age with the threats that i have described to sensitize the public and law enforcement officials alike to the threats, to hves, to signs of mobilization to maximize the opportunity for disruption before harm is inflicted, as i said before. ..

>> people who dedicate their lives to this, working counterterrorism is not a nine to five job. it's an everyday job. and i feel that i would be remiss if i didn't give a nod to the people that i've had the pleasure to work with in the last year. and to make you understand, to convey to you, that this country has find individuals on the front lines who are dedicating their lives, literally, and great sacrifice to keep this country safe. so with that i want to thank you for your time. we will take questions i understand after my colleague, gordon snow, delivers his presentation. and so i look forward to that time. thank you so much.

[applause] [inaudible] >> any questions? [inaudible] >> i think i can hear you. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> today's "new york times" article quotes the director of the fbi, robert mueller, talked about -- is the agency's number one concern.

how should we deal with this threat, thank you? >> the question was about cyber, sort of the eclipse in terrorism, in a sense. as we go forward. and that's our belief, is that as time goes on, terrorism -- rather, cyber issues, cybercrime's, which by the way cyber tens to overlap many of the programs counterterrorism, counterintelligence and criminal programs. but that you will see a greater prevalence of cyber related offenses, including cyber terrorism i would imagine. so what we are doing to a test that, -- to address that, within the fbi there is much more cross programmatic coordination. so gordon's people who work of

cyber issues, and my people who work terrorism, now worked together. now, we have not had a significant terrorism related attack on this -- or terrorism related, or terrorism cyber related attack on this country, but that's not to say we are not referring for that, that potential. -- we are not preparing for that, that potential. anybody else? questions? okay. >> good morning. >> can't hear it.

>> can you hear it now? now? do you hear me? i'm mark rockwell. i was wondering if you could comment on some of the reports this morning, there have been apparently some extremist websites, a series have been taken down in the last month or so, and there's speculation that it was a cyber attack. i know you may not be able to comment specifically, but how are those websites seem? is that a domestic threat or is that an international threat? how is that being handled? >> that they were taken down? are you asking is that domestic or international? >> if you could comment specifically on those reports. and also, a second question, how

does the fbi see those websites? are they a domestic threat directly or are they more of a broader, global threat? >> well, i think they constitute a global threat because they are viewed globally. and the websites that you're talking about our extremist forums, if i'm understanding you correctly. so they carry propaganda. they publish articles on these websites. that really serve the interests of our adversaries, for the most part. >> do they have an active program to go out, reach out to those websites, or are they monitoring them? >> so, anyone can go to these websites. so, i mean, yeah, we monitor, we go to the websites and view the content on the websites, like you would. >> okay, thank you.

>> thank you. >> you did mention earlier al-shabaab, and what is counterterrorism fbi doing to prevent the integration or recruitment of first generation americans, people, families have recently moved to america who are still connected back home to these groups and to certain religious ideologies? >> so, i had a great closeness to the issue because i was the agent in charge of the minneapolis division before i came here. so, i think the most effective answer to your question is, we are dialoguing with the somalia american community in minneapolis. much of that on myself when i was there, met with young somali males, people who are susceptible to recruitment. so that i could gain an understanding of what their life in america was like, and what went on for them. without talking about law

enforcement or terrorism, just taking those topics off the table, and just building trust and understanding with that community. at the same time, conveying what i was concerned about, as i said before, and what the fbi's concerns were in that regard. i think that's the best approach is to get the message out in that way. obviously, people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for attempting to join al-shabaab. so in -- that sends a message of deterrence as well. there's a number of factors that i think we've put together. we've seen really quite a slow down in that phenomena of somali americans desiring to go to the horn of africa, to somalia to fight with al-shabaab. >> thank you. >> thank you.

>> it's now my pleasure to introduce our next keynote expert, the assistant director of the cyber division of the fbi. he began his career as a special agent with the fbi on march 8, 1992. in january 2009, he was appointed chief of the cyber division, the cyber division cyber national security section, and the director of the national cyber investigative joint task force. in november of 2009, he was named deputy assistant director of the cyber division, and in april of 2010, he was named the assistant director of the cyber division. in this keynote address, the assistant director will speak to the efforts and accomplishments of the fbi, cyber investigations and have the fbi is continuing to innovatively develop new techniques and resources that

will help protect citizens from these crimes. please join me in getting a warm welcome to gordon snow. [applause] >> good morning. it's my pleasure to be here today among the outstanding group of professionals dedicated to protecting our nation's homeland security. as you may know, last month fbi director robert mueller met with a similar group of individuals at the 2012 conference in sampras is the. during his speech he said in the not-too-distant future, we anticipate that the cyberthreat will pose a number one threat in our country. so what is the threat? it's no surprise to you that we're living in a high-tech world, but it may surprise you to know that there are more wireless devices being used in the united states than there are americans. it is estimated by the end of

2012, the number of mobile connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth. with this constant connectivity comes increasing voluntary for you and your network. the challenges presented to law enforcement and the cybercrime arena are some of the greatest we've encountered in a century. and at no point in our history have we had to stretch our awareness, our capabilities and our understanding of a threat more than we do now. we have learned the potential threat to individuals, businesses, national economies, infrastructures, and even to our governmental economic strengthen us and stability come exceed financial calculation. several think tanks have actually tried to quantify. the 2011 norton cybercrime report with the global cost of cybercrime at nearly 400 billion a year, and found are more than one main victims of cybercrime every day. a study released last august found that the number of attacks on companies surveyed issue was up 45% from last year, and the

cost 75% more to fix. on average, these attacks took 18 days and $416,000 to repair. that's just the beginning. cyber criminals are using multiple attacks sectors including the supply chain, trusted insiders, proximity attacks to target the network and it's very valuable data. the threat is real and intrusions into corporate networks personal computers and governmental systems are occurring every single day by the thousands. in the cyber criminal world we see three primary actors. foreign intelligence services, terrorist groups, and organized criminal enterprises. dozens of countries have a sense of cyber to build and the victims ranged in government networks to clear defense contractors, and private companies from which they helped steal secrets. or gain competitive advantage for the own nations advance. as the primary investigative agency of the u.s. government for more than hundred years the fbi has become well accustomed to changing pace to meet new threats as an agency with both

national security and law enforcement responsibilities, and with authorities and capabilities that allow us to investigate and target criminal, foreign intelligence and terrorist actors alike, the fbi's prepared to address the cyberthreat. when the fbi first began to look at computer intrusions as a criminal element in its own right, it was 2002, and their 600 million users on the internet. the messages were straightforward and the threat was more localized. the internet has over 2 billion users and a variety of high-tech criminals. ranging from lone actors to vigilante groups, and dangers often highly organized criminal syndicates. they bring together members, with specialist computer skill sets such as coding, hacking, system administration, social engineering, and fishing. this kind of collaboration by thread actors has proven very successful. for example, between 2009-22008 come computers at rbs world bank in atlanta, georgia, were hacked and 44 atm cards were reverse injured using stolen account

numbers. and just 30 minutes, a network of cash and chris recruited forms and use cards to with someone 9 million does. from 21 atms, in the u.s., russia, ukraine, estonia, italy, hong kong, japan and canada. the fbi led investigation brought together the u.s. secret service and international law enforcement resulting in multiple arrests globally and indictment of the ringleader in atlanta. a federal grand jury. one of the largest cybercrime takedowns to date, operation tried and bridge from fbi agents at omaha, nebraska, for other traces of on the data clearinghouse batch payments made to 46 separate bank accounts in the u.s. fbi teams partner with numerous long forced a working group partners in the u.s., the netherlands, ukraine and the united kingdom to identify the operators responsible for stealing banking information in some $70 million from

individuals, churches, and small and medium-sized businesses. the unprecedented international teamwork that took place in that case and naval the destruction of a large organized criminal group, and when the thieves were neutralized, 39 arrests were made in the united states alone. clearly high-tech criminals are evolving their tactics and techniques and the cyber underground, alongside the developing online in climate. whether it is bank fraud, counterfeit trafficking or espionage, most of what we see in a cyber investigation constitutes the same type of crime that takes place off-line. what's concerning is now fueled by the globe reach of the internet platform and an immediacy and anonymity the platform provides. as online criminals continue to raise their level of technical expertise respect to see several new trends emerging in the next few years. some of these trends will include advanced targeting smartphones and electronic tablets. we also expect to see targeting of public safety infrastructure. the systems which serve our nation's first responders. the threat of terrorist attack

developed and developing national infrastructure continues to be a great concert. we have already seen criminals have become so adept at developing and growing specialized malware a market entry their own products with other would be criminals using internet forums. so now the least sophisticated act has the ability to purchase the technical tools. in fact, some malware can even be rented. the widespread dish vision of these ready to use hacking tools and toolkits quickly changed in the playing field and the players in cybercrime. because the tools are easy to use and customize, it's now possible for nearly everyone with intent to engage in cybercrime. whether the motive is financial, activist, political or otherwise, cyber criminals are quickly discover ways to combine the still to get the most from their investment. the creation of botnets creates an avenue or further maximize their respect for those not on the, botnets target compromise and can potentially link millions of victim computers as a tool for a married of illegal

activity from harvesting pii and credit card information to conducting. a computer is created through introduction of malicious code by e-mail phishing and other techniques. operators often working from global location have been able to control the network locally, redirect funds, hijack identities, and steal corporate secrets. the valley of death to the entry in the financial services sector far exceeds that of a physical bank robberies many times over. with hundreds of minutes of dollars stolen from various institutions and their customers. these crimes increase the cost of doing business, put companies at a competitive disadvantage and create significant drain on our economy. so i have told you about the threat but what are we doing about it? to address the increasing complexity of cyber criminal technologies and actors and the international scope of online crime, the fbi has made changes to the structure of our organization. we have placed cyber personal in

each of the 56 field offices housing more than 1000 advanced cyber trained fbi special agents, intelligence analysts and forensic examiners. we've increased the capabilities of our employees by seeking candidates with technical skills, enhancing our cyber training. we change the way we work to employ a more multifaceted approach, leveraging law enforcement and private sector partnerships more than we ever have before. at the heart of the fbi cyber response effort, is a national cyber investigative task force. is outside of washington, d.c. the nci gtf provides an operational foundations were a network of the fbi led interagency task force which investigates all types of cyberthreat. task force measured also become part of a more defined teams. these dedicated teams focus on specific intrusion sets and problems. including.net. these threat focus cells provides a team-leading investigative agents,

intelligence analyst, and just and other specialists and each beneficial multi-agency representation and the diversity of skill sets. through the ncijtf commit the has collected real-time intelligence and has been incredibly valuable for our nation's gurgle networks. we develop strong relationship with the private sector and for the robust information sharing that's been greater we prevented attacks before they have occurred. with the transnational nature of cybercrime, our work with their international law enforcement partners use key as well. since 2010, we have embedded full-time fbi cyber expert with a partners in romania, estonia, the ukraine, and the netherlands, and we continue to expand the program. paying special attention to noted threat region. we also legal attaches positioned and 75 countries and special agents and support personnel in u.s. embassies and consulates throughout the were. each year we're training collaborate with approximate five and law enforcement agencies in more than 40 nations

in cyber investigative techniques. the close working relationships that have been created this way act as a force multiplier for investigations by decreasing our time to react, preserving evidence and expediting too many patients that previously have been tied up in a lengthy international legal process. the expertise has been share through our public and private partnerships, also an integral factor in the successive and numerous botnet takedowns, as was and other cyber investigations. we are truly working? with a number of industry groups, antivirus software companies, research labs and academic institutions that have a vested interest in internet security. the select part is that intentional and breaking some of the largest cases today. in the latter part of 2009 in early 2010, for example, the fbi collaborate with a working group, it's private sector partners and authorities in spain, slovenia and the uk to identify and arrest 17 key players behind the butterfly botnet. the botnet was detected in half

of fortune-companies and hundreds of government agencies, and they were nearly silent as the mastermind still banking credentials and launched a tax will be. the infected computers were linked to 13 million unique internet protocol addresses, and it resulted in over $35 million in losses and damage. this investigation remains significant, not just because is a highly successful international team effort, but because it targeted the programmers of the botnet as was its operators. and another investigation, -- controlled millions of private computers worldwide and we saw 800,000 victims within the u.s. and upwards of $29 in damages over all. the malicious software use long keystrokes to harvest usernames. it was designed to disarm and diverse programs and been repeatedly whenever an infected

computer was rebooted. for the first time in the u.s., the fbi and justice department were granted permission by federal judge to take control of the botnet command-and-control servers and intercepting occasions between infected systems and the service controlling them. expert teams sent a remote stop command of victim machines based in estates about antivirus software to begin to remove the malware operating on them. bother having been been arrests in this case because of extradition laws in the country, almost as important as prosecution has been the ability to mitigate the damage posed by a very powerful botnet. reaching a positive outcome for victims required a tremendous proactive and unified effort. the on taking court action and seizing critical hardware in u.s., owners of the machines were contacted by the intrusion last year with help of estonia and russian officials, the national aeronautics and national aeronautics and space administration and the members of the internet security community, we were able to shut

down a massive internet advertising fraud scheme. the malware was delivered using botnets which hijack more than 4 million computers and more than 100 countries. the malware rerouted victims computers the domain service operated by the subject. the bad servers then manipulate information from search engine results and pay for click advertising bills and upwards of 14 million in gains for the seven subjects who were eventually charged. the fbi worked with isps to notify victims to ensure the now to reverse the damage to their operating systems. as government security professionals, we are on a unique position to address the cyberthreat because of our intelligence capabilities we have a special awareness of certain threats. we must couple classified information with specialist technology to increase the effectiveness of our cybersecurity practices. more importantly, we must recognize that we share this challenge and we must abide a resources and efforts to reduce the threat. what would you give i told you that right now while you sit

here today a criminal gang is in your office reading your e-mails? copying your business plans and stating your research. i imagine you would call the police to report the crime. then work with your company to address the consequences of the theft. i'm telling you, that kind of theft and the kind of intrusion is happening today. and yet we are not common law enforcement and we are not addressing the threat. in favor at this year "the wall street journal" broke a story about a large telecommunications company who networked systems have been compromised for over a decade. during that time chinese hackers allegedly downloaded technical papers, research and development reports, business plans and employee e-mails and other documents. stories like this one expose the uncertainties and reporting requirements for company officials to discover that networks are infiltrated and also the gap in our treatment of cybercrime compared to traditional crime. we must decrease our vulnerabilities which means we must harden the target, including protecting the supply chain, but more importantly we must also be smarter about what

we store in our systems. we have to make a cultural shift from protecting the systems to protecting the information. we must prepare to manage the consequences of cyber attack. we must minimize potential for damage whether that means encrypting data or having redundant systems that can readily be reconstituted in the event of an attack. as we move further into information driven future in which our work, social, consumer, and some and other aspects of our live online art into going with activities off-line. challenges will continue to dominate. from the law enforcement perspective we can expect that there will be some investigative growing pains, along with the threat of the scope of our work and responsive will continue to expand. to ensure the safety of our government and citizens come we can expect that there will be cases in which minimizing the impact of victims is the only resolution and that legislate around the world will need additional time and encouragement to great uniform laws that clearly and firmly defined down trees and panties.

despite these challenges, improved information sharing and strategic planning among public, private industry and international investigative partners is already providing the expanded technical expertise and improved communication and foundation of cooperation that needs to be in place if we're going to keep pace with and control cybercrime. this must continue. security of our networks is very much a share challenge, and i think you for the important part you each plate in a. by working together we can advance the security of our nation's networks and and infrastructure. thanks. [applause]

>> we will take a few questions and answers at this time. please step up to the microphone. >> this is for gordon snow. i was basically wondering, when you do your investigations for cyber division, you do have currently the problems of independent hacker groups, such as anonymous, and how much does this involve, you know, chasing ip addresses and how much does it involve human intelligence and and how much does it involve getting other nations to cooperate with getting access to these targets be? it involves everything that you just reference. having forensic review, good victim investigative cooperati cooperation, the international partners, and everything else that is bundled with that. so, it's a large breadth of

scope for those investigations, and it's just something we need to keep on digging into. the one thing that you did mention though that it think is really critical, and i tried to talk about it some today, is just the way we treat internet crime and traditional crime. so in many of the cases it's been basic blocking and tackling for investigations. unit, see who we can find, see what humans are. because at some point, somewhere in this whole ecosystem to somebody behind a keyboard tapping away the keys. so we actually need to find the undercover platforms, the human and source information intelligence in order to make sure that we can dismantle any organization that we're looking at from activist to the national security threats. >> thank you. >> yes, mr. snow, mark st. peter. i've got a question on how much the fbi may be working with the

operating system vendors to tighten their default installs. most users come including the average americans at home, have no idea about computer security other than antivirus or spamware. the default, you know, both on after the fact security that we are applying doesn't work as well as it was built into an image, or installed as a security platform. have you made any headway with vendors on this? and you know, are there any plans to push that effort? >> so let me break it into a couple of pieces. one is, your comment is exactly right on target. there's a lot of things many of us in the cybersecurity realm need to do in the entire ecosystem here in the united states and globally. the fbi is attribution and pursuit, so the investigation portion of it, department of

homeland security does the mitigated efforts and the contact and reach with private industry. but since it all overlaps with all work in that realm. so i the national cyberforensic training alliance that we partner with our private sector partners with, and in great efforts like serfs easy and the centers of excellence across the nation for nsa and dhs, and also for those nonprofit 501(c)'s like the center for identity at the university of texas and many others is whether addressing those issues. so a lot of it happens to be aware to fix some of it happens to be awareness, and others, end pieces of it is exactly what your talking about. but we're still a market-driven society. so until we get the awareness, fully dead center in everybody's mind, and there but understands that the cyberthreat is everybody's responsibility, i don't think will be crying out for those products that will be so fruitful for the industry,

which holds in front 85% of the network to develop. but we are looking at it from the security aspect in all those places that i talked about. >> okay, thank you. >> good morning, assistant director. you mentioned about the threats and one with chinese hackers. i'm just wonder, when it comes to cybersecurity, what is the greatest threat from china? and how do we, what is needed to meet the threat and how difficult to accomplish that? think it. >> so, a little difficult to talk on the national security side in this forum, but let's do it in a different fashion. so all countries face a national security threat, to include china. so when i look at a threat from any one of the nationstate actors, i try to determine what it is that is really at risk. so the biggest threat is just the hack. the biggest threat is the

compromise. so not really looking at it from a technical scope or view, but let's just say the compromise the computer is the largest threat. and that can be done by any number of means. so the gentleman that was with you before, talked about all the sister to applications and protocols that are not in place that could be damaging. and we all know that phishing or and enoch is coming through your firewall since the protocol set up to let the e-mail through the firewall cannot executable malware in the. so the threat is the compromise that the computer here or the loss of everything that your company, your corporation, your agency would hold the most critical and value to you. so if you're -- any of those threats, those plans that research and development, that cutting edge technology, your reintroduction of your product in the product lifecycle, all that information is very critical.

does that answer your question? >> yes. and you also mentioned about that the fbi cooperate with other nations in law enforcement. are we cooperating with the chinese law enforcement agencies to address this issue? >> we are cooperating with the chinese in many different aspects in law enforcement, and hopefully we will see that continue to improve in the internet space, and the cyber realm. so we have a liaison officer that is over there that works in intellectual property rights. are concerned, idc china and the u.s. for loss of intellectual property, and we look at it, we worked with the chinese in all realms and spectrums across the bureau. so i would just hope that that would flourish and at one point, you know, this global environment would understand that threat is to all and we all have to partner very closely. >> thank you. >> good morning.

i'm from the social security agency, administration, excuse me. you talk about trained techs out in the field and partnerships with state, federal, local authorities and other agencies. are there any hackers, perform hackers or others that are in your employ are with other agencies? >> so, other agencies, some that we have hired, people that we recruited, white hat hacker for everybody here is just the person that is, you know, a member of the league of justice. they're using their powers for good, not evil. as opposed to the black hat hackers. so i would consider all my individuals that have that skill and the technical expertise to be white hat hackers, and, obviously, in this environment where that skill is so widely sought, that many times we partner with them in the private

public partnerships, and the security venues and avenues in order to make sure that the things that we're looking at or thinking about will be the most beneficial and have the most impact. >> thank you. >> thanks for the question. >> i'm part of the national initiative to cybersecurity education, and one of the questions we get quite often is what kind of education are you looking for, and where are the jobs? >> so, the education i would be looking for, and this is just cordon speaking comes i don't want to speak for the entire united states government, but gordon speaking, you know, as looking at my workforce, i don't want to shout want to start with a couple things. i want to make sure that technical and mathematical scientific background that we had so many years ago would be

replicated and become stronger here in the u.s. so that those skill sets that we need would populate automatically. i'd like to see education and awareness for everybody. you know, i think a large percentage of the population still believes that a laptop really doesn't provide any threat to them because inside the house it's kind of a locked door. we go wherever we want, we surf whatever we want to serve, and it lasts about two or three years, we thousand and diverse at it and pretty soon we get the blue screen of death and we decide it's survived three years, we go to costco or best buy a genuine. i want people to understand that threat is out there constantly on your tablet, on your smart phones, in your computer systems, and everything that you touch and reside on at work or at home in the internet, from the counterterrorism threat to use the infrastructure to attack our infrastructure at homeland,

always, all the way letter to the child predator that is out there. so i kind of want a lot of the information to come out. then i would want to be structuring k-12 to make sure that we are building that strong core and substance that we will need to repair, fix, to protect our network in the future. i also personally like to see education that has developed, you know, when we talk about, i will diverge for a second. we talk about cybernetwork tradition. we talk about cybernetwork attacks, cybernetwork's defense, cmd, exploitation, and we don't talk about cyberthreat investigations. so i would like to see that skill set be developed so that we could put instead, i go out and find technical experts and teach them and bring into the cultural mindset of doing investigation. i'd like to see that not only for ourselves but for other agencies, and companies and corporations be instituted, you

know, the technical people in the u.s. have some of the most expansive experience and training, but since it's not done on a traditional four your type degree or program, it really isn't recognized for what it should be good so i would like to see some of that restructured. >> good morning. this question is mostly for mr. boelter. want other things do you think would be effective in countering radicalization, especially online radicalization, community engagement and dialogue? >> so it's a difficult problem, because you know, the radicalizer's can change. one person, there's not a single source of this. it's very dynamic environment. the audience is very broad.

so i think, truly, i think we just need to assess and get out, as i said before, a counter message. and we are doing that, and i'm talking about the entire u.s. government. but i think we need to just step of the game, and to do that to a more effective, at a more effective level. but, frankly, it's a vulnerability, clearly, and it's a difficult challenge for us. thank you. >> i don't know if this mic is on. hello? yes, question over here. we've got millions of people out there with computers and we heard the discussion about not having the right protection on those computers. as we move toward the cloud, and i'm not sure where that is going, are we going to end up everyone having terminals at

home working on a big central computer in the sky? but how will that affect computer security? >> i think it will have a huge impact, and which with the impact goes is going to depend on how we structure the clout. so as of look at the cloud, the cloud, while it has some great characteristics, you know, efficient, effective, agile low cost for corporations and entities, i just want to ensure in this wednesday's that we talked about before that we are not driving towards the bottom line of cost reduction, and not thinking about security. so if you look at the contractual products, i guess the best way to put it, if we look at the contractual relationships that are built between a corporation or an entity going into the cloud and the service provider, you know, there's some very critical things that you should know. it looks over all like the

corporations and companies are outsourcing the information, but retaining the liability and the risk. and if you don't look at the contract close enough, you will see that the cloud computing service, depending on how the contract is written, may have no responsibility for security. and may, in fact, have no security available at all. so it would be something that we want to look at very closely to see which way this is going to tip. if it tips in the direction of strong security, very good managed services, and assumes that he can protect the network, then that's a good thing. if those add-on features or bolt on features as we've talked about before are not included in the service, then you may find out that you don't own the information. you may not access to the

information, and if the information is taken, then you may not be able to retrieve it. so before any entity, corporation, business platform went into the cloud, i would just say that the weirdest piece is going to be very important. and a strong review from technical experts of what the contract is providing is also going to be very important. for us on the law enforcement side, if that information is now outsourced into another country that doesn't have the long reach or arm in the law, it means that i may not even be able to provide any assistance if you happen to be intruded on. does that answer the questions? >> thank you, gentlemen, for being here this morning. i'm an accountant. i'm also a senior in my computer forensics education, and seeing these to merge together brings

forth this circle of life between, around cybercrime, terrorism, and now the advent of cyber terrorism. in that i've been tracking money for a very long time. how is it our governments and our partners across the pond help in this regard in tracking the money, which funds a lot of described? and how are we better equipped to deal with that? is that becoming better? >> it is, and thanks for the question. a lot of great efforts by all, just like in any other traditional crime, to follow the money. there's mutual legal assistance treaties that we use with other countries. event on where they were signed. kind of discusses how much force and power is in that coming in and what challenges sovereignty is there to another country when we're talking about money.

at how effective the relationship is built on any one of the many nations that we would be looking for assistance from. so we have to remember also that just like these cybercriminals entry to computers and steal the personally identifiable information and the credit card information, to train your resources, they also steal -- to drain your and resources. i may follow a long path and track information that comes back to tell me that is a stolen credit card, or it's stolen money, or it's an identity that doesn't exist because it's been stolen before. so it's difficult. it's difficult when we are tracking that money, but all the efforts are getting better. and i think from the awareness, i keep going back to awareness, not because i'm trying to hammer the pen but it's just an

important piece. as globally all our partners become more aware, i've seen the efforts from all law enforcement and intelligence community partners get even closer. so a lot of times we have policies in place from either the law enforcement side or the intelligence community side that are there for obviously good reasons, maybe decades ago when systems were not interconnected. and i see a lot of good efforts from the global partners to pull some of those down to make sure we can have even stronger efforts and impact going forwa forward. >> for mr. boelter, as the economy has slowed down and over the next couple of years we're looking at a lot of reduction in fiscal grants for homeland security. how do you see this affecting the local law enforcement participation and some antiterrorism team's?

>> well, not unconcerned about. i am concerned about the changing economy. i know within and the resources that are available, counterterrorism as a result, so within the bureau we have obviously counterterrorism has grown over the years. i'm not anticipating that continue to growth going forward, so back to my comment, we need to be smarter. our analysis needs to be sharper. it really needs to drive our operations. so that we can maximize our effectiveness. we don't have the luxury, just talking about within the bureau, to sort of waste any resources on this problem. because the problem is very dynamic. now, i'm looking out across the landscape, and i mentioned the 56 field divisions that we have and all the jttfs that we support. and i'm looking for any sort of beginning of a trend where local law enforcement is drawn from

the jttf, meaning taking members away from the jttf. i've not seen that yet. but i'm sensitive to the possibility going forward. as far as grants and that sort of, you know, in terms of homeland security, i'm not aware of any sort of degradation in resources yet going to counterterrorism. i think it's such a high priority at this point come i'm thinking that we will not see that any future but i don't know at this point. but i'm sensitive to those different things. just mentioned. >> we have time for one more question, if there is one. >> last one. so both for cyber and counterterrorism, can you talk

about how you might be interacting with and supporting the multiple fusion centers around the nation? and especially with respect to spatial awareness intelligence when it comes to cyber and counterterrorism. thank you. >> right. just quickly on counterterrorism, we have a very close relationship with the fusion centers but at this point the fusion centers all are a little bit different. they are not uniformly staffed. they are -- >> are the uniformly funded? >> or funded. and their missions vary greatly. i have come as i said before, the minneapolis division to quit three fusion centers so to speak in that territory, north dakota, south dakota and minnesota, but they were all very different. and they operated under different restrictions, different rules. so i think it's going to very, fusion centers to fusion centers

but we are committed to working with the fusion centers across the country. that is really handled out of the director of intelligence that manages the fusion centers relationship, but i know from my days in minneapolis, and now we engage with the fusion centers wherever possible. los angeles, new york, very robust relationship in the counterterrorism realm. others, you know, the other end of the spectrum as well where, because it's not at all a classified environment, then there's only so much that you can do. >> so from the cyber realm, not as much interaction with the fusion centers, although it seems to be growing. we haven't had a large state and local law enforcement population in the cybersecurity arena around, although you've seen probably in the last four years that's really started to grow. so a lot of state police agencies and local departments

are putting in their own high-tech crime center, and that's including intrusion. the springfield, illinois, original concern that the water treatment facility had been intruded in one of the water treatment ponds have been taken off-line by a nationstate actor, was actually original reporting from the illinois state police fusion centers. so that came out very quickly. that allowed everybody to respond, and i think i would expect that to increase as the state and local law enforcement entities start dealing with the attacks that are more localized. and will be there to try to offer them funding and help and direction as we move that forward. from the geospatial realm, and as you know censure asking the question, a huge and powerful tool for cyber. so we do work with our federal

entities here that you geospatial analysis to help construct systems, give us a systems, and for us to look at it from that realm also because a very quick way to route through and dissect huge amounts of data. >> thank you. >> thank you for attending this one. join me in getting mr. boelter and mr. snow a round of applause. [applause] this concludes our program. enjoy the rest of the govsec show. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> want to let you know about more live programming coming up at 10:00 her here on c-span2. we will hear from the reason behind the -- and the implications for the program. the social security administration chief actuary stephen goss will be joined by representatives of various interest groups talking about

the issue that is hosted by the national academy of social insurance. that is coming up live at 10 a.m. peace and. ahead of that, fbi director robert mueller, he spoke two weeks ago at a senate hearing about cybersecurity and terrorism. here's some of what he had to say. >> turning to the cyberthreat, this will be an area of particular focus with the fbi in the coming years. as cybercrime cuts across all of our programs. terrorists are increasingly cyber savvy, and like every other multinational organizations that are using the internet to grow their business and to connect with like-minded individuals. they are not hiding in the shadows of cyberspace. al qaeda in the arabian peninsula has produced a full-color, english-language online magazine. al-shabaab and al qaeda affiliate in somalia has its own twitter account. and extremes are not just using the internet for propaganda and recruitment, they are using cyberspace to conduct operatio

operations. and while today terrorists have not used the internet to launch a full-scale cyber attack, we cannot underestimate their intent. one hacker recruiting videotape terrorist who claims that cyber warfare will be the war of the future. many state-sponsored computer hacking and economic espionage which poses significant challenges as well. just as traditional crime has migrated online, so, too, has espionage. possible -- seeker intellectual property at a trade secrets for military and competitive advantage. and the result of this development is that we are losing data and we're losing money. we are losing ideas and we are losing innovation. and as citizens, individually we are increasingly vulnerable to losing our private information. the fbi and the passengers has built a substantial expertise in or to try to stay ahead of these threats, both at home and

abroad. we not cyber squatting of one or 56 field offices with more than 1000 specially trained agents, analysts and forensic specialists. borders and boundaries pose no obstacle for hackers so the fbi uses our 63 legal attaché offices around the world to collaborate with our international partners. we also special agents embedded in romania, estonia, ukraine and the netherlands working to identify emerging trends in key players in the cyber arena. and here the fbi's leads the national task force which brings together 18 law enforcement military and intelligence agencies in order to stop current and to prevent future attacks. the task force operates from threat focus cells, specialist groups of agents, officers and analysts that focus on particular threats such as botnets. and together we're making progress.

just last week the department of justice and the fbi, along with our domestic and foreign partners, announce charges against six hackers who align themselves with a group known as anonymous. and according to the charges they were responsible for a broad range of high profile cyberintrusion starting companies, the media and law enforcement since 2008. in this case was successful because we worked extensively with our overseas partners and we use our traditional investigative and intelligence techniques in the cyber arena. and we must continue to push forward and to enhance our collective capabilities to fight cyber crime, and we do need tougher penalties for cyber criminals to make the cost of doing business more than they are willing to bear. just as we did after september 11, we must continue to break down walls and to share information to succeed in combating this cyberthreat. and just as we do or did with terrorism we must identify and

stop cyber threats before they do harm. it is not enough to build our defenses and to investigate the harm after the fact. spent the house and senate are out this week and next, but activities are still happening on capitol hill. this is the cannon house office building. wary discussion would happen shortly on the reasons behind the increase in applications for social security disability insurance. and the implications for the program and for the economic welfare of the disabled. among the speakers this point, social security chief actuary stephen goss. also interest groups representatives. it's a discussion that is being hosted by the national academy of social insurance and should get underway shortly. [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible conversations]

.. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> getting under way shortly here on capitol hill, a discussion for the reasons behind the increase in recent years of applications for social security disability insurance. the chief actuary of the social security administration, stephen goes, will be leading the discussion. live coverage here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everyone. we're going to get started. good morning. my name is mark miller, i'm a columnist for reuters specializing in coverage of retirement. i write frequently about social security and medicare and other health insurance issues as well as pensions and personal finance. and i'd like to welcome everyone and thank you for joining us this morning for our forum on why are more people claiming disability insurance, and what should be done about it. and a special welcome to our viewers joining us live on c-span this morning, and our thanks to c-span for covering this important issue.

>> [inaudible] >> is that better? sorry about that. could you hear me when i said all that? i'm not going to start over. the forum is sponsored by the national academy of social insurance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization made up of the nation's leading experts on social insurance. the mission is to advance solutions to challenges facing the nation by increasing public understanding of how social insurance contributes to economic security. the social security disability insurance program currently provides income support to more than nine million people with disabilities and their family members, a total of more than $9.5 billion in benefits monthly. the number of people receiving benefits has increased significantly over the years. 6.5 million people received benefits as recently as 2005, and in 1995 the number was only 4.2 million. the disability insurance trust fund is projected to be exhausted in the near future, as

soon as 2016 according to cbo and 2018 according to the 2011 social security trustees report. journalists, researchers and congress have focused a great deal of attention on the growth in the number of ssdi beneficiaries. a number of questions have been raised about the program. does the growth reflect demographic trends and changes, or is the growth due to ssdi program rules and policies? what is the role of the recession in the growth of ssdi? is ssdi becoming the new unemployment insurance? is ssdi fundamentally sound and sustainable in its current form, or does it need changes to insure its long-term viability? can these changes be small, or does long-term solvency require radical change? does s,sdi discourage work? could more be done to encourage people to stay at work when they become disabled, or could more

be done to encourage beneficiaries to return to work after receiving ssdi benefitses? a variety of reforms have been proposed. some propose augmenting ssdi to provide more assistance aimed at keeping people at work or returning to work. others have suggested creating another public disability insurance program which exld be offered to people with a disability but significant capacity to work, requiring employers to purchase private disability insurance to keep workers employed is another idea that's been suggested. other proposals seek to completely change the way that disability benefits are designed and provided. this forum will explore why the number of people receiving ssdi has grown, whether that growth will continue and the implications of the growth for program design. this will include discussion of some proposals for reform and reactions from members of the disability community to the presentations and the proposals. first, we're going the hear from

three outstanding speakers. steve goss, who's the chief actuary of the social security administration, lisa ekman who is senior policy adviser at health and disability advocates, and dave stapleton, director of mathematica policy research. next, we'll hear brief responses to the presentations from marty ford, director of the public policy office at the arc of the united states, and from tony young, senior public policy strategist at nish, and tony is enroute here and will be joining us. the full biographies of the speakers are in your folders along with today's agenda and a counterpoint article on ssdi that was published recently in the journal of policy analysis and management. one side of that debate is argued by virginia reto and lisa ekman, the other side was taken by economist richard burke hauser and mary daley.

and you'll also find a blue evaluation form in your packet, and we would appreciate it if you would fill that out and return it to a nase staff member. and we also encourage you to pick up copies of other resources available at a table outside the meeting room. so to begin, i'd like to turn to steve goss. steve? [applause] >> thanks, mark. thanks, virginia, pam, for setting this up and having the opportunity to come and talk to y'all about social security disability program which i assume everybody in the room and, hopefully, as hearing and seeing this event from elsewhere knows that social security disability program now serves almost nine million disabled worker beneficiaries in our country and another couple million people who are children and spouse dependents of those disabled workers. so it's a big program, it serves a lot of people. there are and what i can really speak to probably most effectively and, hopefully,

usefully is the first of the two questions that are raised today; why more people are claiming or applying for social security benefits. and so let me address that in the context of the projections that we make working for our board of trustees at, in the administration, working with our advisory board and their technical panel and others in developing assumptions and projections into the future of what the cost of social security, the retirement system and the disability system are going to be looking like in the future. well, first of all, let me flip to a slide. got to have a picture. the slide, there are two ways, i think, that we could really address this question of why we had this runup in claims and people applying for disability. what is the near-term cyclic phenomenon which relates to the fact that we have had a recent, pretty significant recession in this country, as you all know. the recession resulted in a lot of people becoming unemployed,

we went up to 10% unemployment rate, and when people become unemployed, they seek a way to continue having income, and people who qualify for our disabled worker benefits, of course, go and apply. so we did have an increase in the number of application cans an increase in the number of people starting to receive benefits. we expressed this in the disabled worker incidence rate. it's really just the number of people newly getting disabled worker benefits divided by the number of people who are insured and could get the benefits if they apply and qualify. you can see at the time of the recession we have a runup in the number of people starting to get benefits as happens, but this is a temporary phenomenon from a cyclic economic downturn, and we are projecting the number of new claimants who become disability beneficiaries while it went up through around 2010 to a peak will be coming back down. and you can see the little red line on here is showing what we were projecting for the number

of people starting to get social security benefits had there not been a recession. well, there was a recession, and that changes everything, and we had a big increase in the number of people coming on the rolls that exceeded what we had. a number of these people will be people who might not have ever filed for disability benefits, they might have been able to retain employment status, other people are people who might have started to get benefits two or three years later as their medical impairment deteriorated further. but this really sort of the first effect we might talk about in terms of the increase in the number of people applying for disability. a longer-term effect speaks to what mark mentioned which is the solvency of the social security program. and the longer-term effect for the solvency of the social security program does depend on this classic relationship between the numbers of beneficiaries and the number of people paying in, what the tax rates are, what the benefit levels are. and solvency for the social security program, we have two different trust funds.

we have the old aging survivors insurance trust fund and separately the disability trust fund. that latter one is the one we're talking about principally today. and on this little chart you can see we're showing what the trust fund ratios are. the trust fund ratio is just the ratio of the amount of money we have in reserve, our trust fund assets, divided by the annual cost of the program. so it's how many years could we pay out of just the reserves that are retained and, of course, we don't have to pay our benefits out of that because we have continuing income come anything all the time. you can see on this projection that for the old age and survivors insurance program in the 2011 trustees report as mark mentioned, we're looking to be good out to about 2038 and for the combined old age and survivors insurance and disability insurance program if we theoretically put the funds together, we would be good until about 2036 for son venn si based on the trustees report. also as mark mentioned, the separate legal entity which we really have to pay attention to

is projected in our 2011 trustees report to become exhausted. the reserves to become exhausted in 2018. now, mark also mentioned the congressional budget office and the president's budget are projecting a somewhat earlier date, and you should understand that since the time of our development of the assumptions and the projections for the 2011 trustees report which was issued last may 13, that's last year, some things happened. we had a runup on inflation early in calendar year 2011. as a result, we ended up having a cost of living adjustment of 3.6% ip -- instead of the 0.7% we had been estimating. the cost of gas went up. we had almost a 3% higher boost to benefit levels for 2012, and that will persist for years into the future because that cola stays with people who received it. at the same time, by the way, in the year 2011 the level of taxable earnings, the earnings that are subject to our payroll

taxes grew by about 1.5% less than we had been projecting. so the combination of a bigger benefit level and a lower earnings level on average resulted in some negative effects for the trust funds. so you can anticipate our upcoming trustees report will probably have a little bit sooner date for trust fund exhaustion for disability than the 2018. the bottom line, though, is that 2018, 2016 cbo, they're both dates that are quite soon, and people who do a lot of work in this building and the next two buildings down are paying a lot of anticipation to this and will surely -- attention to this and will surely make changes. the one thing you might notice on this graph, the little blue line which are for the disabilim in particular, there was a time around 1994 when it was heading down quite sharply before. i know you can see it bounces after 1994, and it starts heading back up. what actually happened at that time was the congress simply enacted something that we refer

to as a payroll tax reallocation. they took the total payroll tax which at the time then and still is a total of 12.4% payroll tax, employers and employees each pay 6.2, that's split between the oesi and di funds. and they simply reallocated more of that to the di fund. and that more equalized the financial prospects into the future and caused the di fund to start going back up again. that's why we've sustained the solvency, and i've got to tell you right after that was enacted in 1994 our next trustees report that came out projected that trust fund exhaustion for the disability insurance fund would be in the year 2016. so it turned out that was a pretty good or lucky guess, take your pick. so we, so this is really -- and this speaks to, let me just mention, this speaks to the solvency as we describe it, as mark mentioned, for these programs. and the reason we describe this as solvency because solvency in the context of the social

security programs really means the ability to pay the scheduled benefits in full in a timely fashion. and in order to do that, we have to have money in the trust funds for one simple reason. by law, the social security trust funds do not have the ability to borrow. much of the rest of the government if it's in need, if it doesn't have the ready cash reserves to pay for things, it can borrow, but the social security trust funds cannot do that by law, so we have to have our trust funds above zero, and that's why went we see the numbers dropping out towards 2036 or even earlier for the di trust fund, that represents a real problem that the congress absolutely has to address. should mention, though, that for the di fund under our projections as of the year 2018 assuming nothing were done and we reached trust fund exhaustion, we would still have enough continuing income coming in from taxes that are scheduled in the law at that time to pay fully 86% of the scheduled benefits. so it's not as though the trust fund goes out of business, and we don't have anymore benefit payments, but we would be 14%

short of the funds necessary to pay the full scheduled benefits at a timely basis. so if we can go to our next slide, this gives a little bit different look. rather than looking at the trust funds and seeing how they look relative to solvency, this next slide gives you a look at what the cost of the oasi and d.i., the two social security programs look like as a percent of gross domestic product. gross domestic product, fancy word, but it's just the total value of all the goods and services that we produce on our shores in this country. and that represents the ultimate basis for providing everything that we all consume from day-to-day including everything that our beneficiaries consume and receive in the form of their benefits. you can see when you look at this, the lines for the oasi, old age and survivors insurance program and trust fund, and for the combined old age survivors insurance and disability insurance that the cost has a percentage of gdp -- which are what these lines represent --

has been pretty constant. ever since 1975 it's been about 4%. over the next 20 years it's going to be ramping up what we call a level shift, it's shifting to a higher level and then stabilizing, and the reason has been discussed much, the fact that we had a drop in the birthrates, the baby boom will retire, be followed by smaller birthrate generations that we expect to persist in the future, so we have a fundamental shift in the age distribution of our population. while this will be happening over the next 20 years, for our retirement program you can sort of see in a subtle way on this for the disability insurance program it's really already happened. and if we flip to the next slide, you get a better look at it. this slide shows you the fact that the cost of disability insurance has already risen from 1975 to 2010. you can see the cost of the program which is the blue line

has been rising and rising pretty dramatically. you can see the bump right around where we are in history now. of course, that's because of the recession. but there's been a general rise up in the cost of the program as a percentage of gdp, and we project that's going to be, essentially, stabilizing, maybe even declining ever so slightly going into the future. so the question, of course, for us when we're making our projections is why has this happened, and what should we believe will be happening in the future? for that we look and our ways and means committee, subcommittee staff a while back asked for a hearing back in december to address this issue and to look at what the drivers of social security disability costs really are. so in regard to that, we looked at it, and one of the first things, of course, one of the first things that comes up is the number of workers we have for each beneficiary. and back when the baby boomers were in the prime working ages, we had a lot of workers for every beneficiary, and that made the cost as a percentage of gdp, cost as a percentage of our

taxable payroll relatively low. but you can see how we are now moving across time into a position of having a much lore ratio of workers -- lower ratio of workers per beneficiary. and this is happening and has happened precisely as the baby boomers have moved from where they were 20 years ago, ages 25-44 which are ages at which there's not a lot of disability, but people do work. to ages 45-64 which is where the baby boomers are essentially now or in 2010 and 2011. those are ages which are prime ages for people receiving disability benefits. so let me flip to what we refer to as sort of our first cost of social security disability and beyond those demographic factors, just the aging of the baby boom and being replaced by smaller generations coming behind. the first one of these drivers is just being insured. being a person of an age where you could receive disability

benefits isn't enough to get benefits from our program, you have to actually be insured. there's certain work requirements. and you can see here the percentage of the population, male and female, that is disability insured has been rather constant for men, up around 75%. we project that to stay in the future, but over the last 25 or 30 years the percentage of women who are disability insured has risen quite dramatically. and the reason for that is because there are certain work requirements, years of work requirements, and there's a recent requirement, you have to have worked essentially five out of the past ten years, and in the past when they got into their 40s and 50s, many of them did not satisfy that work requirement. we have move today a point where women are, essentially, at parity with men in terms of satisfying this requirement, so we've gradually moved up to women being about as much insured, and we project that will continue into the future. the other real driver of disability costs is given that you're insured, what's the probability you're actually

going to become disabled, file for benefits and get the benefits allowed for you? and we can see the blue line here is males, and it bounces around a lot for lots of reasons. but you can see it's sort of stay anything there, a little bit over five per thousand on the males. females, however, if we go back to around the 1990 period, it's been rising quite dramatically. female disability incidents rates, that is the likelihood of becoming disabled given you're insured, used to be on the order of half or a little bit more than half of what male disability incident rates were, but they also, like the insured rates, have moved up to essential parity with men over time. both of these factors are ones where women have moved up to parity with men. we don't expect a crossover, so basically, this change has occurred, has played out. we don't expect further changes. this is a slide you might want to look at later, won't take the time to go through it now.

this is essentially a slide showing the ups and downs of our disability costs and some of the reasons for it. recessions, like the most recent one, obviously, have a lot to do with this, but there have been a number of changes in the nature of how we define disability. going a little bit further on these drivers, so the effect of these drivers has resulted in our having disability prevalence rates which is the percentage of people who are insured that are actually receiving disability benefits. and our disability prevalence rates have been rising for males and females over the last 20 years, and you'll not be surprised to see we're projecting them to be fairly flat in the future. because the drivers we've been talking about, the aging of the baby boom, increasing insured status of females, increasing incident rates for females have all really happened already. but you can see for the males, though, where most of these have not really been operating. they're, the male prevalence rates have been rising too. and that brings us to one more

driver that i'd like to put up here to show you. one other thing that has been happening in our disability program is that there's been a shift in our disability incidents towards a higher extent of disability incidence at younger ages. it use bed to be it was mainly people 50 and older. we've had somewhat of an increase at the number of people at younger ages, and this slide shows you back in 1980 for both men and women, the probability of becoming disabled was only about one-fifth, only 20% as large for people at ages 25-44 as compared to the incidence rate for people at ages 45-64. it was much, much lower. but by 2010, and we project it's going to stay in the future, that ratio has really changed. now people at age 25-44 instead of only one-fifth are a little closer to one-third as likely, and that's a pretty big change. the shift towards more of our people at younger ages, of

course, means they'll tend to be receiving benefits for a longer period of time assuming that they don't recover. and let me just flip to one last little slide. i'll skip over a couple that we have here, but the one last little slide i'd like to just show you is the history and what our projections are for once people start to receive disability benefits, they stop receiving disability benefits, of course, if they reach retirement age. they are transferred over to retirement status. but our disabled workers like everybody else have a chance of dying, but they also have a chance of recovering. and the recovery rate has been around 1% of people of our disability rolls, and we project it will stay at that level. so since i am out of time, i will just completely conclude with reputing went slide that -- repeating one slide that you've already seen showing us our projections that while we've had a rather dramatic rise in the cost of the disability insurance program over the last 20 years, we believe that the components of that increase have basically

completed themselves, and we expect the cost as a percentage of gdp to be pretty stable into the future. the extent to which changes are necessary, we think, should be looked at in that light. so let me stop there and pass the torch. >> thank you, steve. and next we'll hear from lisa ekman of health and disability advocates. lisa? >> good morning. thank you, mark. thank you, steve, for that great presentation. i'm going to, um, start off by talking a little bit about the importance of the social security disability insurance program to people with disabilities. it is vitally important. it provides critical income support, um, for many people with disabilities and their families. in fact, it lifts many people out of poverty. um, almost half of ssdi beneficiaries rely on these critical income benefits for more than 90% of their total

income. it is the one thing that keeps many people with disabilities from leading lives of abject poverty and homelessness. and i want to share just a couple of very brief stories of some people who receive social security disability insurance benefits where in both cases it did actually prevent them from being homeless. the first is a man named henry, and he, um, was in his 50s. he had severe cardiac problems, had worked in the insurance industry for a very long time, paid into the social security system and earned his disability benefits until the point at which his heart condition made it no longer healthy for him to work. he applied for benefits, or he stopped working and didn't apply for benefits right away, tried to make a go of it without them. went through his 401(k), all of his savings, became homeless and lived in his car for almost a year before he finally took the step to apply for benefits. and he was able to after being quickly approved get an

apartment, and his ssdi benefits allowed him to continue to have a home after that. another story is a woman named angelise, and she had type i diabetes that she developed as a teenager. and she worked for many years, and eventually she became ill with diabetes-related complications. she actually continued to work when she probably should have stopped working to take care of herself and ended up being hospitalized. while she was in the hospital, she applied for social security disability benefits, and, um, was approved for them. in the meantime, she didn't have the kind of savings to rely on that henry did, and she had to get help, actually, from a charity to help her keep her apartment. they paid her rent for her for a couple of months until her benefits did get approved, and then she was able to use her social security disability insurance benefits to help pay for her rent. so the importance of these benefits to people with disabilities and their families cannot be overstated.

but why have the rolls grown? and i think steve did a, steve goss did great job laying this out, but i just want to go over a little bit of a recap, um, for you. um, more women qualifying for benefits has led to a big increase, the baby boomers entering that high disability years, the increase in the normal retirement age is something that, um, steve didn't actually mention. but as you all know, the retirement age is going up from 65, it's now 66 for people retiring for people born after 1960, it will be 67. and the way disability benefits work is you get them until you reach your normal retirement age. so for every month that the retirement age goes up, that's another month that benefits come out of the disability trust fund instead of the retirement trust fund. and in 2009 approximately 300,000 people received benefits from the disability trust fund that under previous law would have received benefits from the

retirement trust fund. so that does, also, contribute to the increase in cost and the growth in the numbers of people receiving, um, disability benefits. as steve said, we really hit the top of the increase. it's going to level off, and then we'll go down. but there are other factors that do contribute as well. and as steve also mentioned, the economy is one of them. we expect applications and beneficiaries to increase during times of economic downturns, and steve showed you that chart, and you can track when there are recessions. we do see an increase in the number of applications and people who get approved. employers are less likely to hire and more likely to fire people during times of a weak economy. when, when there are a surplus of workers applying for every job, there's a huge focus also on productivity. and when there are perceived concerns over productivity --

although all of the research and data show that people with disabilities are no less productive than their nondisabled peers -- there still remains a perception among employers and fear among employers. and so when times are tough, it's even less likely that people with disabilities will get hired. and if they have to let someone go, some of those perceptions around, um, the productivity of people with disabilities can lead them to be the first let go. and it's harder to find a job if you're laid off if you're a person with a disability, and that's especially true if you're an older worker with a disability because now you have two potential things that an employer might consider when they're looking at a huge pool of print applicants about who to place in the job that they might look at and view negatively even though they shouldn't. the perceptions are enough to make employers make different choices. there are a couple other reasons i just want to highlight why the rolls have grown over the past couple decades. in the past decade, past couple

decades we have seen a decline in the number of people with health insurance coverage. a decline in employers offering health insurance coverage to workers. if you're a person with a disability, having health insurance coverage is not an option, it is life or death situation. you need to be able to get your treatments, you need to be able to afford your prescription medication, and if you can't get health insurance through a job, people get health insurance through applying for ssdi. they also get access to medicare. so that's an easy choice. if my choice is death or applying for ssdi benefits, i'm going to apply to get ssdi benefits. there is also a less forgiving workplace, the emphasis on global competition and being competitive and, again, the productivity concerns, perceived productivity concerns that i discussed just a few moments ago make the workplace less forgiving and people, um, it is harder for people who are receiving ssdi benefits to

compete in that less-forgiving workplace. and most of it, as i said, is based on misperceptions, but whether the perception is true or not, if perception means you don't get hired, it means you don't get a job. the americans with disabilities act has done a really fantastic job in helping people with disabilities get the reasonable accommodations they need and be able to sue when they are fired for disability discrimination. it is also available for discrimination in hiring, but unfortunately, it is extremely hard to prove, um, in terms of discrimination in hiring especially if you have a thousand applications for a particular job. it's really hard to prove that. so there is still discrimination in hiring, and it has not been eliminated by the americans with disabilities act. and to a much lesser extent but still to some extent, there are other programs that require people to apply for social security disability benefits. there are a handful of worker's

comp programs that require you to apply for ssdi, and then they offset your worker's compensation benefit amount based on the receipt of disability benefits, and the same is true for private disability insurance that, um, many policies will require someone receiving private disability insurance benefits to also apply for ssdi, and many of them do have the same kind of offsets. so what does this increase mean for the future? um, as, as steve pointed out, it is leveling off. it's not expected to continue into the future. and it does not mean that the program is not affordable or not sustainable. sustainability and affordability are both a matter of priorities. in poll after poll, americans say that they would rather see their taxes for social security go up than to see any benefit cuts, and they support doing that. as steve also mentioned, we can

solve this by just reallocating some of the current taxes in the retirement, that go into the retirement trust fund into the disability fund as we have, um, done in the past. obviously, the political situation today is a little different than in 1994, but that's a matter of political will. it is not a matter of it being hard to do. i want to just go over, um, a few beneficiary characteristics, and that is that people who receive benefits are very diverse. you can see the list of different types of disabilities that people have. and so they, some are terminal as steve discussed, and some have very debilitating, um, disabilities. so when we think about reforming social security disability, we have to think, we have to keep in mind this is not a homogeneous group and what works for one person isn't going to work for another person. every individual is different, and their situation is different, their condition is

different, the likely track that their condition will take even if they have the same condition is different. it's an individual situation, and we have to keep that in mind. um, as i mentioned, some beneficiaries are terminally ill, about one in five male beneficiaries and one in seven female beneficiaries die within five years of beginning to get benefits. they tend to be older. in, um, 2010 the average age was 53. seven in ten beneficiaries are over the age of 50, and nearly three in ten are over the age of 60. and many have low educational asustainment. two-thirds have a high school diploma or less and almost a third did not complete high school. so when we think about, um, trying to find work for folks in this changing technology-based, skill-based economy, we have to keep in mind what the characteristics of the people receiving benefits are. so can a significant percentage work and become self-supporting?

excuse me. ssdi beneficiaries should be given every service, support and encouragement to go to work. but as i've just gone through a lot of the reasons why, it is unlikely that a large percentage have the capacity for ongoing work at a significant level. and ssdi does not present a disincentive to work. the benefits are modest, it's an average of $1,110 per month for, in february of 2012. that is, um, more than 10% less than a person working full time at minimum wage. so it is a modest benefit. does it need reform? ssdi is functioning as it should. it's providing vital wage replacement to millions of people with disabilities and their families who need it. more must be done to help people with disabilities stay at work if they acquire a disability, and more should be done to provide supports and service toss ssdi beneficiaries with work capacity to maintain

employment. but that is not the role of an income support program, it's not the role of ssdi, nor should it be. but we should do everything that we can to help people with disabilities work. the employment situation for them is not good, and we should do more. but that is not the role of an income support program that people pay into and earn a benefit through. i want to end with some principles for reform that if we think about reform, we ought to really think about these as we evaluate from the perspective of people with disabilities as we evaluate the reform proposals. any reform should preserve the structure of ssdi program including the deaf nation of disability. it's appropriate, it's a wage replacement program for people who don't have work capacity. so the definition and the structure of the program are appropriate for that function. efforts to increase employment opportunities and improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities receiving ssdi

should not be achieved through tightening eligibility criteria, narrowing health care benefits, removing the entitlement benefits or devolving responsibility to the states. ssdi benefit receipt should not be time-limited. we can't predict the course of a person's disability, and so that is what governs whether or not a person can work is what their health condition is. and there's no time limit on that, and we can't predict it, so we shouldn't try to put limits on benefits. and work activities and work preparation activities should be voluntary for ssdi beneficiaries. um, a person, their family and their health care providers are in the best position to decide whether or not a work attempt is a healthy thing to do for a person with a disability. not any other arbitrary work limit or work requirement that we would set for them. and we should give the social security administration adequate resources to perform all of the program integrity functions

before we begin reform. we should allow them to have enough resources to complete disability determinations in a timely manner, do continuing disability reviews to insure that people have, continue to have a disability so that the people who have receiving benefits are entitled to them, and we should, um, provide them with adequate staffing resources to prevent overpayments to people who do try to work because that is a huge disincentive to people. i have a couple more slides talking about the specific reforms, and, um, but i encourage you to take a look at them. i have run out of time, but just want to close by reiterating how important the ssdi program is to people with disabilities. as we think about any type of reforms, we have to remember that these benefits represent the difference between being poor and homeless and being able to live ingetly in the community -- independently in the community for millions of people with disabilities and their families. thank you. >> thanks much, lisa.

[applause] and next we will turn to dave stapleton of mathematica policy research. >> thank you. and thanks to nasi for setting this up, and i'm glad to see a great crowd here. this is terrific. so so far we've heard from steve about the financing and the history of the ssdi program which, i think, is the issue that's really bringing us here. and that, you know, things look a little better in the future than they have in the past. and i agree with that. we've also heard from lisa that ssdi program is extremely important for people who are beneficiaries, and i would agree with that as well. but i have fundamental disagreements with lisa on the issue of the structure of the program, and it's not just the ssdi program alone, but it needs to be seen in the context of the larger disability policy

picture. so what -- i'm not going to focus on ssdi. i will talk about it, but i'm going to talk about while i think that the social security -- i'm sorry, the disability policy in general is failing people with disabilities, and it's also failing taxpayers, and is i'm going to brush over fairly quickly a number of ideas for reform. there's just not enough time to look at all of them. but then i'm also going to close by saying, you know, we're really not ready for reform, and we need to do things in a measured way to move the ball forward so that we can be ready for retomorrow -- reform. the -- let's see. okay. a lot of my remarks are based on a paper that i wrote with david mann who's sitting here in the third row, and there's also an issue brief which you may have picked up on the way in, it was on the table there. and the research was sponsored by the national institute for disability rehabilitation research, so i have to give them credit, but you're not allowed

to give them blame, so -- so current policies are failing people with disabilities. i think exhibit number one is this chart which has been around and keeps getting updated for many years that looks at the relative employment rate for people with disabilities, the working age population with disabilities relative to those without disabilities, their peers. and it goes back to 1981, the first year we have data. and what you can see is there's been a really steady decline in the relative employment rate that started in the late 1990s where it peaked in 1988 at about 38% and now is down to about 22% in 2010. okay? and, um, along with that relative decline has been the decline in the relative household incomes of people with disabilities, and here the situation's a little better and income support plays a very big part in why it's better. but there has been a decline

from a peak of about 64% to about 52% today. so the other really important set of information about how current policies are failing people with disabilities concerns poverty rates for people with disabilities. so my colleague, gina liverpool, did a recent study looking at the long -- people who are in long-term poverty. so that's people whose household incomes are below the federal poverty line for at least three years in a row out of four. and they found that 65% of those people who are in long-term poverty have a significant disability of some sort. we've also done work and, again, gina livermore's been doing this, using social security, a survey we did for social security of their beneficiary population. and we found in that survey, and this was from, i believe, 2005 or -- yeah, 2005, that 50% of all ssdi and ssi recipients

combined, working-age recipients, lived in households whose incomes were below the poverty line. and now if we just look to ssi, it's 70%. ssdi only, those just on ssdi, it's more like 30%. but that's a very high poverty rate relative to the overall population. there's also been a body of research that's not on this slide about the hardships that people with disabilities who live in impoverished households experience. they experience hardships such as not going out, going without food, not being able to get medicine they need much more frequently than people without disabilities who live in poverty, you know, with the same level of income. so i think going back i think this is enough of a reason to consider disability policy broadly and whether or not it needs restructuring. but the thing that's really rising interest in disability

policy isn't these factors, which i think they should be. they've been around for a long time, and we've known about them for a long time. but it's the fiscal situation. it's the perception that current policies are failing taxpayers. and so now we're going to look at the ssdi program quickly, and these numbers are going to be consistent with what steve told you earlier. this chart just shows you the number of beneficiaries on the rolls, the working-age population on ssdi starting with the 1970 rate through 2010. and i want to focus attention for a minute on 1980 and the period after 1980. so 1980 and '81 was the last time that both congress and the administration were so concerned about growth and expenditures for this program, the number of people on the rolls, that there were significant cuts in eligibility. and you can see that after 1980 there was actually a significant drop in the number of people on the rolls. this happened during the worst recession that we had had since the great depression up to that point, and it's still the worst recession except for the recent

one. and after that there was such a political backlash that congress in 1984 enacted amendments to the social security act which, basically, reversed what had happened earlier in the decade. and some people would say it more than reversed. it's very difficult to determine, but the growth in the rolls was pretty moderate after that period. but we had a pretty strong economy up until 1990. and what you can see is starting in 1990 there's this acceleration of growth in the number of people on the rolls. and that growth has continued pretty solidly ever since then, for the last three decades. now, of course, as steve explained, a lot of that growth has to do with growth in the number of people who are disability insured, especially among women, and it also has to do with the aging of the baby boom population. my generation. and so we're, you know, we're more prone to disability than we

were when we were younger, unfortunately. but we did some calculations to show you what the effects of those factors are. so that's what this red line is showing you. and we anchored this red line in 1980. so what it shows you is how the number of people on the rolls would have grown if, if prevalence rates for those who are disability-insured, qualified for the program, the prevalence of those actually on the program within the age-sex categories stayed the same as what they were in 198 o. and what you can see here is there would have been overall growth, and it would have been substantial in the next three decades, but not nearly as large as we have seen the growth be since the early 1990s. and, in fact, the difference between the values in 2010 is 28% or 2.2 million beneficiaries. so if we rolled back the clock to the prevalence rates for 18980s -- 1980, we'd have 2.2

million people less on the rolls. that accounts to $50 billion if you count both the ssdi and the medicare benefits these people are eligible for. so that's a big number. but it turns out the medicare and ssdi benefits received by beneficiaries is less than half of what the federal government spends for people with disabilities currently. and these numbers are from a paper that gina livermore and i did that was published last year where we tried to do an accounting of all the money that the federal government spends to support the working-age population with disabilities. and i won't go into -- don't have time to look at the details, but the bottom line for fiscal year 2008 which is the last year we had complete data for was $357 billion. and that was growth after inflation adjusted of 30.6%

since we did the exercise for fiscal year 2002 as well. so just over a six-year period. the total amounts to 12% of all federal outlays in that year. the ssdi and medicare piece is only a little over 5%. so along with those programs, we have medicaid, we have ssi, of course, we have veterans' benefits that are a large and growing number, but there are also lots of other little programs that contribute to these totals. so, so i think that this, the fiscal issue, the overall fiscal issue with the federal budget is going to drive attention to these programs because they represent such a large share when you look at them together of all federal outlays, and be it's going to be very difficult to protect these programs in the way they are. and that's probably going to drive more than the issues that i raised first, the policy debate about what we should do with disability policy.

now, in the past, we've tried a lot of incremental things to improve employment specifically for people with disabilities, and the evidence shows that they have not been successful. there was the ada, the americans with disabilities act of 1990, the rehab act which is now part of the work force investment act. there have been important reforms with that, individuals with disabilities education act, and then the 1999 ticket to work and work incentives improvement act can which had a number of different provisions specifically for ssdi and ssi to increase employment. and, you know, if you look at the numbers, they just haven't paid off in the way that we expect -- we hoped that they would and some of us expected it would. so why is that the case? well, there are lots of very specific reasons, but i think there are a couple fundamental problems. one is that we're layering complexity on top of complexity. i think everybody will agree that current programs for people with disabilities are enormously complex. we worked on the ticket the work

evaluation, and, you know, the ticket concept is very simple. but when you overlay it over these very complicated programs, it became very difficult for the social security administration to administer. and the other thing is that we still are stuck with what we call a benefits-first, work later approach. in order to get most benefits supported by the federal government, you have to get on ssi or ssdi first. and that sort of drives everybody towards those as the programs for first support when they run into trouble. such as in a recent recession. so there have been many proposals for reforms. a number of them concern what are called early intervention for workers. on this slide, um, the social security advisory board as early as 1996 wrote a reform about pursuing these ideas. more specific proposals, the work insurance program that's called being american was brian mcdonald and people on the west coast. it's a public program, it's a

new social insurance program to insure that people can stay at work. very recently david otter and mark duggan proposed private disability insurance paid partly by employers, partly by individuals, but it would be required, and the idea is to give the employers and the individuals more of a stake in staying in the labor force. mr. burke hauser and mary daley have been proponents of doing experience rating with the disability share of the social security -- of the trust -- i'm sorry, of the payroll taxes which, you know, most other social insurances are experience rated. not medicare, but certainly unemployment insurance and worker's compensation. we've talked more about more fundamental reforms, and i think there are a lot of people that would say those early intervention approaches, they are interesting and probably should be looked at more, but they're not going to be enough to really reverse the trends

that we see historically for the well being of people with disabilities. so david mann and i have looked at some of these. addressing work disincentives more comprehensively, one idea is to replace the inability to work criterion for social security benefits with a work capacity approach to determining eligibility. so you work at the work capacity of the individual first, and it's only when it's clear that you can't tap into that capacity, help the person be more self-sufficient, that you give them the long-term benefits. the idea of changing the compensation principle from wage replacement to the extra cost of disability is one that has some place in europe already. we've never done that in the united states, but it is an interesting idea. there's been a lot of interest from the general accountability, government accountability office, and we picked up on this in mann and stapleton about integrating or consolidating programs. one of the fundamental problems is the fact that programs are so fragmented. there's also the idea of

devolving more responsibility to states or localities. i think there's a lot of people who are very worried about that because they don't trust state governments to do the right thing, and they think of the pre-ssi, the federal ssi days. that's something that's been proposed by rich burkehauser and mary daley. we've always taken a look at this, and we think it's important to consider other options than devolving to the states. but it just seems incredibly important since local people are going to be delivering service to people with disabilities that you give them some flexibility as well as responsibility to, to administer benefits, but also have a very strong oversight capacity. but i think one thing we can all agree on is that all of the structural changes proposed, they're not ready to go. we don't know, we can't roll them out the way they are now. it would be incredibly irresponsible to do that. they could end up costing more than our current programs, but more problemmatically, they

could really harm people with disabilities because we just don't know enough about what we're doing. what we think we need is a long-term program, at least ten years, to start pursuing some of these ideas, try to build the evidence base, build the political consensus and develop policy reforms. that requires an enormous amount of demonstration work and research work. it's got to be collaborative. there's many federal agencies that have to be involved as well as state and local agencies and private organizations as well. and in order to do that, you really need legislation that would promote that. so just to close, it seems to me that we really have sort of two viable options, and one is we can continue with the current programs the way they are. but given the country's fiscal situation, i think that that means trimming eligibility and benefits in the decades moving forward. we can probably eke small efficiency gains out of the individual programs, but i think the bottom line is going to be

further deterioration in the economic security of people with disabilities. the alternative is to let's launch a long-term structural reform process where we do the groundwork to build the evidence base so that we can move forward, and maybe that would buy us a little more time to try to preserve the existing programs. thank you very much. [applause] >> thanks, dave. next, we are going to hear two brief responses to the presentations, and following that, we'll be moving into q&a, so we've structured the morning to have plenty of time for your questions and for a conversation with our panel. so be thinking about your questions. our first response will come from marty ford, director of the public policy office at the arc of the united states. marty? >> thank you very much. i'm pleased to be here today, and i'll move quickly, because i know we have a certain amount of time. i did find steve goss' information very helpful in

describing exactly what is happening in the programs, and i want to say that i agree with lisa ekman's principles on reform. i thought they were very useful and absolutely on target. i do want to comment a little bit on david stapleton's proposal. i'm sure you're not surprised, david. and go into a little bit of what was not covered in the slides, but in more detail in his written proposal. david has actually proposed that there be a program that includes a disability allowance, that as i read it would be a bit less than what is currently an income benefit under current law. and my question is, since the benefits under current law are already so low, what in the world are beneficiaries intended to live on? how are they going to cover their basic income needs for food and shelter?

it's also -- the program also seems to call for reducing these benefits and spending them in another way, not necessarily for food and shelter. and serving more people in the same program. and i have very, very serious concerns about what this means. um, the proposal does not seem to guarantee health insurance except for people in one category out of three categories. it's very unclear where the money would come from for the other folks to purchase their own insurance on the open market. and when you're talking about people who are already very financially vulnerable and there are questions of affordability, i think that's a big issue. one of the proposals is that there would be a group of people who are deemed to be, deemed to have low work capacity, and from my perspective i think this would be limiting and labeling people in a way that is not productive. i think many people do try to

work, and i think the ssi program shows us that even with limited work history and what many people might think of as low work capacity, people do attempt to work, and they are successful at it. and in supplementing their benefits. and i would not want to see something that would discourage that or in some way prevent people from trying to improve the, um, the situation that they are in. ..

but i want to take this opportunity to make a few comments of my own. i think it's important to remember that the basic purpose of ssi and ssdi's income support for those were expecting significant limitations in their ability to work due to disability. the intention is to replace income to provide food and shelter. it may be temporary. it may be permanent. the program, particularly work incentives, have evolved over time, as congress has attempted to address its own evolving understanding of disability and the nature of work and support. and people who depend on these programs are in a very financially vulnerable situation. they need the cash support. they need health care. they cannot necessarily handle major swings in policy decisions, or in cash flow, or health care eligibility. on the other hand, attempt to improve the program, congress

has been faced with issues of cost estimates. this is a huge program. every time there's a new and great idea, and believe me, i think we propose lots of great ideas, the changes have had to be incremental because the cost of addressing any of the pieces of the program are so huge. unintended consequences are that things just cannot be done in a big way. at often we end up with layered complexity, and that i do agree with you, david, there are layers complexities in the program. we did attempt, when the section 1619 program was made permanent in the ssi program we did attempt to have that added to the title ii program, and we were not able to defend. and the days of working on the early part of the senator

jeffords bill actually, in his version of what became a ticket to work ago, there were provisions in their to do that. it ended up being a demonstration program, and also the medicare eligibility permanent medicare eligibility was part of that. it is time to look at that again. and effect and the president's budget for this year it is a request to look at the proposal for work incentives simplification pilot. and that would include some of those elements of continued attachment to medicare and simplification of the on and off and the removal of the penalties, and ultimately to join up again with a two for one offset that is currently being tested. these things have worked in the ssi program. we need to see work in the title ii program. we know that they work. they are incremental, and people

with disabilities have been asking for them for now decades, and i believe it is time to see these things be put into operation. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, marty. i know we'll hear from tony young who senior public policy strategist at nish which is a large national community based organization doing advocacy on behalf of disabled individuals. tony? >> good morning. thank you for this opportunity to speak you this morning about -- [inaudible]

which is to say numbers don't always survive. human beings try to maximize their potential. for some people, eminence trying to be the ceo of ibm. for other people it means just getting by, complex medical conditions, keeping her family together, keeping her house our roof over your head. and daily activities of that sort. even the gao in their research

has found that people with disabilities face multiple barriers to employment. including a lack of education, lack of skills, lack of training, barriers at the workplace, no reasonable accommodations. and, of course, discrimination which we have heard about before. i want to go give two quick examples of how this works. first example, we have a person with serval palsy who has a speech impairment, uses a wheelchair, and a speech board. has advanced degree in economics. if that person were to be, were to lose either the wheelchair or the speech board or wasn't

available to an opportune to get that advanced degree, they won't be able to work. that's the thin line. the second person, a person who is a quadriplegic, c-4 level, uses a powered wheelchair which probably cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000, uses an adaptive band, which will cost about 22000, bass, and another 10 or 15,000 for accommodations. uses personal services at the workplace and at home, which will throw an additional 15 or $20,000 annually into the cost. and you can see that if any of those tools or supports are withdrawn am the person is not going to be able to work. and is going to be, in fact, on

the disability rolls. until that could be rectified. david stapleton has proposed major structural reforms, including comprehensive disincentives reforms, program consolidation and more state control. i'm going to concede the point that the system must improve to facilitate work. but i want to put out to basic principles of my own, and i think they are pretty widely shared by the disability community. first principle being that reform begins with do no harm. we don't want anyone to be more disadvantaged after reforms than they were before reforms

started. secondly, the disability community point of view is that it's not too easy to get on ssdi. it's too hard to exit from ssdi. as marty said, that this bill the community itself has been very active over the last 20 or 30 years in trying to make changes to help people go to work to get the support they need, the training, the education. so the question is, which problem with we tried to solve right now? we see that there are conflicting confusions can be drawn from the data. when i looked at it i was not able to physically tell if the di rolls were growing, or if they would be stable in the future. that's an important question. another question, should are

incremental ideas that were previously not adopted be tried again? should he be expected that systemic change succeed now, when it didn't succeed before? and is a possible to impose new taxes on employers and employees in order to find the ideas that are being floated? these ideas, especially the ones addressed at disincentives reform, i think arthur way to go. incremental i believe is the way to go simply because we're not going to be able to convince the congress that massive changes are appropriate at this time.

again, if the economy turns around, certainly that will help, but without these incremental changes, especially to the work incentives, the problem is not going to be resolved. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, tony. we are going to open the floor for q&a. and since the session is live on c-span and being recorded, it's going to be important that you find your way to one of the microphones around the room so we can be sure to capture your questions, and also please introduce yourself. before asking your question. and so i guess, to as i say not when i did when i forgot to turn the microphone on at the beginning of the session. while you're finding your way to the microphone, i will kick off with a first question. to stephen anyone else, they succumb you touched on this,

certainly one effect of the recession and joblessness has been a dramatic increase in the number of older americans without health insurance you are too young for medicare. the commonwealth fund reports that there are 9 million people age 50-64 now who are uninsured in 2010, and that's a figure that is up from 5.3 million as recently as 2002. so my question is, is it possible to form, to find the link, and what is the cause and effect relationship of that rise in general lack of coverage in health insurance, and the rise and disability insurance applications? can one actually quantify that or not? and then a second sort of follow peace to the question is, with the affordable care act now up in the air, that's one of the most important things to a see a certain going to do is get many of those people covered again.

so i'm wondering what the panel's thoughts are. steve, maybe it's our from another's perspective as to what is the relationship look like on health insurance for older americans? >> i guess it's a really good question, as you well point out a very complicated one. we do, of course have, if someone has health coverage in their employment and daily their employment, that they get a 24 month continuation, but they have to pay the whole bill. most people have lost their job, that's difficult for people to do. one of the issues with the nature of our social security disability insurance program is you lose your job, you do have impairment, you imply that you apply for benefits, you get the benefits, you not only have a five month waiting period, he had an additional 24 months beyond that before the medicare benefits start to coming. so clearly these contribute towards a lack of insured status. many people have looked at, among other possibilities, to

help improve our prospects from the cost of social security disability, but more importantly to improve the prospects for people who come to have impairment that makes it difficult to work, not only as dave mentioned, and others, to try to find more effective ways to help people have greater work opportunity, but also to provide additional assistance to people before starting to receive disability and if it's in terms of having access to health care that might maintain them in better health status. preventive care. the affordable care act that you mention obviously will have big effects. the affordable care act, on the one hand, will provide people with that adequate care much more gently than we have now. and that may result in fewer people filing for disability benefits if they maintain their health status and better condition but on the other hand, it would also remove the sort of disincentives that we have now

of having to wait 24 additional months to get medicare. people would have greater access to health care benefits. so which way that plays out exactly, it's not clear. >> at the comments on that? marty spent i would just say that i don't know who contracted are with you can try to come but we do know anecdotally that people do delay getting health care because they don't have the funds to go to the doctor, or get health coverage when they need it. you know, their health conditions exacerbate to the point where they are more costly when they do finally show up. at a physician's office at the emergency room or a hospital. even when the affordable care act goes into effect, people will need to have the ability to pay for health coverage. they will have to be able to pay

for the plants if they're not on medicaid. so it's still an issue to being able to have the funding to pay for. i think that the whole issue of the two year plus five month waiting period is a big issue, and hopefully will be addressed so people may not need to consider medicare your and that would be a tremendous, you know, step ahead. but there are still issues out there, and health care will not be totally eliminated as an issue for people to consider in terms of their pocketbooks. >> under aca to have half of this age group that would be covered under medicaid under the expansion of medicaid which is very dramatic and the rest would be shopping in the exchanges with various levels of subsidy for their premiums. >> right. >> let's turn to the floor. to read anybody with a question yet? >> if i could just also just add

to what marty sent. one of the things, the importance of health care for people with disabilities can't be understated. can't be overstated. i think that when the ticket to work legislation was passed, congress created an option for states to enact something called a medicaid buy-in program which would allow working people with disabilities to purchase medicaid so that they could get affordable health care that really provides all the services and support they need to continue working. and most states have taken up that option, but they allow for different levels of earnings, and some still a pretty strict resource test. so i would say that as a country really want to address the health care situation for working people with disabilities, we should support a national medicaid buy-in without a resource limit, similar to what the qualifications now for the medicaid expansion, that would

allow people with disabilities to work, to save, to be independent in the community and never risked losing their attachment to that vital health care and services and support that allow them to live in the community in the first place. >> so those by its utter of the state by state level? >> some have rather generous income limits and resource limits. some have rather strict income and resource limits. but reverse of how much you earn or save a person with a disability cannot self finance the services and support that they need to living independently in the commend you. so the best way to ensure that that happens is to create a program that allows people to buy medicaid regardless of whether income a resource is to allow them to have uninterrupted access to the services and supports they need. >> thank you. let's go to the floor for some question. we will start right back here. >> thank you that presented as yourself.

>> im working at the army institute. and i have a question to the panelists, the public office event was why has the number of people in di increased and what can we do about it. we heard a lot about the first question, a lot about that. and then people talked a lot about reform, but i think what was missing in this whole debate was the kind of notion that because we have this increase, and i was encouraged to see from you -- [inaudible] is this good or bad? one stance it is good. we ensure much more people. it's very important we see that poverty rates are high for people. we provide very important income benefits. the counter point is this is bad, that we have program that is expanding and we need to shrink it. then the third measure you hear

is, maybe, is it's just not related. we have to think about reform independent of the size of this program. thank you. >> sorry, this gets back to the beginning of my talk. it seems to me that the real reasons to consider reform are not the fiscal issue and the number of people on their own. it's the economic status, the decline an opponent. issues harder and harder for people with disabilities to be self-sufficient or even partly self-sufficient as time goes on. that's what the statistics show, and many live in poverty. it seems to me that's the fundamental reason to consider reforms. >> i think i said during my presentation, i completely agree that the implement situation where people with disabilities is not good. we need to do a lot more as a

country to assist people with disabilities to go to work, when they are able and up to their capacity, whatever that is for the individual. i think if you go back to one of the slides in today's presentation, one area where we have cut spending and we see a mine is to .6% in the time period that gave outlined is on deployment, training and education services. and so if we're serious about helping people with disabilities go to work, we shouldn't start with the final income support program and looking at what we need to reform. we need to look at how can we improve our special education, how can we improve the outcomes of people in school, how can we improve our job training programs, now can we improve our employment support programs. and so my answer to that second question is there's a lot that should be done about it but it doesn't anything to do with the social security disability

insurance program that provides income support. that's what it does and that's what they should do. or we should do a lot more to help people get jobs, keep jobs and not have to apply for benefits in the first place? >> one of the problems -- sorry. one of the problems that i see is even if a person gets a job, there are all these extraordinary expenses that people, particularly people with significant disabilities, have to cover. it's not just mortgage and food and basic transportation. it's the personal assistance both at home and work. it's the cost of a successful vehicle. it's the cost of a wheelchair over communication device. these things are very valuable tools, but they are also way outside the wherewithal of many

people with significant disabilities to purchase. now, i don't know -- there are some thoughts about turning the disability insurance cash flow into a fundamental -- supplemental income stream and nortel to pay for some of these things. that, of course, would take a radical departure from where we are today. but some are another your contacts or the additional support. we're going to have to find a way to help people with disabilities to pay for these devices. >> thanks, mark. i guess we'll talk about reform, reforming a program, of course there are two ways to do the. if we are projecting the future, the cost will be more than the scheduled taxes coming in. one was to try to find a way to pull down those costs.

another to find what to come up with more revenue to be able to pay for the cost. we have as a thing of putting those, the definition of disability for the dispatches program, it's applied pretty strictly. if this changes over time. but it still contains victoria street definition disability. i think that the retirement age where people transfer over will have a 10 to 50% of our population that is insured. receiving those benefits. so i think going forward that has to be something that we consider. are we going to pay for we have or will we find ways to try to pull back on the costs on the. i would add one, the numbers that put up, the number stay put up i think are exactly in confidence. day that the one chart reach of the number of disabled worker beneficiaries in salt lake 20% higher than if the age sex rates, stayed exactly the same

over the last 20 years or so. while the differences and because women have had increased incidence rates relative to me. they basically move to parity, and both men and women have had a shift in incident raced towards younger age. i will just add that one thing a lot of us would hope, i know in my office we have some fantastic people in her office, alice is here, eli daughter, our deputies to work on this to all the time with dave and others, understanding more why there's been a shift towards more disability at younger ages relative to older ages would be a real step in the right direction to understand why we have increase in cost we have had. >> i would add if you look at the general job market and the slack we still have in terms of joblessness and the slack in the market, the challenge seems to be really a big tall hill to climb. you've got already rampant discrimination in the workplace based on age, disability was

mentioned. we even have a lot of workplace discrimination just against people who have been out of a job for a while. so you step back a little sort of the market place conditions. i think suggest this is a big challenge. let's take a question right here. >> good morning. my name is nathan. i have a follow-up question on your discussion about how its significance for the program, a saint, for example, 40% of people who have hiv and are receiving care are paid through medicaid programs can but most of those people only receive that benefit after becoming disabled due to their endless. so i'm wondering to what extent are people who have a preventable disease or a treatable disease who have lacked health care driving disability cost and whether not that is a factor, or whether not health care reform is something that will really address that. and i wonder how big of a piece

of pie, isn't large or is it really small? >> dave? >> i think it's hard to put a number on it. i think it's pretty important, and your example you're alluding to is just one example of how, i indicated that i think we do things backwards. we don't figure out what people need so they can continue to work first and give that to them. a couple years they would get them into medicare. my colleague and i did a paper on beneficiaries on their way into ssdi and into medicare and how many they met in church during that period of time. these were data from the mid 1990s, and at that time about 18% didn't have any coverage at all. some of them died before they became eligible for medicare, right? so what you're saying is just an example of how we have things backwards. we don't figure out what people need so they continue to work

being productive. we let them get into these programs and then we start giving them services such as health insurance. >> just want to respond to that a little bit. i don't disagree that we ought to provide different, provide people better services ahead of time. but again i will reiterate that is him and went to change ssdi. it means where to change the other programs that make someone go apply for ssdi before they can get access to health care or implement support as opposed to changing the final income support program for people with disabilities rely on to keep a roof over their head. >> take another question. >> i am cathy. i was actually surprised by the two charts, david, you had on current policies failing

taxpayers, the finding that is essentially solely people are on ssdi. and i don't think -- [inaudible] i think that's a good thing is taxpayer. i'm glad that people are getting ssdi come because without it i don't know what would be happening to them. i assume that you're saying here, not there to the people getting ssdi, but that there should be other things for them in the workplace. and i hope that's what you mean but i hope you don't mean that we should take to point to many people and just throw them on the streets. but in terms of the workplace, i would like to know what you, how you think we did employers to provide not just chop some people with disabilities, but good jobs for people with disabilities that provide good benefits and the support that

they need, particularly and this time, and his political time when nobody seems to want to be required to do anything in the employment sector. i mean, do we require that they provide adequate health coverage? do we require that you provide support? how do we do this? specs i sorted it mean we should throw whatever it was, to point to when people ou out in the rod but i actually agree, largely with lisa about, you know, the issue isn't about reforming the ssdi program. it does provide essential benefits. i do think there are some changes we could make in the context of larger reforms to ssdi. i think one thing that is happened is, because ssdi is the program is a double to workers when they have a problem, we made changes as sdi to make it easier for them and more attractive for them to work.

they are on ssdi, and we wouldn't have had to do all that if we have something in front of ssdi so that doesn't be working on the program into first place. or something that helped and continue to work rather than get into ssdi before they get support. as far as getting employers to be more interested in support of hiring people with disabilities, that's really tough to do. the health insurance and actually this gets back to one of marty's comments, the paper the david and i rode, so assume the aca would be implemented and that would be sort of the basic form of health insurance for everybody. we probably should've console with the supreme court first. but it is incredibly important. i don't think forcing employers to provide health insurance is the best way to do it though because that imposes costs on

employers, and if they're having to foot the cost for an employee's health care and that employee happened to have a lot of health care, why would they want to keep employing that person? so i think it's very difficult to find options that would encourage employers to hire people with disabilities, but i think they have to be, we have to look at those more carefully whether their tax incentives or other things. people have suggested, for instance, reducing the payroll tax if you hire somebody who has a disability at a level that would otherwise qualify for ssdi or ssi. so that's an example. >> i guess i just like to add i think in a broader context the one possibility is, we've talked about this in the context, as our guys like dave and i are aging and try to encourage people to work longer, provide taxes is for people to work at higher ages. if that really just means they

have an edge over younger workers to get a job, that's not the best of worlds perhaps. i which is the best of worlds is something that is in the broader context, sort of the rising tide, floats all boats people really need is more economic opportunity, more jobs in jeddah. we haven't eight plus percent unemployment. i think looking forward it really is a serious question competitiveness, job opportunities in this country, and folks who have been environmental always be at a slight to suspend one way or the other. but if it more economic opportunity, more jobs available in general that really will be to the benefit of all of us. will have more taxable payroll, more money coming in. it is sort of the route towards solving the problems for programs like this. so i think beyond just disability and what would you just for folks with medically in paris, enhancing the job opportunities in this country would really go a long way.

>> just to add to that a little, i think one of the things we could do, again not to sound like a broken record, is have a national medicaid buy-in. if employers knew that the health care costs would not affect them, that could remove some of that misperception and fear. i think another thing that we can do is encourage the federal government to fully comply with the executive order on hiring people with disabilities and the federal government. one of the biggest ways we can encourage employers to hire people with disabilities is to show them what could workers, people with this those are, the fact that lower absenteeism, june have at least high productivity, and the best way we can do that is to lead by example. and if the federal government were to become a model employer of people with disabilities, it would do a lot to help educate employers about the truth of workers with disabilities. and if we could also have their

health care taken care of, it would remove a lot of the fear and anxiety iran hiring people with disabilities. >> let's go to another question on this side of the room. >> good morning. i'm with america's health insurance plans. i really appreciate and enjoy the robust and interesting discussion this morning. going back a ways, a question for mr. goss about the rise in the disability population in recent years, and outlook for the future. question basically is, you mentioned the great recession. you mentioned them both you and dave mentioned that change and participation of women. are you able to offer an opinion on whether you think some of the rice is actually a success story, a success story in dealing with certain disabling conditions, cancer, hiv, that we've progressed to a point where survivorship is strikingly higher, and perhaps there's a way to progress even further to

a point where work capacity can be preserved and maintained. >> that's an extremely important question. in one sense, what you're saying is exactly right. we have had a success story in so many areas where there are disabling condition of maintaining people with sufficient health to survive, to continue to live and live a good life. even if not able to recover to the point of being able to go back to work. and that has contributed towards people who come on our disability rolls, staying on the disability rolls, surviving longer. and certainly that increases the prevalence, the percentage of our population that is receiving disability benefits. in that sense there is no question it is a success story. just as i think would probably agree that once people reach 62 or 65, if they live longer that will most certainly increase the cost of our retirement program but hopefully we would all agree that is a success story as people live longer after the

reached the age of 65. >> good morning. my name is glimcher with u.s. department of labor. i have got a question that gets to the main question of why more people are claiming, and i wonder about the substitution effects that might have, some people talk about the rise in the retirement age as being one reason health insurance going where for some people being another reason. i'm wondering if anyone has investigated the devolution of a social insurance programs like worker's compensation, and other things, where the state reductions in benefits might be causing some of the increases in di costs? >> i'll mention a couple things. one is welfare reform, which the law was passed in 1996, i believe, and there's been quite a lot of research on the effect

of welfare reform on low-income parents obtaining disability benefits. mostly initially ssi, but just think had some work experience, and for fairly young people it doesn't take a lot of work experience to qualify for ssdi. so i think prior to the rise and the disability incidence that steve has pointed to, for women, could be, and for younger people, could be explained by the welfare reform. but it may be a fairly small amount. worker's compensation, it's interesting, interesting controversy about the research in that area. there have been a couple papers published, one that finds tightening of worker's compensation state laws and workers, tightening eligibility has increased the number of people on ssdi. there's another paper that finds no relationship.

and it's very difficult to tell which is correct, but i think it's an important thing to think about. and so that when people have studied changes in disability policy and other countries, they often see there's a ripple effect in other social insurance systems. so for instance, there was a tightening in eligibility in austria, i guess in the early 2000s, for older workers. they have something that is equivalent to our vocational factors, and to increase the age of eligible for the vocational factors, and they found that more people worked at that age level but they also found that more unemployment insurance or other types of benefits from the government. so that is an important issue. >> to your very good point about substitution effects, we are one of those that operate shrunken social security program. when we raise the normal retirement age, which lisa mantua gone up one year and will go another, the benefits that

are available say at age 62 if you take your retirement benefits, drop from, used to be 80% of a so-called full benefit, the benefit if you wait until normal retirement age, down to 70%. however, if you start to receive disability benefits you get the full benefit without those reductions. shifting the retirement benefits to age 62 clearly provides an incentive for people to be a little bit more inclined to apply to disability benefit if they may qualify. we take into account in our projections in the future, and certainly see that that's happened so far. >> martie? >> i just want to point out that it's not going to be a complete transfer of people from one program to another though. the social security test is very difficult but it's a very high standard to me. you have to be unable to perform a substantial gainful activity due to a physical or mental impairment that will last one

year or result in death. so not everybody who was on the other programs is going to be able to meet that high of a standard to qualify for social security. so it is not a one-to-one transfer from other programs into social security or ssi. >> i don't see any more people at microsoft but i do have one more question for steve, and anybody else does have a question, please head for the microphone. steve, a question for you about this discussion, the broader context of social security reform and specifically the retirement program. periodically when we hear proposals for further changes in the oasi program can we hear about yet another increase in the retirement age. but with the impact of that be on the disability program? how do the two interact, and he really make meaningful games, political gains by ray reform like that in so far as what it

might do with disability? >> real good question. really when we look rightly or wrongly at reforming our change can have a legislator changes to the overall social security program, we usually look at the two trust funds on a combined basis even though they are legally separate entities. when we raise the normal retirement age, one major thing happens. instead of only paying people out of that fund up to 65, we are now paying them out of that fund up to 66, that extra year. that extra year. that execute the state is paid out of disability insurance trust fund is one year less that is paid out of the old age and survivors insurance fun. so it's kind of a trade off, and it doesn't make a huge difference. what does make a bit of a difference though was the substitution idea that we were talking about before. when we do raise the normal retirement age, think of it. when you raise a bite to you, if people decide to take the retirement benefit exactly the same age they would've otherwise

it lowers the benefit by about 6.5%, or they can delay starting their benefit by one year, it is a monthly amount but for one year less, which lowers their lifetime benefit by about 6.5%. so raising the normal retirement age clearly does save money overall but there's little bit of an offset on the disability side just by virtue of the fact that age is 62 up to the normal retirement age, the disability benefit becomes more attractive financial as compared to taking the retirement benefit. that offsets a little bit of savings for retirement age. that clearly is significant savings. >> is administered cause an issue with all the procedure that goes into applying for di as opposed to the almost automatically that you apply for retirement? >> there is certainly that. there's no question. the administrative cost for disability benefits are significantly higher current event for retirement benefits because of the work that has to be done in making that determination. so there is some cost in that

regard. >> if i could just add a couple things to that. one of, there's also discussions about notches increasing the retirement age, but also the early eligibility age which is currently 62. and i think there's been a lot of concern about that, precisely because of people with disabilities, and not so much that they'll end up on ssdi and effects on people with would suggest maybe we need to make it easier to get on ssdi for those over 62, if that were to happen. but because there are many people who experience medical problems in their 50s, early '60s, really fight hard to continue to work and they're using early retirement benefits it has they really are having a hard time continuing to work. some of those people would get into ssdi but some of them would not. so i think one of the important issues for people with disabilities, if there is every

form retirement policy reform like that, is what do you do about those individuals? there are various ideas. we have suggested an increase in the earned income tax or people that age, some kind of a health benefit dependent upon what happens with the aca. but there are first things you could do to address the issues with a partnership that i think would be important in the context of a retirement policy reform. >> tom with the national academy of social insurance. question for anybody. on the composition of the ssdi population, has there been a marked change in the ratio of mental health related disabilities to physical disabilities? and is anyone tracking that in terms of relationship to economic conditions and perhaps also to what lisa was saying about the absence of programs to help people not be on ssdi? anybody?

>> , really action had a very colorful slides and presentation earlier. we didn't have time to get into them. as it turns out, this question has arisen before and we look at it very carefully. it turns out if you look at people who start to receive disability benefits at any given age, younger people coming on our rolls, there's a great proportion of them not come on our rolls with a primary diagnosis of mental illness as opposed to more physical determinants of disability. but what we found is if you look at people at age 25-34, the percentage of them coming on the roles that are mental and other reasons have been pretty stable over the last 20, 25 years. that's true for higher age is also. there's a most greater proportion of people over 45 as opposed to mental, the mental endurance of drop down quite a bit. but the distribution of reasons for disability have been quite stable across the ages. where things have really changed

though is, we've had a relative shift in the average age at which disability incidence occurs. with that more people coming on our rolls at younger ages because people come in on roles at younger ages 10 to have a higher likelihood that they will come up with a mental impairment, and the people, at a younger age who have lost pakistan on the roles a long time, and till they reach age 66. overall we've had increase in the chair of our disability population with mental impairments. >> if there are no the comments i think we're going to wrap up. i want to thank this terrific panel for their comments, and thank you for attending. thanks to c-span for covering the event. let me remind you all to fill out your blue evaluation forms and turn them into a staffer before you leave the room, to check the resource table on the way out. and i believe you can also find presentations and other resources about today's event at

the nasi website at nasty town or care and thanks to everybody. -- nancy.org. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> the united nations security council is meeting today in new york, u.s. ambassador to the u.n. susan rice will be taking questions from reporters on a wide range of issues including syria and other upcoming priorities.

>> the feminist majority foundation recently hosted an all day for him in washington. they focus on issues important to women in the 2012 election including reproductive rights and a review of ballot measures affecting women and getting more women to run for public office. this is about 50 minutes and we will show you as much as we can until the u.n. news conference gets underway at 12:30 p.m. eastern. >> we are going to go right on because debbie walsh, the real are moving so fast is we are on c-span live and we wanted to keep the ball rolling. so i feel like everybody should get up and stretch after all that come but i want to give a

began to this panel, ballot initiatives. [applause] you see we have our work cut out for us. [inaudible] >> anyway, we want to get going on to the second one, and we have a central question. this one. the central question is, are we at another anita hill moment? debbie walsh will set the stage, so i'm going to move right to her. the center for american women and politics, the eagleton institute of rutgers university, if you are not familiar with their website, please go to it. it is cawp.org. my little ipad, all i have to

do is put in cawp and i get there. google is awful smart. the official thing is cawp.reutgers.edu. it is basically a marvelous marvelous incident. it has all the facts really about women in office. it tells you how many women are in the state legislature, who they are at it tells you why state. it does all the employment offices. it doesn't by state. it does the congress. the history of all the women in congress. i could go on. it is a bible and one of the reasons we wanted debbie walsh, who is the executive director to come forth is because she can better probably than anybody set the stage of how do we get from 17%, or how do we get more women

in power, and stop this constant discussion of how we fight off going forth one step, come backwards another step as we keep on doing for nearly 40 years? so i want you to set the stage. i want to commend the center for american woman in politics, and the eagleton institute. eagleson institute is headed by ruth, who is an absolute treasure for the woman's movement come but also for the united states. because they feature local and state politics, which is so often overlooked. but if we're going to do this, we have to be at all levels. so please set the stage and keep us running on time. [applause] >> that's a tall order, keep us running on time. i want to thank you and i want to thank alice, kathy, for having me here. we were really lucky because a

couple years ago we brought ellie to rutgers university where we gave her an honorary degree and she was the commencement speaker for rutgers university. [applause] we are delighted to count alley as an alum of rutgers university, so thank you. i'm going to put a little bit of this year into historical context for you. and i want to just talk about the numbers of women who are in office and running for office. and as ellie said we keep track of all these and we monitor the transfer when in office. in pre-1992, we saw this slow, steady growth for women in elected office, and we used to be known that because we would only go up about a percentage point or so every election cycle and came to women in state legislatures, and very little in every congressional cycle. and then came 1992 and we've all been talking about this, so it's 20 years ago, and we saw a year of redistricting. we saw a year where there were

record numbers open seats, and we saw a year where there was a catalyzing moment when everyone in this country saw firsthand how white and how mail the united states congress and particularly the united states senate was. and i know that many of you in this room a remember that weekend where we all sat and watched all weekend long, never leaving our tv sets, as we watched anita hill facing down not all male, all white senate judiciary committee, and we all have that moment of, these guys don't get it. and where are the women? as a result of that year, when we had record numbers of open seats, we had was then called the year of the woman. and, unfortunately, that has sort of in the last year that we had. so in that year we saw 24 new women elected to congress. we had never seen anything like that before, and we have never, i'm sad to say, seen anything like it since.

and was women running at that point for 39 open seats. that's the most open seats that women have ever run for one time in the general election. so kind of keep that number in the back of your head. open seats are critical. open seats are where you make change. when the incumbent is out. incumbents win 95% of the time, men and women. so it's critical that we are finding women to run in those open seats, so just keep that in mind. so after 1992 when we saw this fight, ever since then we have been basically flat line at the state legislative level. we have seen almost no increase in the number of women who are running for state legislatures, and relatively no increase in the number of women serving in state legislatures. from about 1994 to now, we've gone from about 22% to 24% in state legislatures. i love this end of 17%. it's a real reminder.

what happens after is we see these big famous names. you see nancy pelosi and juicy hillary clinton, and juicy michele bachmann and juicy condoleezza rice. and people think it's mission accomplished. there are women everywhere. there are plenty of them, but the reality is we are talking about 17% in congress, 24% in state legislatures. of all of the women, of all of the governors in this country, only six women. and that's down from the record. we have been going down and statewide elected office. so we see this kind of flat-lining, and we all sort of moan, what can we do? and we looked at the year 2012 and we said, this is another year of opportunity. and we thought about this at the center and with her partner, mary hughes, out in california a while ago, and we've been working a something called the 2012 project to take advantage of 2012. because let's look at this year.

it's a redistricting year. once again after the census, every state legislative like of every congressional district redrawn, creating new open seats, making incumbents a little less entrenched because their districts and their constituents are different. more retirement than we normally see, and so we see some similarities there. it's also a presidential election year. that we only get every 20 years. redistricting every 10, presidential cycles and redistricting every 20. as presidential election years, what we see are more voters, and voters are less tied to the party so they are not, they are what we call a occasional voters. they don't go that kind of straight party line. it makes it a little bit of a benefit for newcomers and, unfortunately, women are still newcomers. so what we've been doing is going out around the country trying to engage and inspire more women to run in 2012. ..