he said, it's not just about my wife and my daughters, it's about our whole family finances. if we didn't have access to birth control, you know, we wouldn't be where we are today. really, what's extremely good news is that the men are with us, and i think that's demonstrated by the afl/cio's statement about birth control. >> i hate to tell you all, but the ama only has a small amount of physicians as their members today. you know, they have a very large presence and thought in lobbying, but their members have been going down for many, many years. a lot of the importance is on the state and the grassroots areas in the medical professions. so, again, we need to talk to men of good conscience. that's what i call them, and there are some of them in this room right now. it's the men of good conscience. we need to say to men and not be

worried about saying it that they need to speak up for reproductive rights. it's a health issue. it's a family issue. >> thank you. >> i want to say that 20% of our volunteers throughout the country are men. >> terrific. 20% volunteers. isabella. >> hi. i'm isabella, and i'm 14. i wanted to ask the panel, i just want to say that a lot of the issues you're talking about, if not affect the younger generations, if not affect us now will eventually affect us in the future. and i know that the younger generations do care about a lot of these issues, but they don't feel like their voice really matters because they cannot vote. how do you propose that the younger generations can get involved to help with the cause? thank you. >> use your voice on community forums. you can use your voice now. you can speak up now. you can blog now. you can facebook now.

you can make your voices very much heard. you may not be able to go into the voting booth, although you can if you go to the nuwzeum and go to the every four years booth and vote there. >> last week we also had a youth summit led by a high school student, ka mara hudson, from a school without walls. this past saturday we had about 30 young women, young girls, middle school and high school age who actually really focused us on the fact that what they need for us to do is to remember to vote for them, but also they laid out the issues that tear concerned about. they're concerned about their futures. and so engaging young women and young girls together around the issues that they're concerned about. they're looking and worried about what will happen with the election. so i have a very fresh understanding about what girls are thinking about from that youth summit.

they're concerned about whether or not they can go to school. they're concerned about the balance of the community. they're concerned about health and wellness and the fact their parents don't have good jobs that they need. they're whole point is you guys have to vote for us, but also be able to engage young girls in listening to what they had to say and young boys, and young boys. as we know in the african-american community behind what's going on, i mention trayvon, there go i. i mean, i had my hoodie on last saturday after we all went out there with the young people. i am, we are, any of us could be trayvon and what's going on with the mother and father both. so engaging just because you're not of voting age, and you don't have a vote in your family and engage your community. we all as adults have to make sure that you feel that we're doing is also about you. that's the thing i say, engage young people. get their issues and make sure we make that part of what we're doing.

we're definitely doing that with the national coalition. >> just one moment. i will add to the comments. the wonderful thing about college age especially or just getting to stroet for the first time many of them in the upcoming elections, they are so outraged about what is happening. everywhere -- as you know the feminist majority foundation has a very large, over 600 camp network feminist majority leadership alliances and affiliated groups. we're having a big conference this weekend following today and tomorrow. we have almost 500 collegiate leaders from all over the country coming together to self-organize in a massive get out the vote campaign for this next election. so do not worry. do not worry about young people. we have them. we just need to help get the resources together so that they can overcome the especially

severe voter repression measures that are targeted at young people. just take two more questions. one on this mike and then here. >> kathy. >> yes. >> i'm sorry. i wanted to remind everyone to answer the question about where the american medical association is and everything like that, the american college of object transitions and gynecologies do support us. they're on their side, even if the ama is not. so sorry to interrupt and be rude, but i wanted to get that out there. >> we'll take two more questions. >> my name is andrea rank, and i'm from a small foun in central new york. in 1984 the choice group organized a coalition of women's groups with the idea that the perception of power is power. so every year since '84 we've polled candidates running for office on their opinions on women's issues. of late we're not getting any responses, and they're refusing to fill that out. then i also learned that project

vote masmart, democrats and republicans are telling candidates not to fill out candidate surveys. so it forces us to do a hell of a lot of research to find their positions and also to look eyeball to eyeball and confront candidates. but critical that you do that research and get the word out on where candidates stand on these issues. we've got to know and women have to know to vote as they go in that day who's going to stand up for women's rights. >> and also be sure to get -- we put on the tables the congressional voting record. please take those with you. don't p put them and just throw them away. inside there is a poster that you can actually take out and put up in yir communities and use this for it's my vote, i will be heard. it says it has everybody's congressional voting record. this is how at least you know how the candidates are standing.

so take it with you, give it to your families, your friends. it doesn't matter how old you are. put the poster up, okay? thank you. >> thank you for supplying that for everybody today. terry. >> now go to the now packs.org and see the candidates endorsed by n.o.w. pacs. let me say that i have this wonderful fantasy, and i don't know where we're going to find of resources for it. i really think that whoever is the nominee for the presidency needs to be asked repeatedly and often to sign a pledge for birth control. we know that -- rick santorum signed the personhood pledge where he promised to work to pass laws to declare life begins at fertilization. whoever that candidate is, we wanted that candidate to sign a -- mitt romney refused to sign the personhood pledge, but he has not signed a birth control

pledge. sign a birth control pledge, a violence against women pledge, a medicare and medicaid pledges. we have a lot of pledges. we should just follow them around and get them to either sign the pledge or say why they won't. okay. >> lana, you have the last question. >> i'm lana from cleveland, ohio and i want to say i was so pleased to see the 70% pins, because i think this visual reminder to people is so important. i'm here to happily announce in ohio this year we have seven women running for congress. >> whoo! >> that, i think, is amazing. these seven women could be a part of turning around this key battleground state into being from red to blue and also adding so many more women to the

congress. thank you. >> thank you. thank you, lana. i'm going to have to move right into this next plenary. we're going to also take questions and answers at the end of this one, so if you had a burning question, hold onto it. you're going to get a chance to ask. i'm going to ask -- first of all, i want to thank all of you for joining us today. and for being such a key part of the her votes coalition. together, we are going to mobilize an unprecedented turning out of women in the november election. thanks to all of you, and if i could ask the next panel to approach the stage so that we can keep on schedule, we're still on c-span, the next panel is going to be on c-span. for more information don't forget hervotes.us to keep up what's happening in the

elections as it impacts on women. >> tavis smiley leads a discussion on poverty in america and it's effect on women and children. >> there's a number the fact sheet i shared with folks. in 1990 the average member of congress had a net worth of $250,000 excluding their home. by 2010 the average member of congress had a net worth of $750,000 excluding their moem. what happened to congress that they could triple their wealth in just a 20-year period? meanwhile, for the rest of us, the average person had income

excluding their home of about $20,000 both in 1990 and in 2010. so everybody else stayed level, but these members of congress found a way to enrich themselves. i'm not hating on members of congress. i'm not hating on wealth, but here's what i'm saying. people who have that wealth doesn't understand someone who needs extra $40 in the biweekly check to take the bus. >> you can watch the whole event tonight starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> the vast majority like web based e-mail services and mapping services and search services. they do that for free because they're able to sell nonpersonally identifiable information about the things you do on the internet. >> first of all, this is hardly my view with respect to the concerns about the change in

google's privacy policy. you had 36 state attorneys general objecting. i don't think they're in europe, by the way. i think those are states within the u.s. you had congressional leaders in the democratic and republican party objecting. you had 60 consumer organizations from the united states and europe objecting. >> open internet coalitions mark ham eriksson and mark rotenburg of the electronic privacy nfgts center on google's new privacy policy providing free services for the users for violating their privacy tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on "the communicators" on c-span 2. >> in primetime this week, book tv on c-span 2 with a look tonight at pearl harbor starting at 8:30 eastern with craig shirley's december 1941. then stanley wine traub's pearl harbor christmas and burt and

anita on "fdr goes to war" on c-span2 this week. applications for social security disability insurance have recently increased to 3.4 million people. last week the social security administration's chief addressed what's behind the increase, citing the high unemployment rate and an increase in mental illnesses. he was joined by interest groups representing the disabled who talked about better ways of incorporated the disabled into the work force. hosted by the national academy of social insurance, this is an hour and 45 minutes. >> good morning. i'm mark miller and i'm a columnist for reuters. i wreet 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 shurngs and what should be done about t. a special welcome to viewers live on c-span this morning. our thanks to c-span for covering this important issue. 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 and 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 provided income support to more than 9 million people with disabilities and their family members. a total of more than 9$9.5 billion in benefits monthly. the number of people receiving benefits has increased significantly over the past several decades.

6.5 million receivered benefits. the disability 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 trustee's report. journalists, researchers and congress focused a great deal of attention on the growth of ssdi beneficiaries. a number of questions have been raised about the program. does it reflect demographic trends or changes or is it due to ssdi program rules and policy science 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 ensure its long-term viability? can can these changes be small,

or does long-term solvency require radical change? does ssdi discourage work? could more be done to encourage people to stay at work when they're disabled, or could more be done do encourage beneficiaries to return to work after receiving ssdi benefits? a variety of reforms have been proposed. some propose augmenting ssdi to provide more assistance to keep people at work or returning to work. others have suggested creating another public disability insurance program which would be offered to it people with a disability but significant capacity to work. requiring employers to purchase private disability insurance to keep workers employed is another idea suggested. other proposals seek to completely change the way the disability benefits are designed and provided. this form 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 to hear from three outstanding speakers. steve goss, who is the chief act waefrt social security administration, lisa ekman, senior policy advisers at health and disability advocates and dave stapleton directly of the center for studying disability policy. next we'll hear brief responses to the presentations from marty ford and from tony young, senior public policy strategist at nish and tony is en route here and will join us when he gets there. the full biographies of all the speakers in the folders along with the agenda, and power point discussions from the presenters and an article published recently in the journal of policy, analysis and management.

one side of that debate is argued by virginia reno of nasi and lisa he can land. the other side was taen by the economist richard burk houser and mary daly. you'll find a blue evaluation form in your pact, and we would appreciate it if you would fill it out and return it to a staff member before you leave today. we also encourage you to pick up copies of other nasi resources, which are available at a table outside the meeting room. so to begin i'd like to turn to steve goss. steve. >> thanks, mark, virginia and pam for gives us the opportunity it to talk about the social security here. i assume everybody ndz that the social security disability program serving almost 9 million disabled workers in our country

and another couple of million people who are children and spouse dependents of those disabled workers. it's a big program that serves a lot of people. what i can speak to probably most effectively and usefully is the first of the two questions today. one people are applying for social security benefits. let me address that in the context of the projections that we make working for our board of trustees in the administration. working with our advisory board and their technical panel and others in developing aassumptions and projections into the future of what the cost of social security, the retirement system and the disability system are 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 run-up in claims and people applying for disability. one is a near-term psych lickal

phenomenon which relates to the fact we 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 a 10% unemployment rate, and when people become unemployed they seek a way to continue having income, and people that can qualify for the sdpabled worker benefits, of course, go and apply. we had an increase in the number of applications and we did have an increase in the number of people starting to receive disability benefits. we express this as a disabled worker incidence rate. that's what you see on the chart. it's really the number of people newly getting disabled worker benefits divided by the number of people who are insured and could get the benefits that they apply and qualify. you can see at the time of a recession we have a run-up in people getting benefits as happens but this is a temporary phenomenon from a downturn, and we project that the number of

new disability claimants is about 2010 will be coming back down. you can see the red line on here. it shows what we project for the number of people starting to get disability benefits had there not been a recession. there was a recession, and that changes everything. we had a big increase in the number of people coming on the rolls that exceeded what we had. a number of of these people are people who might not have ever filed for disability benefits and might have retained their employment status. other people are people that might have started to get benefits two or three years later as their personal medically determinable impairment deteriorated further. this is sort of the first effect we might talk about in terms of an increase in the number of people with disability which is a cyclical effect. a longer term effect is we speak to what mark mentioned which is the solvency of the social security program. the longer term effect for the

solvency of the social security program does depend on this classic relationship between the numbers of beneficiaries and people paying in, what the tax rates and benefit levels and solvency for the social security program. we have two different trust funds. we have the old age survivors trust fund and we have the disability insurance trust fund. that latter one is the one we're talking about principally today. on this little chart you can see we're showing what the trust fund ratios are. the trust fund ratios are the amount of money we have in reserve, our trust fund assets divided by the annual cost of the program. 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 of out of that because we have continuing income coming in all the time. you can see on this projection that for the old age and survivors insurance program in the 2011 trustee report we look to be good out to 2018. for the combined program if we put the funds together, we would

be good until about 2036 for solvency based on the 2011 trustee's report. also, mark mentioned the disability insurance trust fund xhs a separate empty is projected in the 2011 report to be exhausted in 2018. mark also mentioned the congressional budget office and the president's budget represent an earlier date, and you should understand that since the time of our development of the assumptions and the projections for the 2011 trustee's report, which was issued last may 13 last year, some things happened. we had a run-up in inflation early in calendar year 2011. as a result we ended up having a cost of living adjustment of 3.6% instead of the 0.7 that we had been estimating the price of gas went up. we know what that does to the general price level of everything in our economy. we had a 3% higher boost to benefit levels for 2012, and that will persist for years into

the future because that stays with the people that received it. at the same time, by the way, in the year 2011, the level of average taxable earnings, the earnings subject to payroll taxes grew by about 1.5% less than we had been projecting. so the combination of a bigg eg benefit level and lower earnings level on average resulted in negative effects for the trust funds. you can anticipate the upcoming trustee's report we have a sooner date for trust fund exhaustion for disability. 2018, 2016 cbo, they're dates that are quite soon. pooh who do a lot of work in this building and the next two buildings down are paying a lot of attention to this and will surely make changes in the not to distant future. the one thing you might notice on the graphic on the little blue line, which is this trust fund ratio for the disability insurance program in particular, there was a time around 1994 when it was heading down quite

sharply before. you can see it bounces after 1994, and it starts heading back up. what happened at that time was that the congress simply enacted something we refer to as a payroll tax reallocation. they took the total payroll tax, which at the time then and is still is a total of 12.4% payroll tax. employers and employees each pay 6.2. that's split in the funds. they simply reallocated a little more of that from the osi fund to the di fund. that more equalized the financial prospects into the future for the osi and di fund. it caused it to do back up again. that's why we sustained the solvency. right after that was enacted in 1994, our next trustee's report that came out projected that trust fund exhaustion for the disability insurance fund would be in the year 2016. so that was a good or lucky guess, take your pick. so this is really -- this speaks

to -- let me mention this. this speaks to the solvency as we describe it for these programs. the reason we describe this as the solvency, because solvency in the context with the social security programs really means the ability to pay the scheduled benefits in full in a timely fashion. in order to do that, we have to have money in the trust funds for one virchl. by law the social security trust funds don't have the ability to borrow much of the rest of the government if it doesn't have the ready cash reserves to pay for things it can borrow. they cannot do that by law, so we have to have our trust funds above zero. when we see the numbers dropping as you do out towards 2036 or earlier for the di trust fund, that represents a real problem that the congress absolutely has to address. should mention, though, that for the d.i. fund under our projections as of the year 2018, assuming nothing were done and we reached trust fund exhaustion, we had enough continuing income coming in from

taxes that are scheduled in the law at that time to pay fully 86% of the scheduled benefits. it's not like the trust fund goes out of business, and we don't have more benefit payments. we would be 14% short of the funds necessary to pay the full scheduled benefits in a timely basis. so we go to the 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 shows you what the cost of the osei and di look like as a% of gross domestic product. gross domestic product, fancy word, but it's the total value of goods and services we produce on our shores in in the country. that really 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 benefits. you can see when you look at this the lines for the oesi, old age and survivors insurance

program and trust fund and for the combined old age disability insurance that the cost percentage of gdp, which are what these lines represent, has been pretty constant for the combined program. it's about 4.3% of gdp since 18975. up the next two or three years it will ramp up a level shift and the reason is something that has been discussed much. the fact that we had a drop in the birth rates. the baby boom will retire, and we'll be followed by smaller birth rate generations that we expect to persist in the future. 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. if we flip to the next slide you get a better look at it. this slide showins 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 the recession and there's a rides up in the cost of program to gdp, and we think it will stabilize and decline slightly into the future. the question is why is this happening and what do we believe will happen in the future? we look at the subcommittee staff a little hearing back in december to address this issue and look at what the drivers of social security cost really are.