this recession and recovery period. since 1999 the share of men 65 and older who are relying on social security for 80% or more of their income has grown by six percentage points from 29% to 35% so that is one third, more than one third of all men who are relying on social security for more than 80% of their income. that period from 1999 to 2009 of course included two recessions, the 2001 recession and the gao testifier mentioned that at the start of the second recession, older people were not in a great position in terms of their assets because most americans never really recovered from the 2001 recession before it is much bigger recession hit in 2007.

so, we have another graph in the full testimony that shows that the older rely more on social security than younger old and minorities rely on social security for larger shares of their income than do whites. secondly i would like to point out in the next graph something that should gao mentioned that social security has been remarkably successful in this recession in preventing the poverty rates for older americans from going up. as you can see it on the green line those are american 65 and older. their poverty rates actually fell between 2007 and 2010 but you can also see that the age group characterized by ms. ruggles for them, the poverty went up and for those 60 to 64 that is the blue line, their poverty increased during the recession and especially for those 55 to 59 with the red line. their poverty rates steadily increased during the four years of the recession and recovery.

this reflects the fact that they are still largely in the labor force in the labor force is simply not providing good jobs. begin their racing -- rising poverty rates reflect the problems and shows how important is to create jobs and to provide job training for this age group. third, i want to share some findings from a survey we did of 2700 americans in the next chart and just looking at how people believe they will or will not have adequate savings to maintain their standard of living in retirement. we asked them to compare their view of that now to what they held before the recession and the drops in the confidence that their savings will be enough to maintain their standard of living are amazing. for example for women ages 45 to 59 in the blue lines showing a severe drop, 52% before the recession thought their savings would be adequate and now only 25% do.

once again women have less confidence than men and a greater drop in confidence as a result of this recession. once again, this age group and is an age group that has had severe risk and therefore i think, i would just conclude with the notion that these programs such as described that ms. ruggles was able to take advantage of our extremely important to continue. if we are going to prevent poverty from increasing as this generation retires, we have to do something now to strengthen their employment opportunities and their ability to save and build for their retirement. thank you very much. >> thank you very much dr. hartmann. our final witness is dr. sandra nathan where she oversees programs geared toward improving the economic well-being of

5 million vulnerable older adults by 2020. prior to joining, dr. nathan served as president and ceo of the richmond children's foundation. dr. nathan, thanks very much for being with us. >> thank you chairman sanders. my fellow witnesses and gas on behalf of the national council on aging i greatly appreciate the opportunity to testify today. and cla is a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered here in washington d.c.. its mission is to improve the health and economic security of millions of older adults, especially those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged. it is a national voice for older americans and a community organizations that serve them and working with nonprofits, businesses and government, it develops creative solutions to help seniors find jobs and

benefits, improve their health, live independently and remain active in their communities. senator throughout my career i have examined the issues that we are discussing here today from a public private and nonprofit respective. but my expertise is not the focus of my remarks. today, i am an ambassador on behalf of the millions of older adults who struggle every day just to pay for food, for medicine, utilities and a place to live. my remarks will give voice to the one in three over 13 million older adults in this country who are living on the edge, just one health incident, one car repair, one missed rent payment, one roof leak or one layoff away from poverty. people like frank from st. johns

very vermont who shares, i am one paycheck away from foreclosure and bankruptcy. struggling to make ends meet, i went back to college at the age of 59. i graduated at the age of 61 and continued training in my career field learning new valuable skills but can't seem to get ahead simply because i am so strapped with debt. and covert cofer della from warsaw, kentucky who says, i am a 72-year-old female getting by on $650 a month in social security. i am living in a senior citizen subsidized apartment complex in rural kentucky. i need my medical benefits and food stamps so that i can make and meet every month. i am someone's mother and grandmother. struggling to make ends meet, many low and moderate income older adults are either rethinking retirement plans and

extending work or returning to the workforce. often it is their only option. as marcus in eugene, oregon puts it, my 83-year-old mother is so pressed economically that she has had to go back to work in a part-time job. with little cash, many older adults in this country today are balancing their budgets on credit, forgoing necessary medical care and letting the bills mount. this past year ncoa launched a national video advocacy campaign called one away, which gives voice to older adults who are struggling initially. working with over 14 states and local organizations, including many strong partners in states like vermont, kentucky, iowa, maryland, north carolina and

pennsylvania, one away captures real stories of seniors to raise awareness and advocate for policy change. they the one away campaign shines a spotlight on the fact that the golden years are not so golden for many older adults. despite their struggles, they regularly suffer in silence. and the courageous few who do reach out for help often find a system that is ill-equipped to respond to their needs. of course family caregivers and friends play an essential role in helping older adults, but the needs that older adults are facing today are often too complex for families and friends to have the expertise to assist them. with the retirement of over 78 million baby boomers ahead of us, ncoa believes the pending reauthorization of the older americans act provides a key opportunity to initiate import and changes.

we have three specific recommendations for the older americans act this morning and i will highlight them very briefly. first, the older americans reauthorization must improve the coordination of existing resources and and empower older adults to access and navigate the range of public and private support that are critical to increasing their economic security. with the growth in the older population and under economic struggles, the aging network organizations across the country are experiencing escalated demands for core services such as job training, help with applying for benefits and subsidized meals. we feel strongly that the older americans act reauthorization should remove barriers and strengthen opportunities for the network to better coordinate existing federal, state, local and private resources through a

comprehensive person centered approach to elder economic security. second, the older americans act reauthorization should define economic security and explicitly stated as an objective of the older americans act. issued evaluating replicate comprehensive person centered approaches to economic case work and assistance. although the economic security has long been an applied goal of the older americans act, the recent economic downturn and its negative impact on the housing, employment and financial markets have made it an even more pressing matter for older adults. the aging network must adopt a measurable goal as a benchmark. the term economic security should been access to assets, income and community-based

support necessary to provide for basic needs. at a minimum, the measure must be geographically based, take into account life circumstances and ensure that an individual can afford housing, health, nutrition, transportation, basic household needs, financial services and if necessary, long-term care. these recommendations are based on the elder economic security standard index or elder index, created by the wider opportunities for women, and they gerontology institute. our third recommendation is that the older americans act reauthorization must modernize expand and protect training and employment assistance for mature workers, including the senior community service employment program. and our previous witness, mrs. ruggles, talks about the

importance of that program and we feel very strongly that it should be you know, it should be expanded to meet the needs of an aging workforce. finally, we cannot forget to protect and strengthen the foundational role that social security, medicare and medicaid play in ensuring economic security. we have a specific recommendations senator that we have included in our white papers and i would be happy to elaborate on those but very quickly i would like to close with a story about mrs. perry in baltimore, who worked hard, retired, wanted to retire at the age of 70 and just found herself in a position where she wasn't able to do so. she went to their cash campaign in baltimore which is an economic security center and as a result of the services we were able to provide her, was able to get her life back on a path of economic security.

so thank you so much for the opportunity to testify today and i would be happy to answer any questions you might have. >> thank you very much dr. nathan. i want to divide my questioning of. the good news for us is that we have you in front of us so senator franken and i can ask you a number of questions and get into some depth on some of these issues. one area i want to focus on is in fact the social security cola and i want to start with dr. kingson on that. i am back in vermont. many seniors come up to me by telephone or to my office and they say we don't understand how the government concludes that there has been no inflation in the last two years and we are not getting any cola, we haven't gotten any coal in the last two years when we are paying more for health care costs. we are paying more for

prescription drugs, more money is coming out of our pockets. are those seniors in vermont and around the country wrong or are their perceptions correct that in fact if you are a senior american today you are paying more out-of-pocket than you used to? >> those perceptions are correct. dicolo was not given as you know senator in the last two years as a matter of law. it was the decision by the president or congress. it was a function of a spike in the cost of living around 2008 when the oil prices spiked. it resulted in a very large cola, a 5.8%, and since then prices went down. the cola was not given and for many seniors that is very problematic and the reality of people on the ground is yes, prices are increasing. they know their health care costs are going up.

they know that out-of-pocket costs are increasing. they know fuel costs have gone up so correct, yes. >> as you mention in your testimony, some folks here in congress who are staying in fact that the current formulation for cola is too generous. it's too generous. it overstates what seniors should be getting and that we have to move in a new direction to a so-called chain cpi which you indicated in your testimony would mean significantly lower cola for seniors and years to come. would you comment on that? >> yes. evidently some members of congress, some members of the press seemed to believe that giving seniors two years of no cola was giving them too much. they now see the need for reducing cost of living adjustments to this technical

change. i can go into the technical aspects of it but the bottom line is, err is airs a fancy, technical counter metric measure that they would put in which would change the way we measure the consumer price index. nobody can say i believe with a straight face that is being done to really improve the accuracy of the cola for seniors and people with disabilities. if it is done is being done to cut social security. pure and simple, $121 billion would come out of the pockets of seniors, and other 24 billion out of the pockets of veterans because bent -- veterans benefits are attached. it would also increase -- it would also increase general revenue slightly but placed the burden mostly on middle income and lower income people by the changes that would take place in the tax. >> let me just go right down the

line from ms. ruggles to dr. hartmann and dr. nathan. what do you think a reduction in social security benefits would mean for seniors in this country? ms. ruggles? >> they seniors that i deal with and especially the ones that i talked to at the vermont training associates, they are all terrified. plain and simple, terrified to expect to live on the earnings statement which unfortunately we no longer get. but you know, their standard of living, they were working adults and all of them that i was at these meetings with, they were working adults. these aren't bums just standing around waiting for handouts. these were hard-working people that wanted to keep working. they knew they couldn't survive on social security. >> dr. hartmann? >> in the survey that we took,

we asked retirees and near retirees before challenges that they would face. one would be not having enough savings, going to a nursing home, not being able to pay for health care but the single thing they were the most afraid of was the possibility that social security benefits would be cut. i think that is in our full report, which i can send you. i think it is, as you can see from the poverty data and from the data on how many people rely on it for such a large part of their income, it is simply their anchor and cutting that anchor would need a mistake. ..

>> this provision and the affordable care act is critical to senior's economic security, and as the affordable care act continues to be implemented by 2020, it will virtually be eliminated. what do you think the effect on seniors would be if health care reform were repealed, and seniors had to go back to the

full cost of their prescription drugs? in the donut hole. >> problematic, very problematic because it would be an increase. even the 23% mentioned of seniors who are 20% in reasonable situations initially, many of them, as they age are not, and so that's closing up a donut hole, but, in fact, it's money out of their pockets in the future. >> the closing -- >> the unclosing, sorry. >> right. >> and, you know, i can't resist this, senator franken, you have a marvelous chapter in your book on social security that everyone should read, and i just thought i have to answer that, and it is my -- it's a defined pursuit, and it's insightful, and it's very correct.

>> did you buy the book? >> i'm sorry, i have not helped that. i copy and hand it out, sorry. >> we'll talk later. >> okay. [laughter] >> i'd just like to follow-up on this in terms of mr. kingson. you know, as we saw in the chart there, or maybe a chart in one of the testimonies, an i apologize i had to leave. the energy committee is going on at the same time. as you get older, you are reliant on social security. is that because the savings run out, and if you have income, because you're working earlier, your retirement, that goes away as you get older? your medical costs tend to go up

so the change in the cola would sort of exacerbate that problem, and am i correct? i mean, let me see the chart again. i mean, it seems to me that becomes more and more significant as you get older, and as you rely upon your social security. >> that's right, sir. getting the collar right is important for those reasons too. people who age, people who abled to work often times leave work, have higher health care costs, often, as you said, and we see transitions by losses of spouses, those who are married, and we also see people are not protect against inflation or influx rates. the one thing we have that's largely protected is -- against

inflation is social security. it's so critical to keep that, and it was so correct for the congress back in 1972 to implement it and say national policy should be that no matter how long someone lives, the social security benefit means change in purchasing power. >> because as, obviously, the older you get, the, in a way, the harder things get, and the sense of more medical costs, loss of income, the draw down of your assets. many people who live well into their 90s now or their hundreds probably didn't expect to live that long. ms. ruggles, thank you for being here today, and thank you for your story. in your testimony, you said when

you went to your appointment at point associates, the staff made you feel comfortable? >> they were amazing. they really were. it was a small office, nicely furnished, and one of the things that amazed me when i went in, i was the only one with that appointment. usually when you make appointments, you're told 11, but there's 20 other people, and five hours later, you might be seen or might not, but they were efficient in what they did. they knew i'd get the skills to match what i'd like to do, and it was really good. they were really wonderful. >> and they explained at csep that it was not a handout, but a hand up. you're aware that sccep is part of the law of older americans act? >> i am. >> it's full of similar programs

that give seniors so-called hand ups so, you know, i just can't underscore the importance of the real authorization of the older americans act and is there any one here who would like to say who would like about the older american act that we need to do in the authorization? >> i have a simple comment, and an ounce of prchtion is worth an ounce of cure. if you make a senior citizen self-sufficient, they will not be on the door. i was a poster child for the run away program. i was. i went away from everything. i went away from having my lights shut off, i went away from losing my mortgage, my

house, and the fact is that if all of those things had happened, if i had gone off that cliff, i would have been dependent on the system for food stamps, shelter, whatever. my kids would have been with me, and i would have been raising another generation of welfare kids, but i'm showing them what they can do, and now one just graduated college, and the other is on his way, so -- >> mr. chairman? thank you. >> thank you very much. let me start with dr. nathan, and we'll head west, i guess. we talked about colas, but i guess the more basic question is the issue of economic security for seniors and what that means. when i read that op average --

on average that people in the bottom 20% of living on 7,000 -- $7500 a year is beyond comprehension. i don't know how people do that. how do people survive on that income, and second of all, more broad comment, and i know it varies depending on the location of the country that you live in, in vermont, minnesota, people spend money on heat. in other parts of the country, that may not be so. food prices vary, but dr. nathan, talk a little about the issue of economic security and what is happening to people who are at $7,000 or $8,000 a year. >> well, senator sanders, chairman sanders, anyone living on $7 # ,000 or -- $7,000 or less a year as stated previously lives in a state of economic deprivation.

no one can survive for their basic needs less than achieve a certain level of economic security on that income. part of the problem is that as i stated earlier is the way that we have such an outmoded measure for poverty. the federal poverty level in 2011 for single person was a little over $10,000 a year, and that is extremely low. we're talking about income that's $# ,000 less -- $3,000 less than that. from the stand point of the economic security, it would be impossible for someone to achieve that on that income, and when you look at the geographic, you know, differences, and the $7,000 a year in san fransisco is, you know, it's even worse.

so >> thank you very much. dr. hart mann, people living on min mall income, they have health care needs and get around and how do they survive talking about economic security? >> i hope they have found subsidized elder housing. what they do is live with other family members. they cannot afford to live in their own household. public housing is extremely important at such low incomes so any programs that can increase housing assistance for elders is very, very important. 8% of our seniors are on food stamps and they may receive help through sci if their social security was below that level. we have programs to assist people, and not all of these

programs are showed. among the poorest elders are those who live alone and who are the longest lived, which, of course, is many women. at older ages, most men are actually still married, but women, at older ages are not married. they are living alone, and those are among the most deprived. >> you say many of the lowest income seniors depend on affordable housing or food stamps. let me ask you a simple question. what happens if the programs are cut? >> well, obviously, a complete disaster. people can try to go to food pantries, rely on charity from friends and neighbors, and, of course, people from churches, friends, and neighbors try to do as much as they can, but most of those groups are actually

relying on the federal programs to give assistance. if you have meals and wheel, you volunteer the time, but it's coming from a federal program. i think as much as we call upon the volunteers to help, it's very, very difficult. >> you live in the northeast area, a very rural area of vermont. what is your observation about seniors in their struggles economically? >> i've seen seniors give away or put down their puts because they can't afford to feed them. i've seen seniors close off all of their living room and use the oven to heat the kitchen and house and turn off one utility in favor of the other. they don't use lights. they go to bed when it's dark and up when it's light. if it's gray outside, too bad.

they don't have the money for electricity. i know a lot of seniors in my area who got together, give up their house to live with the other. you just start giving things up. you just peal things away that you are used to all your life. you don't shop for new clothes, don't get your glasses fixed or if you are to take a medication seven days a week, you take it four to stretch is out. you decide which is the most important medicine, and you don't get the others refilled. i know one lady who is to have an up hailer with her all the time, and she doesn't. she's gone to the hospital twice in the last three years. it gets worse. >> the point of this hearing is to raise consciousness just on those issues because i think the stories that you and others have told are really to a significant degree being pushed underneath the rug. you have a lot of seniors in rural areas desperately,

desperately trying to maintain dignity and hang on, and i don't think we know that as a nation. we have not heard enough about it, and i think until we know that, it just becomes too easy to stand up and say we're going to cut social security and lower the eligibility level for medicare a few years. what's the issue with that? the meals on wheels program, tighten that up a little. they don't know the human cost of that. thank you very much for your general testimony, viewpoints, and dr. kingson? >> you're so right, senator. we see -- we don't see people. there's a am amnesia that's so problematic today. we don't remember the poor house or what the world was like before social security and medicarement i'm extremely concerned for the bottom 20% and concerned there's a crisis coming down the road among baby

boom cohorts and people who follow. in many ways, that's what we're fighting for too to ensure we have a retirement system that works for them. we have people who lost housing, lost ceo sigh, lost pension protection, lost jobs, have not seen wages increase, moving towards retirement, and they don't have a lot of time to make up that. a lot of what's happening, being middle class, that implies a sense of security, a sense that you can deal with the difficult times that might happen, but still basically be okay. we're squeezing the middle class, and we're shrinking the middle class, pulling that security away, not only from the very poor who never had it, but from the hard working people, and even the upper middle class. it's a world that we have to deal with, and it's for that reason, i'm just pleased to be here, proud to be here, because i know you're asking the right

questions. thank you. >> thank you very much. senator franken? >> i'm glad that ms. hartmann, you brought up the fact very often it's the churches doing the work, meals for wheels or something like that, but people don't realize that is part of the older americans agent. that's the funding that's coming through, so the -- it enables the churches to do that job and to do a wonderful job as they do it, and many volunteers and it's leveraging, and the older americans agent is such a good use of funds because it enables seniors to stay in their homes and not have to go to a nursing home which is much more expensive to everybody concerned

and not what seniors want to do, so thank you for bringing up that. i know ms. nathan, there was an act just launched encouraging members of congress to commit to strengtheninged older americans agent. how many members of congress have joined the support drive? >> so far, senator, chairman sanders, and aging committee chairman cole provided statements of support. >> [inaudible] >> we're delighted to do that. thank you very much. >> i'm committed to -- a big part of what i've been doing in minnesota, and listening, ect., and i'm committed to strengthening the older american's agent and introducing this and bill of rights putting

in place additional protections for seniors who receive home and community based services. my bill would expand the long term care on programs of seniors in their homes as well as guaranteed that every -- >> we are well aware of the work you've done with your constituents and trying to improve the older americans act, and we deeply appreciate your commitment and support.

>> when push comes to shove, they can sell their home, and the housing market today is such that the nest egg disappeared in many ways, and some seniors are even underwater in their mortgage so that option is gone, so we are really talking about the most vulnerable americans now at a very vulnerable age as they get older and older, and as we talk about this change to cpi, how much would you say that would take a year from someone who is 65 and 20 years later.

how much do you lose in 20 years? >> in the testimony, i used the example of a hypothetical woman turning 65 today, and she's worked her life. she's a legal secretary, moved forward in time, ten years out, say she has a benefit of around $15,000. ten years out, she loses about $9,600 that year. twenty years out, she loses about a thousand dollars that year, and further out, she loses about $1400 a year. that's in real dollars adjusted for inflation. >> uh-huh. >> now, social security benefits are modest. the average retiree receives, as you know, about $14,000 a year in social security. >> and then as you said, as you get older, your assets disappear, and you don't --

you're less likely to be earning, more likely to be using health care services that have some out of pocket, so we are really asking if we do this for the most vulnerable americans to be, you know, sort of the ones that are absorbing the hits in order towards creating a -- reducing the deficits. >> we would be asking many vulnerable people including middle class people, and, yes, it would be doing that -- now, they propose a birthday bump, perhaps increasing the benefit by 1%. the bowles-simpson proposal included a 5% increase over several years at age 80 or 85 or so. it doesn't do the job.

the accumulative impact on the woman that i put forward, or a typical beneficiary, if they live to 95, they lose $24,000 in real income. >> this is something we're doing at a time when there's just a refusal to ask people who in our economy are doing extraordinary well, better than any people have done before in the world actually, and there's an absolute refusal to on the part of some to ask those people themselves to make any contribution this towards the sustain the of our debt even while we're setting up a construct people will be asked to give because they'll be asked

to contribute to the fiscal stainability, and not those who are wildly successful because they've lived in the country that provide the opportunity and provided the structure for them and the legal apparatus, and all the stuff that those of us who have done well in our society from benefited from. >> we seem to forget we've moved forward on the shoulders of others and other generations, and that part of the shoulders involves having good education, having a good social security system and health care and the pulling apart of that is almost mindless in the sense that we have more and more up security in the society. the last thing we want to do is undermind the systems and particularly ask the most vulnerable to pay for it. >> i thank the pam for all your testimony, and i thank the chairman for calling this very important hearing.

thank you. >> thank you, senator franken, for all the work you're doing and for all your work today. let me just conclude on a point that senator franken made. a number of wonderful people pointed out that how you judge a society is how you respond to the needs of the weakest, the most vulnerable, and the population that we're talking about today, when people hit 70 #, 80, and 90, they are as a rule nearly, and it -- vulnerable, and it seems to me at -- that at a time when the wealthiest people in the country are doing very, very well, at a time when our deficit was caused by unpaid wars and tax breaks for folks who didn't need the money, and wall street bailout and so forth, i think we have get to take a very hard look at the morality and economics of balancing the budget on elderly

people and the most vulnerable people in the society, and i think that's the point that many of you have made this morning, and i thank you very much for the testimony. we're trying to raise consciousness on the issue that in this recession, many, many seniors are hurting, and we cannot simply balance the budget on their backs. i thank you very much for your contributions. thank you. >> thanks. >> the subcommittee meeting is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> there was a flood in fort wayne, and people were filling sandbags so air force one stopped, reagan had a motorcade to the flooded area, took off his jacket, and he filled three

sandbags. said hi to everyone, got back in the car, went back on the plane, but that night, what was filling the air waves was not three sandbags, but reagan filling sand bags with his shirt off. >> thanksgiving day on c-span, sam donaldson and chris dodd talk about the legacy of ronald reagan. new york city mayor bloomberg discusses the american dream and the opportunities in the u.s. and astronauts john glenn, neil armstrong, and michael collins a awarded the congressional medal. for the entire schedule, go to c-span.org. >> next, remarks from academy award winning actress on gina davis. she is joined by bet network, ceo deborah lee and others at the event hosted by the "wall street journal".

it's 50 minutes. >> this is about competitiveness and the economy. the journal convened the first ever task force on women in the economy, and to be honest, we used your ceo counsel as a model. it was a high level group including sandra day o'connor, deborah lee, and gina davis, who are joining us here today. to keep it fact-based, we partnered with mckensie. just as you do, the participants voted on the recommendations. their top priority was to engage the ceos. we agreed to give them the forum today. there is a growing sense of a disperty between the success of women in education and the success of women in the workplace. research says that in education, women are outperforming men at undergraduate, graduate, and ph.d. work. they enter the work force in

similar numbers, but at every level, men are more likely to be promoted than women. until we get to what we see to some extent in this room here where 16 of the top fortune 500 ceos are women. to talk about this further, let me introduce dome nick barton, san raleigh, and gina davis. [applause] just a word about the format. we'll have a panel discussion for 20 minutes, and then with al lap's help, throwing it open to questions, and please, don't be shy. what moes surprised you about the research done on women? >> well, may i say a couple of things. one is the realizing, first of all, that as you said at the beginning, this is an economic priority. this is not about being politically correct or it's a nice thing to do sort of thing, and if -- a couple things, if

you look back at the productivity growth, particularly in the u.s. and other countries as well, from 1970s until today, the fact that more women entered the work force was a big driver of gdp growth and productivity, and just to put it in a snapshot, the number of women participating in the work force went up from 41% to 56% over a 40-year period. if they didn't join the work force, that would have been -- that would have been a 25% gdp hit. it's important for economics to have women joining the work force, and keep that in mine. it's not because it's a nice thing to do. the second aspect of it is while we've seen a lot of progress over a 40-year period, our sense is it's begun to plateau, and there's self-reelection. i look at our own firm finding the best talent in the world, and we're only taking 25% of our

intake are women, and as you mentioned before, 58% of the college garage graduates are women so what's going on? why is that not the case? i think there's a plateauing in the last five years in terms of the participation level, and word about in the u.s. is ten points lower than in scandinavia countries. there's a variation in the u.s. with california and nebraska in terms of participation. one is on the economic side. i think the second thing that struck me is if you look at what happens today, let's say in the corporate world, about 53% of the workers coming in are women, and then you just see the thing just dwindle down to what you get, the kind of 3% of the fortune 500 if you will, and there's just various stages that goes -- i have to look at the numbers to ensure they are right, 53% at the entry level, then 37%, at kind of the next level up, lower middle

management, and then at the vp level, it's 28%, and at the executive committee, it's 14%, and 3%, so you just see this drop off, and when you sort of peal back why is that the case as to why that happens, it's interesting to see some of the barriers are not the traditional ones. there are issues about flexibility that people are looking for and so forth, but the barriers are around mind sets of senior executives. can we risk a senior woman in this role? what if she leaves? what if she has children? can we do it? it's never said explicitly, but it's implicit in terms of what's happening. there's actually not a lot of role models for people to look up to and sort of see a path of where things are going. we talk about networks that women have, and we, in the work we did with you and catalyst, we actually mapped out women's networks at the middle

management level comparative to mens' and it's factor of a quarter of that in terms of people. i don't know why that's the case, but that's where it is, and so i think there's a good news that there's a number of things that can be done, which others here can talk more about, but i think the notion of the role modeling, looking at the pipeline, if you will, and what can you do to try to increase the conversion rate of each level is key. the final point when looking at the pipeline, one of the most important areas is the middle management level, if you can focus there, you can get a lot more upshift as you go to the next stages. those are just some of the things. >> you are ceo and chairman of viacom and on the task force last year, share some of the recommendations of the women there. >> right. there's several reameses that came out of our three day conference, and, you know, for those of us who have been doing

this a long time, you have females on the executive levels, and at a certain point we felt like we were going over the same things we talked about 20 years ago, and one of the great things about this is we talked to ourselves so much at all-female conferences, that the suggestion was made that we come to this conference and talk to other ceos, so this is a great thing. several items were suggested by the women there. first is holding the ceo accountable. that, as the ceo of a company, you have an obligation to make sure women are able to move up the ranks in your company, and whatever that takes, whether it's mentorship programs or taking a perm interest in a couple of women executives, yourselves, but really holding the ceo accountable and making that part of his or her accountability to the board. the other is leveraging the

suite power expecting that there's a balance of men and women in the c suite and holding others at that level accountable. we found there was a data point that men are promolted on potential and women are promoted on performance. i 4 never heard -- i had never heard of that before, but i thought it was very interesting, and one of the recommendations is women should be promoted on potential that if you see a young women who you know will go far at the company, that she should be pushed along and not wait for her to do something amazing which is usually the way it happens with women. the second is to make sure there's mentors and sponsors in your company. again, that there are people looking out for women who have potential and are able to make it to the executive ranks.

another is strong talent management programs outside the normal course whether it's sending women to conferences, whether it's having finty groups within your company, whatever you can to, again, give women more exposure allowing them to move up the ranks. the final, i don't know if you want to talk about this now, but that's corporate boards, which everyone agrees is an amazing opportunity for women and that ceos as the executive in charge of their companies should ensure their women on their boards, but also on the boards of their companies, but also as ceo of your company, you should recommend women within your company to serve on other boards. when i became coo of bet networks, one of the great training ground for me was the boards i served on and being able to see other ceos in action and learning from them and

getting exposure outside my own company and being able to network, and that's very important in something that ceos don't think about a lot, but in my case, the ceo of my company at the time, bob johnson, was called to be on a board, and he said i can't do it, but look at my coo, who happened to be me, and that provided me the first opportunity to get my foot into corporate boards and see how other ceos dealt with issues like hr or pnl or cfos. you can't find a better training ground than experience on corporate boards. >> you're well known for your role in movies, but busy these days with women in the media. share with us what your research has shown about how media shapes how we view the world sp >> right. well, hollywood is very

hollywood, and everybody knows that there's fewer interesting parts for women, and female characters are sexualized a lot, and it's been that way forever, but what i didn't know until i had a daughter and watched g-rated movies with her is that we are showing kids really almost a 50s version of society where there are far fewer female characters, and the ones that are there a highly stereotyped, they don't get to do very much. they're very much hypersexualize the. in g-rated movies, there's the same amount of sexual revealing clothing as in r-rated movies, and why there's any is a good question. we found that we did -- i decided we wanted the facts about this. we talked about studio

executives once i started noticing this saying you notice how few female characters there are in movies? they said, no, that's been fixed. then they name a movie with one female character. as evidence that the problem about imbalance has been fixed, so i realized nobody was noticing this, and so the first study we did was on g-rated movies, covered a 15-year span finding for every one female character, there's 15 male characters. in crowd scenes, there's 17% female characters which is strange. it's like women are not into gathering, i think. they -- [laughter] something's going on over there? no, i'm not interested. [laughter] it's very strange, and as i said, a lot of hypersexuality and we just completed a study in the occupations in g-rated

movies and found that 80% of the jobs held by male characters, and of the women who hold jobs, there's no scientists, medical professional, lawyers, politicians, business executives, so girls are not seeing all of that, and we know that this was not research that we personally did, but that the more hours of television a girl watches, fewer options she thinks she has in life, and the more hours a boy watches, the more sexist his views become, so clearly we're, you know, transmitting a very, very disempowering and negative message about girls to kids, and another thing we should keep in mind is that 80% of the media consumed globally is made in the u.s.. we're actually the ones

exporting this disempowering image of women and girls around the world. since then, we studied every family film rating, and covered a 20-year span, and what we found disturbing also was there was absolutely no improvement. there was some improvement. in fact, if female characters were added at the rate they were over that 20 years, we would achieve parody in 700 years. [laughter] to which i said, let's cut that in half. [laughter] right across the bat. [laughter] so that's basically where we're at. >> you just laid out research, and host your company doing on this front? >> not as realm as we should be. if you look at the numbers, 25% of the people are women, 58% of the college graduates are there,

and we look at it, and part of the places we go to recruit, actually, they don't -- there is not a high as percentage, like 40% are women in business schools, but we're not where we need to be, so we lose on the talent side. the only thing is it varies by country, and i actually am coming to the view i don't think it's so much cultural so that can be a factor, but the point about the leaders, and, you know, thinking about this session now. we actually have more, higher proportion of women partners in the middle east than we do in the west coast of the u.s., and one of them is in saudi arabia, and so me, we didn't -- it was very much -- if you smell a i want to promote this person because it's based, but there's things the leadership there is doing to enable and encourage the people to do it. i'm looking at the variations that we have, and i think

there's more that we can do, and we have to make it a priority, and so even, the you know, the role models, it's a chicken and egg. how many role models are there? if i think about appointments i do, if there's a choice between a man and woman, equal on what they do, i defer to the woman; right? i think we have to have a critical mass so people can see they can -- there's a life that can actually work. you can actually have 5 successful career. those are just some of the things we're trying to do. >> i think one of the important things is as ceo or coo, you have to keep focused on it, and i realize after i had been coo for four or five years, i looked around my senior staff meetings, and it was 95% men, and the tees testosterone was driving me crazy, and needed to go to my own senior staff meetings

because i was babbling or the guys were babbling themselves, and after a couple years, i said, i have to change this. i have to get more women in this room, and as a female coo, you know, how did this happen? how did i let it get to the point where 90% of my executives are men, and it was just i had taken my eye off the ball, and it's not about quotas. it is not about, you know, actual numbers. it's -- well, it is numbers, but not necessarily quotas, but just making sure you have representation on your executive team, and whether that's minorities or women, whatever it is, you just have to retain a focus on it. if your numbers are unambulanced, find a way to get them back in balance, and what i did was the next several openings i had after realizing what i problem i had, i just insisted, again, out there there's a female and a male that

we would lean towards the female because i had to rejigger what was dealing with in terms of an executive team, and it's worked out better. now i have at least four or five female executives, still outnumbered by men, but it's really turned the company around in terms of how we deal with each other, and i'm in a media company, and it's also helped in terms of the images that we put on the tv because i have women sitting in the room saying, well, wait a minute, how come that character can't be a female? how can we put out negative images of women? what are we saying to our young girls? it's also helped balance out what we're tryinged to accomplish on the programming side and how we take pride in our programming, and the speedometer we feel to young -- responsibility we feel to young girls and young mep. >> i just want to echo what was

said about being conscious of it because, realm, i have so many people come up to me and say, you know, thanks a lot because now you've ruined movie watching for me. [laughter] all i do is count the female characters and bsh -- but, you know, it's meaningful for people to notice, and especially fathers. i've spoke p to you with -- spoken to you with daughters, and it's important what we show them. also, i wanted to talk about the phenomena of things leveling out, and you mentioned 25%. there was a benchmark report done last year by the white house project looking at ten sectors of society. media, politics, business, law, academia, ect., to find out the percentage of women and positions in leadership and authority, and the average across the board of all of these ten important sectors was 17%-18%, and that says to me

that things are stalling and leveling out so what i'm -- my pet theory is if -- this is about the same percentage of female characters -- if everything we've seen from when we first started watching media is imbalanced in this way, couldn't it be possible when we're adults and thought our life, one to two women in a group looks normalment you don't mark on that as weird. that's all you've ever, ever seen. there's been no examples of parody in what we watch for any of us, anyone alive that watched media, and we're creating generation after generation to see one or two women as looking normal, so couldn't that explain why there's just one or two tenure professors or law partners or 16% women in congress or boards. >> uh-huh.

>> that's my theory. >> to be fair, a lot of this in the past has been kind of written off to women in childbearing. you have two kids. what role do you think that does or should play in the equation, certainly women have a lot of options. >> well, i have not see it be an issue at my company. i was -- i actually wrote our maternity policy. i was general council for years, and i think i was the first female executive at bet to did out on maternity leave thinking i was going to be gone for three months, but i was the only attorney, so i was not gone at all. i changed my office -- location of my office. i was doing e-mails from the ma ternty ward, but -- maternity ward, but i think as a company, we have been very --

allowed women to have children, to take off time, to stay involved, especially executives. it's different if you're talking about lower level women, but you can do, you know, with technology, you can do your job from anywhere now, and if you're committed to the company, you're going to put forth the effort. i remember breast-feeding while i was on conference calls, and you know, almost smothering my son to death, but he lived through it, and i did too, and, you know, if you're committed -- if i woman wants to have a profession and chirp, she can -- children, she can do it, and people at companies, ceos or executives shouldn't think because a woman is of childbearing age that she can't do her job. i have two children, and during the 25 years at bet, my son is 2 # years old, and my daughter is 18. i feel like i'm on the other end of the spectrum and i have freedom because they are both

launched in their own lives, but, you know, they were always part of my profession. they went to events with me. they knew what i did. they understood. i might not have been there every night, but i was there for the important occasions. as an executive, you usually have flexibility to determine your schedule, and, you know, if i had to take a red eye back to l.a. to make it to the holiday program to see my son give one line, you know, that's what i would do. [laughter] i can tell you stories of amazing trips i've made just to be there for the halloween parade around the driveway at the miller school, so, i mean, you make it work, and interesting thing i see now is that men are dealing with the same issues. because of the rate of divorce and men are now single fathers, they have custody every other week or weekend, and i have men, male executives coming to me at three o'clock in the afternoon

saying i have to leave for the soccer game or get to the parade or leave, you know, so it's not just women. as we become family friendly, it's men also. it's something companies have to deal with in general and not used as an excuse why women can't move up the ranks because it's just not true. you know, we can do things on blackberries and ipads and whatever. i've done conference calls from, you know, sudan watching baseball games. i mean, you can do it. it takes a lot of juggling, but it can be done, so i don't think that's a good excuse for why there are not women on the executive levels to the level that they should be. >> expand on the business case. a cynic says, okay, there's the dep factor, but for your company, do you look at this and compare how you're doing on the competitors and do you feel it makes --

>> we do, and i know it's done well. i don't like to say that publicly, but one should. [laughter] it's a war for talent, and that's sort of why, and, again, look at the pipeline, why is it that people don't want to come? do they have a perception of how we work? what we do? is it lifestyle? when we work, it's better for everyone. we have very much the same thing now, we have more males taking the paternity leads now -- that's given the number of women and men, that makes sense, but we have more paternity leaves going on. when i joined, i would have been afraid to ask that question. it would be like, what are you? did you think -- there's more role modeling of that, and so i think there's a lot of benefit. it does affect us over time, and it's not for politically correct

reasons. we don't -- we don't care about that so much. it's, again, we're not getting our fair share, and i think the other part you look at, all of us give children, especially when you have a daughter as well, and i'm thinking about her career and what she wants to go through, and you have a different mind set about what you say with work. another thing off from that, thinking about one of the things i learned, reenforced from talking to allen at dupont there, and when you think about the number of people making it to executive level, 14%, through to that level, and them just 3% to the ceo, a lot of those women in that are in staff roles; right? they are in hr. it's more a staff type of a role, and i think one of the things that is quite important is to give women line roles early, and sometimes there can be an implicit -- not sure if

this is something they should do, but give them pnl responsibility, giving them line roles early so they are running things and doing things to give them the experiences, and i think there can be mind sets there. that's something we look at, for us, again, too, it's how many women are office managers or practice leaders as opposed to staff roles as they get moved through. >> before we open it up for questions, ge, na, -- geena, what's been the reaction of studio directors in hollywood to your work? >> it's interesting. before i had the data, they were convinced there was no problem, whean we do with the data is since i'm in the industry, we go directly to the studios, meet with disney and nickolodian, fox, ect., everyone, and universal reaction, the first time we visit, is that they are

stunnedded. they are absolutely shocked by the data, that -- like i said, i think we're conditioned to see one or two women -- now we have women covered, but to find out that there's a complete date of birth of female characters in the world they were creating was shocking to them, and we found that they are very interested in and open to addressing that problem because we don't say make more movies starring women. we say populate, change female characters, populate the world with half female characters, and what was talked about, having it in the front of your mind, you know, is something we talk about. you have to consciously think about, go through the scripts, and what to do to improve it, and that's one of the things we

say. at the first studio we went to, there was a -- the studio's head of casting, and she had her head in her hands at the enof the presentation saying every single script we have, we go through and see could they become asian or black or hispanic, and we never once have said can any of the characters become female, and i'm a woman, and i don't know why that is, and so it's cloarly something ha doesn't spring to mind, but if you can keep it in the front of your head -- i said, even put in the script a crowd gathers which is half female -- [laughter] otherwise it's going to be 17% once you get there. >> fascinating. we'd like to open it up for questions. >> comments. bob? >> behind you, there's a microphone. >> couple comments. one is we run the nordic

market. we have experience working in that culture. one, one of the reasons for more family friendly is they have 56 days of holidays compared to 18 here in the states, and the maternity policy is a whole year. women gives birth, they have a solid year and guaranteed to have their job when they come back, but that being said, when you look at the environment you still have the glass ceiling effect where they are well represented at higher percentage, but going up the ranks, it's not too dissimilar to what we have here in the states, now, in the states what we find is it's constantly pushing the tie to keep the percentage up, and the head technology person, cio, is a woman, and it was interesting. i had a lunch meeting with her at core technology staff with about 30 engineers, and one person was female, so i've got a female boss and then it's just

very hard so she says, here, you have to push at it, and that one female was asian, was not american-born, so it's a difficult thing. getting to a question is in studying the data with respect to the successful female executives we find the dream of having a working couple is quite just that, a dream, and that when you look at the successful female executives, they generally have stay at home husbands behind them, and that seems to work very well. it's a rare case where there's a two-career couple. my question is that an anomaly within our experience or something you see also? >> hold the questions here, and we'll get a few more questions or comments. victoria, you wanted to say something? >> a question -- help me on special rules for women, explain what i mean by that. we came to the same conclusion

you came to awhile ago, a rule where only the first report could be on the boards, and we said, no, no, women have high talent. we have one, two, three, and now went come and say, well, can we, two levels below, be on boards? of course, the reaction of my colleagues is no way. we cannot be the reservoir, and you know, we have to -- special program, moving them through, but not for men. now, the women resent it saying, well, we are treating them in a special way. how would you, and more in general, international mobility, same thing. would you advice -- my inclination, that fine, there's a target, more women, special rules for women, tough luck, you're a boy. or not? [laughter] >> who else? george, can i call on you?

oh, right there, sorry. >> comment first of all, winning the catalyst award last year, and very proud of that, and it was a kyeser shipyard employee. we have the museum near our office in oakland. we've managed to incorporate women at pretty much every level. we have eight presidents, four are women. our controller, cfo woman, board is half women. we have an organization that includes women, and one of the things we discovered is you have to be family friendly and look for the skill set of collaboration opposed to command, and both ceos recognize the skill set of command and do not recognize the skill set of

collaboration, and when we did the largest system project in the history of any business, a billion dollar systems project a couple years ago, we put a woman in charge who ran it as a collaboration. she opened by bringing 180 people in to do a collaborative bill, thought through the pieces of it, and then came back and did it. the agenda is to teach collaboration and pick women who are experts at collaborating. the question is how do you communicate that value set to ceos who are making decisions about who to promote? if you work for command, it's a different set of people than just those for collaboration? >> do you want to tackle the interesting question about -- >> yeah. i think sometimes you do have to have different rules. you have to balance it, but in some situations, it is important

given women a different kind of experience. i don't want to answer your question because someone else might, but women do have a different management style, and i'm over generalizing, and i hate to do that, and it's not always the case, but in a lot of cases, women manage differently, and you need a company that values that. i think if you have a role that says women can serve on corporate boards because it's important to their growth at the company, i think, you know, that's fine, and it's something that, you know, you just have it deal with. maybe over time you change it, but it is recognizing that you have a need that you want women to move up the corporate ladder, and this is a way for them to do it. i made that argument to my ceo because i was grandfathered. i was on several corporate boards before i came to viacom before they purchased bet ten

years ago, and i got push back because i was on three or four corporate boards. i said, look, i'm one of the few black female executives out there, you know? i understand viacom doesn't promote executives serving on boards, but i'm a unicorn in this environment, and i get a lot of requests, and i think it's important for my own personal growth and important for bet to have me out there on corporate boards, and so they understood that, so i think, you know, you can have different roles, and as men develop and want other opportunities, there may, you know, you just have to ensure you're not violating work laws or anything, but i think, you know, it's find in certain circumstances. >> i just want to add a tiny thing talking about how many years it takes to achieve parody in movies, and in congress, to achieve parody, adding women at the rate we have is 500 years. i don't know if anybody figured

out if we add female ceos to the fortune 500 or female board members, how many hundreds of years it takes if we go on the way we are assuming that things change, things improve. it's so glacial, so unless we take special measures, keep it in front of our minds, and have special accommodations, we're not going to get anywhere fast at all. >> to hear that you said half of your board is female? i mean, that's unheard it. that's amazing. >> right. >> i went to a conference on boards and women, and, you know, they were saying if there's three women on a board, you know, they won't be afraid to speak, that that's the critical mass, three. it's like, why three? i mean, you know, that sounds like a lot, but it should be half. >> also, you do see some countries that are being quite aggressive on that. i mean, the norway, for example, they sort of have a minimum number of work members by a certain time because they tried things, and it didn't work.

they drive it. u.k. just did a review about why are we not getting more people? they pivot towards forcing it, if you will, to get that. >> right. >> i would point out one of the outcomes of women in the economy task force is they wrestled with the problems. they explicitly concluded that quotas were not the right way to do it. >> yeah. >> and rejected that as an option, and there was a lot of discussion about that. >> right. it's fair to say i think they liked it. they wanted to recommend it. >> they liked the numbers. >> but afraid it could create too many issues and people, that companies would not go along with it, but they liked the system and they liked the recognition that, you know, there's something to do majorment i think the gentleman in the back, your comment about collaboration and command, i've never heard it defined that way, but it's true. again, to the point that women

manage differently, and it's okay. you know, you can have a collaborative company, and still achieve results, you know? that you want to, and, again, it's letting women know that you don't have to act like a man to be successful in a corporate environment. you can manage in a way that works for you as long as you get the results, and as long as you find people that can -- that work for you that can relate to the management system. when i took over at bet, people were interested -- were used to the way that the prior ceo managed which was very dictatorial command, and so the people i inherited weren't used to my management style and weren't very successful at it, and over time, i had to change the people that reported to me because i needed people responding to me as ceo and were more collaborative and didn't expect me to do their jobs. the people there before expected someone to tell them what to

do. what i wanted was talented people who i could give, you know, a lot of resources and rope to, but i knew they would come back to me if they had a problem, but otherwise i wanted everyone to work together towards the same goal. it's taken my six years as ceo to really get that team together, and it's working well now, but it is an issue. >> we have a bunch of comments here, but i'll get to you in a minute. one of the interesting comments made at the task force meeting, i think, it was by sally, was that making it to the top in one of the organizations for a woman was an extreme sport, and since we have a super at leet here, i wonder if you -- super athlete here, i wonder if you can comment on your experience in that extreme sport, and what you've learned from it. >> thank you. >> yeah, you're on the spot. >> well, actually i played sports, basketball in college. i think that was helpful. team work; right? competition, you know, kill the other guy, and that's why i'm

sitting in between these two, so they don't into it here. what i thought was insightful is the differentiation between performance and potential. how do you gauge potential? put people in tough jobs, tough spots, and see how they rise to the occasion. are you giving the opportunities to the women in your organization? i was given the opportunities on a couple of different occasionsment one was a positive growth experience. one was how do you stop the hem ramming experience in a -- hemorrhaging experience if a business, and i all the sudden had potential once i showed what they could do. are you really challenging the women in the organization with the tough opportunities that allow them to show their potential because i think we do defer on that side, and it's a great up sight from the group from last april. >> i think we all agree with the idea, and we agree on that for a

long time. when you listen, there's a lot of things that came to mind, and the big question is how do you navigate yourself through it? what do you prioritize. i'd love your views on that. what's worked best? having tried this many, many years, i think for us, the single -- if i think back, the single most important change in our hr policy was when i insisted that every position from a certain great level on, the candidates i interview, the slate has to be diverse. if it's not diverse, the hr person can want come to me. -- cannot come to me. i won't interview anybody. i'm not starting the process. i want to hear your view on that. >> a couple quick reflections. when you talk about the studio executives shocked, i was flashing back to the police being shocked there was gambling going on, but you know, when you

think about the comments, and receiving the catalyst award, others here have and bruce young has and others have. i'm the chair of catalyst. i encourage you to get very active in this. you talked about talent, and not getting a fair share of talentment i think that's an incredibly important piece, but i think there's another piece. i think when you really make success around the diversity of your work force, it's not just the talent, but how it works together and the solutions and ideas you develop. one of the truths in the world is the team that all of us will be part of in the future will be more diverse than the teams we've been on in the past around gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, you name it. the real scary truth that we have researched is these diverse teams rarely perform at the

middle of the road. they are either off the charts great or they absolutely suck, and it comes down to the culture built within the organization. are the contributions of people who don't look like you welcomed on the table? are you reaching out, bringing everybody's ideas forward? it's yes on the numbers, but about making numbers work effectively together. any observations on that would be helpful as well. >> in terms of what works, concrete steps rather than getting beyond the talk in aceps. >> well, a couple things people mentioned. one, it's a priority. i think the people that actually say this is something i'm going to be measuring -- it's actually a lot is execution. it sounds boring and regular, but that's really where it is because you can put the flexible programs in place. you can provide all the support, but then it's how do you drive people through that

process, and i think that there are -- the ceo taking ownership saying it's important them and whether it be done that i want to ensure i see a female candidate or to your point, a diverse candidate in terms of where we move it, but the discussions you have with people. why is it over a period of time there's no woman coming through the organization? what's going on in that system? what are you going to fix? you know, i think it's very important. what allen talked about, and i know gayle as well, by the way, another excellent role model in just giving people the experiences early. like i was also surprised about the potential versus performance bias; right? it's there. how do you give people the opportunities that are there? a lot to me is around the execution and that you keep on it because it's a game of inches. you're not going to have some big breakthrough. there's not been any organization have a sustained

breakthrough in terms of popping up and moving it through. argue whether the programs in norway, whether that gets it there, and so i think it's a pipeline execution role modeling giving people the chances. >> right. >> i think i would add to that that it's important when you're doing your succession planning, not only in terms of new candidates or hiring, but also in terms of succession planning. i'm on one board that i think does a very good job of it, and when they did succession planning, they look at the number of minorities in the queue. they look at the number of women, and it's a, you know, a five to ten year building, you know, what candidates are ready now? what candidates will be ready in five years? not just for ceo, but for cfo,

for general counsel, for any other c suite positions you have. it's important to focus on that, and if there's no one in the cue, how do you get there? do you say at this point because i don't have anyone in the running for counsel, i have to hire assistant counsel for the flex the? i think the plping is important. it's important to the company as a whole to ensure you have candidates able to take over in different positions, but it's also important in terms of moving women and minorities up the ranks. it's just something that should always be part of the conversation. >> geena? >> i have a suggestion based on what was asked, which is i work with u.n. women, and they developed a program called women's empowerment principles including seven steps they feel would be helpful to adding

women, and it also offers the economic reasons, you know, the bottom line reasons why it's good to add women, and this is something that the ceo of a company can agree to. there's no quo toes, -- quotas, but the concept of we're going to address this. i know others here have signed that they agree with it, so i would recommend that as something that's incredibly helpful tool, and i offer that if you want to talk about it, i'd be happy to bring it to you, and we can discuss it at your place of business. i can even come back a year later and see how you did. [laughter] i'm serious. you know, i'm a big supporter and sponsor of that, and i'd love to talk to any of you about it. >> any other questions? >> there's several other

questions, but unfortunately, we're out of time. this has been a great discussion, and i hate to cut it off, but we have a tight schedule this afternoon. clear to everyone in this room, we are going to continue this effort and this discussion. we'll meet again in palm beach, april 30th to may 2. all of you are invited. hope to see all of you there. it's a beautiful place, and we'll continue the discussion then. do you have any closing thoughts? >> i would just like to thank our panelists. it was a fascinating discussion. thank you so much. [applause]

>> last month, a house natural resources committee met to extend compensation to local counties for lost tax revenue on federally owned land in their

juxes. payments in lieu of taxes affects western state that contain 94% of all federal lands. this is an hour 10 minutes. >> all right. now we are prepared. the subcommittee will be in order. chairman notes the presence of a quorum. grateful to all of you here. subcommittee on national parks and public -- or forest and public lands. this meeting today to hear testimony in lieu of payment of federal lands, and it's important to all constituents of the west. under the committee rules, opening statements are limited to the chairman, and however, i ask unanimous concept to include any members' opening statement in the hearing record submitted to the clerk by close of business today. hearing no objections, we'll do that. i ask unanimous concept any

member wishing to participate in the hearing is allowed to participate even though that doesn't apply to anybody, but we'll make that anyway. okay. no objections. we're doing it. today, we're going to hear testimony on the history and the construction of pilt and how payments are con figured and -- configured and how they effect management land decisions we have in our communities. while pilt compensates for loss of federally ownedded land, it's never fully accounted for the numerous prescriptions of that land. no all federal public lands are created equal. it does not adjust for variations in land use especially if moving from accessible use to a nonimpairment status. it's a lifeline for many communities and counties and since more than half the land in the west is owned and managed by the federal government, pilt has

a significant impact on all rural chais of western states. it's not an equalizeer, but -- equalizer. almost every county benefits in some way throughout the country from it, it does not accurately reflect the economic opportunities available through active management and use of the federal public lanes. when land management disci'ses reduces access, utilization of natural resources, local economy bears the brunt and too much vile economic opportunities with resources and energy sources are lost. again, pilt cannot and does not fill the void. it's not reimbursement especially when the push is additional reductions in access and multiuse in the public lands. contrary to claimses. designation of wilderness are not a boom to economies, but a

debt debt triment. i look forward to hearing the work that have done clearly calling into the question the validity of recent testimony we had from the hedge waters economics. the directer of hedge waters economics. america's in the midst of the recession with elevated unemployment, but the obama administration pushes an agenda competing with our priorities of job creation and american energy independence. this is counterproductive. particularly in the royal west, the obama administration needs to evaluate the real impact of advancing a worldness agenda. locking up millions of acres in the west without congressional approval and restricting access and energy production and other activities devastates the rural community that up fairly bear the brunt of the designation the with the expiration looming in 2012, the interest of all residentings should be considered and protected when making land use decisions. this designation should be initiated at the local level,

not out of pressure from washington without understanding the impact on communities. the majority in congress understands this is a critical juncture managing national assets and the current state of economic mandates that we do more with less. we have to mapping the federal lands and resources for return on conservation, economic, and public benefit and improve management of the federal lands and resources to create jobs and conserve efforts and make america self-relint. this approach helps keep them productivity and viable. i look forward to hearing from the witnesses today, and i recognize the ranking member for his opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and sorry i was tardy. i apologize to the witness as well. mr. mr., in 1976, we created payment in lieu of taxes or pilt program to receive compensation for the presence of public lands within their county boundaries.

the amounts are over and above the revenues generated on federal lands which are shared with local governments. since 1976 under democratic majorities, the program has been fully funded. when the republicans took the majority in 1994, it was underfunded with appropriations between 40%-70% of the authorized amount, and it took a democratic majority in 2008 to restore full funding as a mandatory spending program for five years. starting in 2013, it will again need to be authorized and appropriated by congress. i'm worried this history is about to repeat itself with the republican majority either allowing it to expire or targeting the program for significant cuts in funding. just like the secure schools program which the republic allowed to expire, the republican majority has to decide next year what the future is of pilt.

if these programs are truly vital to the rural communities throughout the west, we have to find ways 20 fully fund them -- to fully fund them. we must not cut pilt and violate our safeguards on public lands that provide substantial benefits to states and local counties from travel and tourism dollars. the public lands are the backbone of the outdoor recreation economy generating jobs and 88 billion in annual state and federal tax revenue. we have to find bipartisan solutions to help the counties meet their budgetary needs. we stand ready to work with the majority on an effective long term funding solution for pilt. i thank the witnesses for joining us today, and i look forward to the thoughts on these proposes. thank you, and i yield back.

>> all right. we'll have problems here, but we may have time. i think we have time to get the first two witnesses' testimony in, and then we have to break to go back to vote, and then we'll come back and finish this panel. all of the witnesses' written testimony is in the record. we want to hear the oral testimony here, and keep it close to five minutes. the light's indicate green, is fine, yellow, one minute, and please stop when it's red. with that, starting with pamela, assistant deputy office of budget finance performance and acquisition at the department of interyour. . >> good morning. as you said, i'm the budget finance perform acquisition, and executing the payments in lieu of taxes is in my portfolio of programs. i have here with me today from

interior, adrianne moss, and i just wanted to mention them. good morning, thank you for inviting me to be a part of the pam. i have a formal statement, and i have just a few brief comments, a quick overview of the program if you will, and how we manage the program. many of you are already very knowledge l about the program -- knowledgeable about the program and its history, so hopefully i'm not repeating things you already know. the payments in lieu of taxes programs offsets the cost of services in infrastructure that are incurred by local jurisdictions where certain federal lands are located. payment eligibility is reserved for local governments that contain non-taxable federal lands and these jury dictions provide -- jurisdictions provide housing, social services, transportation, and other services. pilt payments are made to counties with lands within them,

lands in the national forest system, the national parks system, lands managed by the land management, lands affected by the corp. of engineers and resource development projects. we use a formula in allocating pilt that's provided in the pilt act. the annual payment to each county is computed based on the number of acre the federal entitlement land within the jurisdiction and population serves as the cap on the formula. we consider prior year revenue payment amounts from a sect number of revenue programs within the cage collation of the payment -- calculation of the payment. the first payment was made in 1977, so since 1977 and through 2011 with the last payment we made in june of 2011, the department of interior made payments totaling $5.5 billion.

from 1977 to 2008, it was included in discretionary appropriations. we sought the budget request, and it was considered as part of the appropriations process. in 2008, the emergency economic stablization act authorized a five year program of mandatory funding of pilt payments. beginning in 2008, we made full entitlement payments to the counties and have through 2011. ..

we use a portion of this to make adjustments to prior year payments when counties come in and give us new information or federal agencies change acreage. with that, i'm going to conclude my remarks. thank you. >> thank you very much for your testimony. if we can get one other witness inherit easley with our time limit before we run out of time for both so i asked dr. corn who is the specialist of the natural resource policy with congressional research service address is now. staying at five minutes please. [inaudible] >> ms. corn can you make sure you are on? >> do you up made to repeat

that? >> no, go ahead. >> i've been. >> i've been asked by the subcommittee to describe how the program works for taxes. i have submitted written testimony in the form of the sierras report that a updated recently. with the help of some slides from that report i will describe this program. the original program was designed as an overlay rather than a substitute for federal payment programs already in existence for national forest lands, wildlife refuges and a few other specified areas. the emphasis was on one providing at least some payment to counties whose federal lands produce little or no revenue from agency payment programs in two thing or portion way more to counties with slope operations that might be less able to provide government services. the result was a formula they kept payments based on population, subtracted out specified prior year payments and set a certain minimum payment so every county which eligible lance got at least some pilt payment regardless of prior year payments from other agencies.

there was no adjustment for inflation. the program light on discretionary spending and congress appropriated 90% of more of the full authorized amount in all but one year from 1977 to 1994. all states had to have some acreage eligible for pilt programs. as the years passed to pass the counties receiving pilt payment raised abraded concerns particular the erosion of the value payment due to inflation. some counties want to see more categories of federal lands or indian lands become eligible for payments or to move to a system of tax equivalency. in 1994 senator hatfield tells pilt hearings in the natural resources in many different views were expressed as virtually all proposed changes would have helped some counties and hurt others. a compromise was reached to raise payment rates and adjust rates layton later years. as my next slide shows the authorization levels rose rapidly. the program continued to rely on

annual appropriations so even though appropriations rose rapidly they did not keep up with the authorization level and counties tended to focus on the gaps between these two sets of large. however is my next slide shows whether measured by current dollars or constant inflation-adjusted dollars, the payments did go up. the reliance on discretionary spending ended in 2008 with pl110-303. this was from fy2008 through 2012. the payments next summer is the last in this provision and after 2012 the program overturned to annual appropriations unless congress changes the law. to calculate the pilt payment for any given county you need to know the answers to these five questions. one, how many acres of eligible plans are in the county? the pilt statute specifies which lance are eligible and i've shown these on page four in my written testimony. two, what is the population in

the county as my next slide shows. no matter how many acres and regardless of prior year payments, counties payments are limited by the population of the county and no county is credited with having more than 50,000 people. third, what were the previous year's payments if any for all the eligible plans of their payment programs of federal agencies. in the next slide, note that is prior year payments shown their on the x-axis increase the next year's payments under subsection on on the y-axis decreased. only those payments named in the pilt statute produced in the offset. any prior-year payment that is not named in pilt is required on the offset does not count. i've shown these prior year payments the result in an offset in table a3 in my written testimony. four, does the state of any laws requiring payments for mothers federal agencies to pass through to other independent local government entities such as

school districts rather than staying with the county government itself? if they do and the county government never receives the funds than those funds don't count against the county in calculating the next year's pilt payment and five what is the increase in consumer price index during the year lex my next slide shows a very complicated flowchart as to how this calculation is worked out. i would be happy to go through the steps in this if the committee wishes. and with that let me thank you for your invitation to appear today and i would be pleased to answer your questions on this program. >> dr. corn thank you and thank you for keeping within the five minutes. i know that was a lot of material to cover that short period of time. we are now going to recess to go vote. i am estimating maybe 15 minutes, 20 of the most unless something weird happens on the floor. [laughter] so i would ask if you would be

kind enough to do that when we come back. dr. yonk we will take your testimony and come back for any questions. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the commission will come back to order. apologize once again. let's just say something weird happened on the floor.

with that we thank the two panels who have spoken already and we have yet to hear the testimony from dr. ryan yonk from southern university. go thunderbirds and your old coach is not related. we would be happy to hear testimony if you would please. >> chairman bishop ranking member grijalva i appreciate the opportunity share with the result of a number of studies i've conducted by some colleagues of mine at utah state university in myself. brian who is here with me today and dr. randy simmons. as i said, as you introduce me my name is ryan yonk and i'm assistant professor at southern university with a primary emphasis on the issues that surround public land and how they impact grimm amenities. i will skip the background in pilt were received from the other witnesses today. other than to say the fundamental logic of pilt funds was to prevent the systematic disadvantaging of counties where a vast federal land holdings would be forever excluded from

their taxable land-based. this initial recognition of the potential harms of these large, permanent federal ownership has unfortunately given way to claims that suggests this ownership imposes not a cost to local communities but a benefit regardless of the types of lands that are owned. a question about the effectiveness and importance of pilt should explore the trade-offs that occur when large tracts of land are federally owned and the opportunity cost arise from these sorts of holdings. beginning in 2004, the center for public lands in rural economic at utah state university began a series of studies funded by the department of agriculture to investigate the effects these public lands have on rural communities. the studies have focused on health care markets, social services, education, the effect of wilderness on life quality and on the economic conditions and all share similar results. suggesting across a wide variety

of policy areas, the presence of public lands has a non-positive effect on rural communities at best and a negative effect at worse. for example, we find with regards to education that one of the effects of large federal ownership is an increase in the size of the county and school district resulting in increased costs of administration and a reduction due to the federal land ownership in the tax base available to provide service. when other short examples suggest the public lands counties for disadvantaged directly to their economic conditions. our research indicates the communities with 25% of their gross acreage held by the federal government have an average household income that is between $741.1350 per year less than non-public lands counterpart. this is not to say that these funds are not an essential

torsion, the pilt funds but rather they are not the panacea that corrects the myriad of other effects of large-scale federal land ownership. in the counties are severely disadvantaged when pilt payments are reduced or delayed. we have three examples to present that call into question the idea that in fact federal lands are a net positive for the community. the first is a study conducted on the grand staircase monument in utah designated in 1996 by president l. clinton, and our evaluation of the event focused on the most basic assertion presented by those who supported that designation. the protection of those lands should have resulted in increased tourism dollars and a net positive impact on the communities in cain and garfield counties. we find no evidence of any

positive results other than a single task that indicates the possibility of increased tax revenue in a single year. our second study speaks to this is a study of wilderness areas. wilderness, to cut to the chase of it, there are lots of other things in my written testimony. when you control for other factors that influence county economic conditions wilderness designation is associated with lower per-capita income, lower total tax receipts in counties where it is present. there's a fair example that i'm happy to answer questions about called the treasured landscape memorandum that came out from president obama's administration and we look at the opportunity cost that are there. to conclude, research suggest the reality of federal land ownership and the effects of those lands can be best summed up with two core economic on --

trade-offs. every policy action necessarily chooses to do something and not to do others. the second is opportunity cost. anytime land is removed from the active economic base there will in fact because that be costs that are difficult to estimate and the counties where these lands are protected have to bear. thank you. >> thank you dr. yonk. i appreciate the testimony of all three witnesses. now we will turn to questions. mr. tipton you were here in our earlier session. du have questions for these witnesses? >> thank you mr. chairman, and i would like to tank or panel for taking time to be able to be here. i guess i would like to ask ms. haze first, understanding that pilt is funded for one more year, does the administration to the best of your knowledge plan to maintain full funding in their presentation for pilt following the 2013 budget?

>> i don't think i can answer that. that would be pre-deciding what we are going to do in future budgets so i'm not really able to say that at this point. >> you know in your testimony that mentioned that the payments are typically made in june. >> right. >> there was a decision that was made to delay payments without providing any notice. was at this last year? >> there was a delay this past year, yes and the 2011 payment. >> that creates a lot of problems. i come from a small rural county that has a lot of public lands. we have one county might district with 98% of the entire county of public lands. federal lands. the real issue is that does create a real problem for those communities. what are your plans going forward in terms of making sure the counties are compensated properly? >> i'm glad you brought that up

but actually we learned a lot last year about probably how to better communicate with the counties and the state and the members. we didn't send our notification out soon enough and we know we need to do that. and we were able to accelerate the process and make the payment before the end of june so we ended up really only being a week later than normal. but, we assure the county and the secretary was very engaged as well, that we would do earlier notifications and we would just try very hard not to have a delay. and we would stick to that early june date. >> can you expand on this formula a little bit more in terms of the entitlement acres where counties don't receive payments for some acreage that they currently have and can you explain some of that inequity for me? >> so, we make payments for

certain lands, the lands that are in the first system and the park system and there are some lands for which we don't make payments. i am a little sheepish to tell you, i don't specifically know the distinction but dr. corn does. >> dr. corn? >> under the pilt statute taji the lands that receive compensation are specified in the statute, so if there is a category of land, dod or whatever, and it's not specified in the statute it will not receive compensation. so if there is a category let's say a forest service lands that does not get compensation under the pilt statute then it won't. that's not discretionary with the department of the interior. >> i guess the question that i have and it goes back a little bit to what -- mr. yonk's, and in a fight to get you to

comment. education is very important for my family and our entire community. we have had restrictions in terms of being able to get to harvest timber as an example, access to provide resources back into our communities. we see the pilt has been fully funded -- i just did a couple of sketches there. would be go back to the beginning it looks like it has been underfunded to the tune of $1.5 billion since its inception which are very round numbers. are some of the restrictions we are going to be putting on going to further impact our ability to make payments that is going to provide for schools, provide for public safety and the building of highways in your estimation? bead you you mean under pilt? >> yes. >> the factor that would relate to that is to the extent that you reduce the prior year payment or increase the dryer year payment, you may end you

will remember i had a very complex formula for this calculation but you may reduce a given county's pilt payment or you may increase it, and it's difficult to tell what the net effect would be. >> i'm about to run out of time here but just in your estimation, where we have got counties, hinsdale county 98% federal lands it might district. dairy small population that they receive less. if our friends from new york come out of their public lands and drive off the end of the road, they want to have public services they are to be able to provide those services. in your estimation is that fair to simply have that part of the calculation population nor should it be strictly on size? >> as you know it's difficult for crs to deal with that sort of question. let me just say that this is not discretionary with the pilt statute. in other words they receive whatever the statute calls for. >> i wish is going to ask for a

commented terms of fairness but understand. thank you mr. chairman and i yield back. >> thank you, thank you. what is your hypothetical is actually for us a reality. >> ms. haze, there has been some suggestion that the formula for pilt payments results in some and equities, some units of local government that are already fairly well off. we have seen large pilt payments while some areas have limited resources and do not receive as much from the pilt program. does the department have any suggestions on how the program might be reformed so we more fairly allocate the funding? >> that's a great question and i anticipated would ask me that an struggled with what i would say. i hesitate to suggest anything. the formula was so extensively discussed while they were putting the act together many years ago, and i've gone back and looked at all of that.

there were so many different options they looked at before they settled on what they enacted, so i really don't have a better way to -- that mousetrap. >> the other question i have is the department of the interior shares receipts from development activities on public lands with local government. can you give us some examples of where various programs that have revenue-sharing? >> i sure can. many of our revenue-sharing programs share the receipts with states as opposed to going directly to the counties, but their formulas are very diverse across all of the programs, so for example mineral revenue payments to states for onshore mineral production, we share $2 billion a year with the state. there is also -- let me think what else we have her go of

course there is offshore which has nothing to do with pilt. grazing revenues, so there is a number of them. >> and that would be a significant transfer of funds, would it not? >> it is a significant transfer of funds. on an annual basis we are sharing about $8 billion a year. >> thank you. ms. corn according to data, how has the amount of funding authorized for the pilt program compared to the amount actually appropriated between 1976 and 1994? >> congressman, the first payment was made in 1977, so between then and 1994, the range

was between 100%, down two and 1979, 88%. all of the rest of them are over 90%, generally over 94%. even been in the early years it was difficult to figure out what 100% payment was because the baseline data was so confused. in other words the county didn't actually build federal land or the agency did not or how much they had gotten in the previous year? >> do the same comparison if you would for 2008 to the current year. >> between 2000 -- wade, 2000 it did you say? >> yes. >> it was 100%. >> and appears there was a period from 1995 to 2007 when the amount appropriated to the program fell short of the authorized levels. >> that is true.

>> i will not ask you which party was in the majority from 2005 to 2006. i will leave that for people to figure it out. that may ask if i could professor one question. in your written testimony you suggest an analysis of opportunity cost. that would be useful in evaluating the merits of federal land ownership. in other words we should estimate what is being lost in a coal mine, uranium line and other extraction activities. what an analysis of these opportunity costs as you see it, did that the potential cost for mitigation, cleanup, and a waste for pollution that was caused associated with these projects? would that deduction be fair? heart of the opportunities gail? >> absolutely. good part of the cost would have to take into account the cost both the production and postproduction timewise but

again it should be something that is appropriately included and estimated. >> right time is up. >> thank you. mr. mcclintock. >> dr. yonk, how much of the state of nevada for example is owned by the federal government? do you have figures on that? >> if i were sitting in my office i could tell you. it's well into the 90%. >> what about california? >> i do not know the answer to california. >> i represent the northeast and we do have counties which the federal government owns 70 to 80% of the land area, which stuns me when we reflect on the fact that washington d.c., the federal district of columbia, with all its government buildings, the national malls, all of the memorials and parks, the federal government owns about 25% of land area of the federal district of columbia.

what happened? how was it that the federal government seized the fast portions of the western united states away from the local people? >> that is quite a question. the short answer is that you had a period where you had landholdings that were held by the federal government that were being in large measure privatize and that era ended prior to the introduction of the pilt program. it was no longer just to do and doing those sorts of things so it was sort of a default setting as we came out of the homestead era, when what you did with the balance of the land? well, that land was held in most cases by the federal government and was not fully allocated. >> we have found in the northeastern quarter of california the federal government is a lousy landlord

and even worse neighbor. we are watching these federal agencies shutting down community events that had them exercised in these communities, in some cases for generations, driving grazing operations out, forcing people to abandon cabins that have been in their families for generations. it really is a lousy neighborhood. what do we do about all this? >> not only are they consuming vast proportions of land that would otherwise be going for productive use, but they have become an active impediment to simple commerce and activity in these mountain communities. >> i think the short answer to your question is that is the fundamentally political question that is left in your capable hands but there needs to be a recognition that the costs are real to these communities. it's far too often that those costs are discounted or even suggested that the results are positive, that you should be

grateful to have increased levels of protection because you will see increased tourism dollars. our work does not err out that is consistently the case. >> the ranking members pointed out that there have been years when the federal government has been unwilling or unable even to match the current authorization for pilt which is very low and of course as we all know, the federal cupboard is bare. we are actually borrowing that money and i'm not entirely sure how much china is going to loan us. shouldn't pilt be funded by simply selling off these excess federal land holdings? shouldn't we set perhaps the 25% limit on the amount of land area of any state or locality that certainly any state and the federal government can own considering the fact that it shows -- does just fine owning 25% of the land area of the district of columbia? >> again i think that is the

fundamental tillie clinical question that this body will have to decide. their cost especially as you caught -- ross at 25% threshold and is landholding expanse their increasing cost. >> if we were selling off its excess land two things would happen. who were using that to fund pilt that would provide a source of revenues to provide relief to these communities without tapping a treasury that is deeply in debt. and at the same time would begin reducing the problem by restoring this land from unproductive federal holding to productive local holding. >> i think one of the interesting things in response to that is pilt is not the solution for these public lands counties. wafer testimony it is to be been funded that over 90% and public lands counties still lag behind their nonpublic land counterparts in a friday of measure so i think the more fundamental question that you

are asking is an interesting policy question, should we be divesting public lands? >> so there is a solution that would create jobs throughout these regions, would create additional tax revenues throughout these regions because of productive at kennedy and would still leave the federal government holding far more of the land area in the states than it does in his own federal district of columbia. thank you. >> the short answer if i may? maybe that would happen. >> you did it in less than five, good job. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you chairman bishop for holding this important briefing. i would also like to thank thank the witnesses were testifying, giving this committee the information it needs on the program. is a member of the -- of colorado, a member from colorado i understand how vital the pilt program is to my district, to

colorado and other western states specifically douglas county in my district is slotted to receive nearly $300,000 of pilt payments. mr. yonk, right now we have a continued budgetary problem at the federal level but there is significant need for pilt funding on the local level so how can the department of the interior increase the local communities to extract more dollars from their lands and therefore become less reliant on federal pilt dollars? >> again i will revert to part of my written testimony. as you increase the level of protection particularly as it expands beyond civil federal ownership and many of these pilt counties have large areas that are protected at some level greater than the standard just ownership. when that occurs we see increased cost to those communities so one of the

potential avenues would be to reduce some of those levels of protection that could potentially have a positive outcome depending on the context. there were a lot of potentially potentially -- because estimating what would happen gets to be very difficult and it becomes dependent on what resources actually are available on which public lands. >> thank you. thank you mr. yonk. ms. corn, you testified that the addition of indian lands to the pilt program is a current issue of debate but my question is, how the addition of these lands will affect the decision to continue their five-year mandatory authorization in the future? and how will this addition affect local communities ability to earn revenue from these lands and become less reliant on pilt funding? >> congressman, this was an

issue that was brought up extensively in 1994 in the hearings that were held in the senate. the biggest difficulty that i recall was that defining indian land all by itself was a monumental task. there were multiple categories, preservation lance, trust lands that may or may not be on a reservation allotment, land holdings that were once owned by other entities in the prior so it was practically impossible they felt that the time to determine exactly -- that was the big stumbling block. in some counties,, i don't recall where, but in some counties the holdings by let's say a federally recognized tribe on a reservation are a very substantial fraction of that county's land and since they are not taxable, then the burden, the tax burden falls that much

more heavily in terms of property taxes on the non-reservation land and some counties have complained that this is a very severe burden. having said that the reservation lands do sometimes receive important county services such as fire protection, emergency services and so on. it could vary quite a lot from one county to another. >> mr. chairman thank you and i yield back the. >> mr. kosar, we welcome you to our committee. do have any questions? bis permission to have included in the record at letter from the board of supervisors from arizona and because the staggering amount of federal land in gila county supervisor martin reports that hewlett property owners shoulder over 90% of the burden of the county's budget. >> without objection will be added to the record. >> professor yonk i'm curious to hear your views on something that is affecting my district. district 1 is roughly 70% federal lands and meanwhile the

is calculated, the ultimate land multiplied by the dollar amount received. this is a substitute for lost property and taxes so here's my question. let me ask you to pilt compensate localities, disasters caused by mismanagement from federal lands by force fires require the services for local firefighters policeman and emergency responders? >> one of the things we do see in public lands counties is that their budgets are, when you compare them to nonpublic lands counties they spend more on everton public safety in the things you are describing than their nonpublic land counterpart so it would appear that there is at least a cost of having public lands in the county. >> so do you know of the conference a for natural disasters, that they are inherently -- take for example we had a big old fire in the fire area so this is the biggest fire in arizona history.

it is directly related to our management of the forest and yet the counties are impugned by this and there is no way of compensating. >> it's difficult to answer that question because pilt is in my estimation and what we found, it does not cover the day-to-day operations. it's not a full replacement to property tax revenue in every case, so based on that logic the answer to your question is no but i can't say that conclusively based on any data or study. >> but it's asking in requirement, the federal government is asking that they do maintain this on the day-to-day business gets not compensate them on a day-to-day basis. is that true? >> that sounds correct. >> i know my counterpart from arizona brought up a compensation mechanism, q. no, the minerals, ms. haze. is it not true that those mineral allocations are

determined by the state constitution? in their allocations? >> i don't know about the state constitution. >> i do so let's go back to arizona. the record stays those monies for conversation for mental royalties goes to the land department which go strictly to education, nothing else, nothing more. so let me ask you another question. ms. corn, is there any way in a procedural way that counties have the ability or states have the ability to either increase or decrease the numbers of lands in regards to compensation for pilt? >> no, no, because that provision is statute. another with availability of federal land holdings to receive a pilt payment is defined in statute sony change in the county would require us to hate -- change in the statute. >> so we would have to do it here. >> yes barring one exception. at some lands were to be

acquired let's say to fill a hole in the national forest and that would become national forest land and would therefore be eligible for a pilt payment but the status of the land is fixed in the statute. in other words the types of land that can receive payment are fixed in the statute. >> you brought up another question for me and the definition of indian lands. let's say for example that a tribe buys a piece of property that is a considered part of their holdings. if it was a part of a pilt, does it then become a non-pilt? >> in effect you are suggesting that the tribe has acquired some type of federal holding, and it has change from federal land that was eligible for pilt into land that is now part of the reservation. i haven't heard of that happening. i'm afraid i can't answer that.

>> the reason i ask is you know we spent the better part of 100 years trying to get criminal law with native tribes and is very similar and it's very similar but we have yet to touch civil actions with regard to try his. i have a number of big tribes in my district and we have an example of this possibly occurring. so what we have to do is look at the ramifications because i have some of those holdings where a big tribe has lock on the land ownership within the county but still drives a lot of those -- and there's no way they can compensate or maintain. there's just no way. navajo county is one example. what those people do is her relic come all the way around, emergency response, it is amazing what they do at this fence of the federal government. i yield back my time. >> thank you. i have more questions that come to my mind as i've been listening to the discussion going on here. ms. haze, let me start if you if

i could. first i want to say it was troubling, very troubling to hear your answer to one of the other questions that the department, you don't know if the department will be requesting full funding for pilt in the june 2013 budget year. i understand that maybe it pay grade different than yours to make that statement but it is troubling that the department is not determined to do that and is willing to publicly say they are determined to do that. can i ask a question simply about the payment schedule though? is there statutorily a date certain when pilt payments must go out the door? >> yes. the statutory requirement is that they need to go out the door before the end of the fiscal year. the federal fiscal year. >> so there is a cutoff date is not a date that it has to be done? >> correct. >> will the department of the interior then this year and pilt payments will they be made to

the county before that date? >> they will. >> i appreciate being that definitive. can you tell me what then the specific reason was when you all announced the expected delay in the 2010 payment? >> we had received some additional, some information from a state about -- that impacted our cat collation of the payments to the counties, and it had to do with the way dr. corn described it as the pass-through money and it was a new, a new procedure that they had put into the state. the state assembly had passed new legislation and so a set of prior year deductions, we would have ordinarily considered in the formula. >> so what is the county problem you had with in the department of the interior? >> i think i'm understanding your question, but if not ask me

again. it was a delay in trying to understand what happened in the state and get legal clarification around whether we should deduct those payments are not so it was a legal interpretation of what the new process was. >> if there's a statute that says you have to make us payment by the state, then why did you tell the states you may break that statute in order to do the internal calculations? >> there is a statute that requires that we make the payment by the end of the federal fiscal year on december 30. we try to make a payment in early june. we had gotten initial information from the state later than we normally ask for it. in normally get the information in from from the states in december. we didn't get it until later in the spring and then we had additional clarification discussions with that state that went on for a wild. >> thank you. i appreciate that. i think it would be helpful for the counties that there was a specific date on which they could depend, not when it has to

be done, and end date but a specific date on which those payments had to be going out at some time and i realize there's not a statute to fans that particular thing. i am also under the impression and correct me if i'm wrong, but the department of the interior does not have the ability to increase or adjust valuation land statutorily. that has to be done in a legislative change within the basic program itself statutorily. the department of interior does not have, in my right, the flexibility to change land categories, population payments and those types of things? >> correct and as dr. corn explained there is a set definition for which lands are subject and get full payments in lands that do not. >> thank you. let me turn to dr. corn for a few more questions. i think you have parties at this. are the county payments that are not counted against future pilt payments for some counties but not others?

>> you pilt provides for -- >> actually doctor i'm going to run out of time. i will come up with that one later. on what counties get and what counties don't. mr. grijalva you have sat here and you are the only one on your side. do you want any more questions? [inaudible] >> i'm not that nice but you can go now if you would like. >> thank you. appreciate it. professor, let me ask you a follow-up on a question. i believe that the wildfire was the result of a lightning strike. who would bear the cost for fighting that fire? >> i don't have any specific information about arizona's loss but it would have been born most likely by whatever level of

government is assigned in arizona riemer responsibility for fighting those fires. >> and, you know on page five of your testimony you quote the definition of the grand staircase of the national monument has had little or no effect on the economic situation of the whole county. is that correct? >> we can find no significant impact of the designation of the monument in neither cain or garfield counties. >> so the designation of that monument has had little or no effect on the economies of cain and garfield? >> that is what the date and our study have led us to. >> thank you. it's a relief to have that question resolved once and for all. i appreciate it and with that i yield back. >> thank you mr. tipton. any other questions? >> thank you mr. chairman and i have just one more. mr. yonk since we have so many public lands throughout the west

and i come from an area that is typically economically depressed and unfortunately right now we have that are then double-digit unemployment in many of our counties. going off of some of your analysis and i would like to be actually to see the full report, if lands are further designated to become more restricted, do you see further negative economic impact because i'm hearing testimony. i just held a public hearing in one of my communities and one of the contentions is that we are able to see positive economic impact but you seem to be indicating to the contrary and if you see more restrictive designation, we understand. not all regulations ever go all away as long as it is for service plans. there is going to be protection that will be in place and if he gets more restrictive is there more negative economic impact?

>> in response to that, this notion that there is a positive effect, in none of our studies that we found a consistent positive effect of increasing designation. we do find especially in the case of the wilderness areas, a greater negative effect on those communities. as we go beyond that it becomes less clear. for example the monument study of the grand staircase. it's not that it's a positive. we can find no effect. when the claims were that the effect would be this great boon to those two counties through recreation dollars. so it's a little bit of an mick's bag to answer your question. there are costs as you restrict the uses of land. >> great. ms. haze would you like to comment on that at all? do you have any studies? >> no, not prepared to do economic study comments. thank you though. >> does crs have anything doctor? [inaudible] >> thank you.

i yield back mr. chairman. >> dr. corn can i start over with this one again? what i was trying to ask his or their county payments that are not counted against future pilt payments in some counties but are in other counties. >> yes. where states have laws that require this pass through, and other words this is a feature where state may say the payments resulting from -- must go straight to this entirely separate entity, the school board for example. does not go to the county government. in that case, that payment, let's say $10,000, would not be counted as having gone to the county government so it would not be deducted from the following year's payment. >> so let me give you another hypothetical. we have already establish some counties will be treated differently according so for

example on secure real school payments are they always deducted from the private veers payments? the following year years payment? >> they would be for national forest lands. >> so is that going to be uniform in all counties? for example let's talk about onc counties, and omc county in the west. secure payments would go there? would they also have pilt payments as well? >> in the case of omc lands the school's provisions does not apply. in other words, if we are talking about national forest lands, any prior gear payment under secure rule schools is deducted from the following year's pilt payment. if on the other hand, the land in question, and omc county, has chosen the schools, that payment under secure rules would not be deducted from the following

years pilt payment. bear in mind that this is an incredibly confiscated problem simply because some of those counties will be limited by the population ceiling so it wouldn't make any difference anyway or some of those counties may be receiving the minimum 33 cents per acre payments payment so it still wouldn't make any difference. but potentially, there would be a distinction between -- . >> i appreciate you saying that 33-cent figure. usually don't want to ask a question less you know the answer and i have no clue what this answer is. when that dollar figure was established, why? was there a specific reason or a matrix that we used? we talk about how the formula goes out based on the amount of land and a certain dollar figure attached to it. is their matrix used to, but that figure? >> in the original law, the dollar figures were 75 cents per

acre and 10 cents per acre. >> huai? >> you know i just tried to look that up quite recently. i looked at the hearing records in the house in the senate, the committee reports. that number just pops out and in the house report it says that instead of choosing, and then it was various options, would be committee selects 75 cents per acre? >> it could well be than that of states were allowed to charge a tax levy based on the run standard they would keep begetting subif you way more money from the federal government than they will get in pilt because we have those arbitrary numbers that are there. >> as long as you bear in mind as some might be getting significantly less. >> okay. in my own mind i can envision that scenario but is theoretically possible. can i ask one of the question just on the history? i know population is included as a figure.

historically, hawaii? >> the reset the time for including population is they do not want to give counties that had very large population resources. in other words in the west, the counties tend to be really big geographically and some of them i think in sacramento for instance are big counties, fair amount of public lands and they also have substantial populations. in contrast there may be other counties just as large also with a fair amount of public land that they have a small population. the county that has the small population needs proportionally more assistance than they presumably -- more resources if that is the word i want. at county, one like sacramento. that is where that started. >> once again, seems like once again we made maybe an entirely appropriate decision but a fairly subjective decision. >> the numeric figures for the

75 cents, 10 cents and the county ceiling have not found a specific justification for the senate back shortly after the pilt law was passed in 1978 there was a study by the council on intergovernmental relations which asserted looking back to that 75-cent figure, that there was and i merely quoting, no fiscal reason that they could determine for having chosen that number. >> thank you. like i said i didn't know the answer to that and you have given me an answer. i have to admit it's a troubling answer but it's a good answer. thank you dr. corn. i think in your written testimony gave a sentence in there that i thought was interesting and the idea of pilt was tied to a change in the attitude we had about public lands in the first place. would you one more time just reinforce why you said that? >> sure. the logic of pilt was there a

change happening in this orientation towards what public lands were meant to do and increasing federal oversight of what was occurring on those federal lands. and so part of what pilt was desiring to do, especially those that have advocated very strongly for its was to prevent the systematic disadvantaging of those counties with large public land holdings based on this change and this new focus on conservation at that time and we might determine environmentalism today but it was designed with a recognition that there would be costs to these areas with this change. >> you have given us another avenue of attacking this problem if we look outside the box in some way. are you familiar with the headwater economics in their and their analysis on the impact of national monuments. >> i am. >> can you tell me why your conclusions differ so starkly from their their conclusions? >> the analysis uses a simple growth model where they take what the value of some specific

measure was, compared against time b, holding constant the dollars, they use 2009 and they create -- there has been an increase. that's great that it's possible the increase has happened everywhere. our approach says, suggest that we look at it like controlling for what the other factors are and comparing it against the counties that were most like the counties where a monument was designated and in our case in came. at the time the designation happened and then we wanted to see what happens in the intervening years. and so it is simple to look and say yes, there aren't fact larger household incomes in 2011 then there were, i think it is 1995. yes they are larger but there is no clear discussion in that report about why you would see the increase and the assumption made and the implication that is

made in that report has been taken from it is it is the national monument that has led to that. our work finds no evidence that is the case. >> in your answer to mr. grijalva when he said there is no impact, you are saying in practical terms tourists are not flocking to that destination? >> correct. >> but in your study though, did you include economic opportunities that were lost by those designations? >> no, and in this case there are two primary reasons. the main opportunity cost identified in the grand staircase is the end the lox mind. we have serious questions about whether that mind would have been operative in the period taste on the regulatory environment so an estimation of what that effect would e. they felt was inappropriate i merely

because we have serious doubts about whether or not it would have been open today. someday it would have been open perhaps but the regulatory environment which is a whole nother discussion would likely have prevented it. >> let a finish off with three questions and then i will let you off the hook. to what extent to pilt payments reimburse counties with monument designations? >> at some level less than the cost of those designations. >> states like my state of utah have productive state lands especially school trust lands. about a week the economic benefits from state-owned lands as opposed to similarly federally owned lands? >> we do include to include a control for those stayed on plans because we want to make sure we are not inappropriately describing the impact that we have not done a full scale study of what those impacts would be. have an assumption -- that's unfair -- of what you would find out? if i had an assumption of what

you would find out with at the fair? nevermind. onto another question. after our last hearing i would like a quick reaction. there was a study, survey done by an interest group that was published in one of the salt lake papers that said basically people are loving the grand staircase monument. i want to read with the question was to you. the question that was given was the grand staircase escalante protects lands in southern utah. the national monument allows for continued public use for grazing and recreation including having a new development. do think the grand staircase escalante national monument is good or bad for utah? in their survey they asked one person who lived in garfield county, one person who lived in cain county, one in wayne, nobody in pi ute and then went

five miles by car away and asked 132 people in salt lake city. as somebody who works on the academic area, what kind of fluidity would you give to that type of survey sample? >> having not seen the actual sampling methodology, the question is clearly both vague and provides direction to the answer. we just recently completed a survey of broadband internet and attrition in utah and one of our primary concerns was if we simply try random sampling utah we are going to get a large majority from the counties of salt lake, davis and weaver and if that is the only people we asked, we can identify with the result of that survey will be. they will in fact almost all have access to high-speed internet so we had used a different sampling methodology to ensure that you got geographic representation in this sample. so that would be our approach to dealing with those potential problems. >> i appreciate that very much.

those three counties are all in my district. they are good people. i want to thank the witnesses who have been here to give their testimony and thank the members who have shown up to take questions. i want to make public. the hearing record will be open for 10 days to receive responses. if anyone wants to add to their testimony or if we -- sometimes i think just for me i found this very illuminating. sometimes they think it would be helpful if there was a specific deadline or dates on when those checks will be going out and i appreciate your answers to the reason for that delay that was announced that one time. dr. corn i appreciate your historical in sight. if you can tell me why 75 cents was picked sometime, good for you and i actually appreciate that data. dr. yonk appreciate you being here and i appreciate the studies you have had on the impacts impact these lands has had on the people live in those areas and i thank you for your testimony. with that this subcommittee