i think it should be a little bit broader if we're going to do something like that, because it should be common sense, and we need to allow the states to do that one by one, even if the federal government allows it. >> thank you. the delegate from california. yes, ma'am. >> my name is noelle irwin-henshall from california. i think we share our opinion about this. i think it sounds like michelle obama. because when we're trying to tell people what to eat, we're supposed to be the party of individual freedoms where people eat what they feel they need to eat. and how do you -- i agree with the gentleman who just said that how do you define what really is junk food? what about ginger ale that you need for your stomach to feel better? so, i would just say that i think it's not republican. >> the gentlewoman from maine and then the gentleman from california. >> thank you. representative stacy guerin from maine. i am in favor of this proposal. unhealthy eating is costing our nation billions of dollars in

health care effects, and i agree, if you are buying something with your own money, that is your choice, what you buy, what you eat. if you are using federal dollars and state dollars to supplement your food intake, it should be of healthy foods. and addressing the question of the vagueness of junk food -- everyone understands what junk food is. and as this was vetted out through the legislative process, they could get the specifics of what they felt needed to be put in for language to make it clear what would be in the computer system so that absolves the businesses from problems with it. the computer system would disallow certain foods that are unhealthy and that are costing us billions of dollars in health care costs. >> the delegate from california. >> andy pozner from california. i hope we don't become the party of the food police. this is something that -- [ applause ]

this is something that mayor bloomberg tried in new york. it was not very popular. it won't be very popular with our voters. i think it's a big mistake to try and tell people that are using s.n.a.p. benefits what they can and can't eat. so, i would as a republican and a conservative, i would be opposed to the government taking this position. >> thank you. the delegate from virginia. >> yes. actually, i would like to -- >> can you identify yourself, please? i'm sorry. >> yes. i apologize. cynthia dunbar of virginia. i think that the language is not broad enough. first of all, it assumes as though the states do not have regulatory authority when, in fact, they do. it's the federal government that does not have purview over this. there's no enabling legislation within the constitution that even allows for s.n.a.p. and so, i think that part of what needs to be done is addressing the authority of the states themselves to regulate

whether or not they are going to allow those funds to go up to the federal government in the first place for dissemination. >> thanks. yes, ma'am. >> judy eledge, anchorage, alaska. and i'm not going to support this because i do not think it is a guiding principle of the republican party platform to define junk food. >> thank you. any other discussion? going back to the author of the amendment. >> thank you, mr. chair. so, in maine, i serve as the senate chairman for the health and human services committee, where we oversee the state's welfare programs. and let me just speak to this. you know, when individuals say that this is what michael bloomberg has done in new york city, i have to very strongly contest that. what michael bloomberg tried to do in new york city was tell people what they could purchase with their own money. in maine, we also passed prohibitions restricting people from buying things like alcohol, about cigarettes, lottery tickets with welfare dollars. these programs are supposed to be for helping people cover

their basic necessities as they get through a tough time in life. it is not -- these are not programs that are supposed to enable people to live excessive or unhealthy lifestyles at the expense of the taxpayer. there is a big distinction to be made between someone spending their own money and somebody spending taxpayer money and a program that is designed to give people in poverty nutritional food. it is an abhorrent misuse of taxpayer dollars to let that money go to anything else. >> okay. any additional discussion? okay. all those in favor of eric's motion, please signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> all those opposed, please signify by saying nay. in the opinion of the chair, the nays have it and the amendment is defeated.

>> as you're taking your seats we're getting ready to resume and the first amendment that we'll be considering is from philip wilson, the delegate from the state of washington. so i could ask delegate wilson to be ready to present. i see the microphone is on as people are getting to their seats. this is on page two line five. the delegate from washington

state. >> bill wilson, washington state, and actually, i'd like to insert between eight and nine the paragraph. it's going to be a new paragraph. would you like me to go ahead and read the text? >> now that everyone's here, we have about nine more amendments to go. i appreciate your patience and your willingness to work through these and work into this evening. it will be about nine to go before we adjourn for this evening, so with that, we have on the screen the amendment from philip wilson of washington state from page two of the health education and prime plank. please proceed. >> okay the text reads "we believe that children have a natural right to be raised in an intact biological family while broke ne brokenness can befall children in a myriad of ways. we acknowledge that children are made to be loved by both natural

parents united in marriage. legal structures such as no fault divorce which divides families -- i can't see the text there -- which divides families and empowers the states should be replaced by a fault-based divorce. would you like me to speak to that? >> please do. >> okay, you know, a lot of our focus in this marriage issue has been on the parents or the adults, and really very little has gone to children, although some of that is addressed, you know, in other areas on this platform. you know, really a child does not have -- is not going to go into court when their parent is taken away from them at 5 years old. you know, they're not going to be found in court saying hey, my dad's been taken away and i have a right to my father, or that sort of thing. the structures that we put in place here for the state are really important to protect children.

the adults will be able to take care of themselves in ways that the children are just not going to be able to do, so the legal structures we have should be those that encourage families to stay together, rather than the state coming in on the side of splitting up families, because that is what happens in no fault divorce. the state comes in on the side of the party that's least committed to split it up, and what happens as a result of that, is the state grows bigger, because now you got all these other people to take care of suddenly. g.k. chesterton a philosopher from about 100 years ago said frivolous divorce will lead to frivolous marriage and that's where we're at today. so i'd like to submit that as an amendment. >> the amendment is on the floor. discussion? delegate from kentucky. >> thank you, i would like to just speak on this really quickly. this amendment is nothing new. it was proposed during the subcommittee level of this process, and it failed because

it never even received a second. the subcommittee felt as there were a few problems with it. i'll just raise one as a for instance. we talked about an, it talks about an intact biological family. this does not account for the vast number of adopted children that are in our families all across this country. so because of that, i think in the interest of time maybe since it never received a second in committee we might just want to move on from this. >> amen. >> the chair needs to apologize for not asking for a second before getting to this. is there a second? it is moved and seconded. delegate from new york. did you had your hand, sorry, delegate from ohio. >> tracy windham from ohio. i'm very, very pro-marriage but

i don't think this is for the platform. you know, right now people aren't getting married. when you -- i mean 70% of african-american children are raised by single family homes and never been married, and the number's growing amongst mainstream. we believe in traditional marriage. we believe -- we don't want people to have divorce but in the times we're living in right now, it is what it is. and i think that this should not be a part of our platform. we need to get to the nuts and bolts of this platform so that we can advance our party, because we have a lot of work to do, and this is not something we can legislate today. it's not legislative. it doesn't work that way. you can't tell people who to live with, who not to live with. right now we just want people to take care of the children that they have. so i'd ask we, please, not get into this type of conversation and move this along so that we can get to what we really stand for so we can sell the party and

our candidate and move forward for a victory in november. thank you. [ applause ] >> delegate from south carolina. >> i call the question. >> the question has been called. takes a two-thirds. it is seconded. all those in favor of voting immediately signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> all those in favor please signify saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed no. >> no. >> it is defeated. the next amendment is from andy dickerson delegate from new york. >> thank you and welcome back to the 21st century. we're glad to be here. so let's put up my little amendment. >> amendment page two, line 10, 11 and 12. >> yes, before i get to the strike language, i just want us to keep in mind addition versus

subtraction to start off here. so we really need to attract more people to the republican party and not cause people to flee in large numbers, not just gays but people that love them, millenials who, by and large, support nondiscrimination and even marriage equality and larger and larger and larger numbers. this is only going in one direction. so we're all for adoption. the first line says families formed by adoption strengthen our communities and ennoble our nation. so far so good. i agree. i have two adopted boys. they're fantastic. i don't know what i would to without them. my eldest boy was adopted on the same day that a gay couple was adopting their little girl. she's now a young woman and she's strong, healthy, and was raised in a very stable and loving family, which should be the hope and dreams of every american. so, so far so good in private

entities which facilitate adoptions and enrich our communities, bravo, yes, absolutely. so then we get into this, we support measures, and i'm going to be advocating that we strike this language. we support measures such as the first amendment defense act to ensure these entities do not face government discrimination because of the views on marriage and family. so what we've got here -- first of all let me just say i agree that religious freedom for private organizations absolutely amen to all. however, we need to distinguish between the private orgs and those that receive public tax funding dollars. all right? this language is not just asking for religious freedom. it's asking for taxpayer-funded organizations to actually turn away people, to turn away gay

couples. freedom is not freedom when it abridges the rights of others. we are a party that was built on freedom. we are built on a free society. let's not lose that. it seems like it's gone out the window a little bit here today. now, this was tried specifically in mississippi recently, and it was struck down by the federal courts. so i move to strike this, because it is both not constitutionally held up, and it is blatant discrimination on our loved ones, our brothers, our sisters, our sons, our daughters, our neighbors, our co-workers and some delegates perhaps even in this room, and in the back of the room, and everywhere in america that we know and love, and that we to not wish to discriminate against for the very fact that they're gay, and again, this does not pass the smell test of

attracting and addition. this is blatant discrimination and blatant subtraction. thank you, mr. chairman. >> discussion on the amendment on the floor. is there a second? >> second. >> the motion has been made and seconded. discussion, the delegate from virginia. >> thank you, mr. chair. i really don't appreciate the lady from new york implying that the rest of us are bigots because we don't agree with her view. [ applause ] she's certainly not helping her cause. and if she wants to imply that anybody is a bigot she should talk to them personally. >> i did not use that language, sir. i reject that language. >> i have the floor. first amendment defense act does exactly what it says. it prevents government discrimination against people who believe in natural marriage, both donald trump and ted cruz, among other nominees have endorsed the first amendment defense act. i think that's something we're all in agreement on and i think

we should move the debate quickly because i think most support this. >> delegate from maine. >> just a point of information. do all adoption agencies receive taxpayer money? that was the claim that was made. >> no. >> delegate from south carolina. question has been called and seconded. there is no discussion. all those in favor of voting immediately please signify saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed nay. vote immediately. all those in favor of the amendment from the delegate from new york signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed nay. >> nay. the amendment is defeated. the next amendment is and we have two first from rachel hoff from the district of columbia. the one i have first is the one that has striking parts from page one and two. is that the one you want to go with? strike i think page one, line 17

to the bottom of the page, and then the top of line two, and then replace with language that is going to appear on the screen. >> we're going to be testing the eyes of all of our committee members here. it's a strike and replace amendment, mr. chairman. the first three paragraphs of the section on marriage family and society, they are the three that deal primarily with marriage. if i might read the language that i'm proposed instead, i don't have a copy myself. >> it's now on the screen. we just want to make sure it's exactly what you want as you propose it. >> i'll read it and let you know if anything doesn't sound right. we believe that marriage is -- >> there should be an s there. >> we believe that marriage matters both as a religious institution and as a fundamental personal freedom. because marriage, rooted in life -- in love and lifelong commitment is one of the foundations of civil society, as marriage thrives, so our nation

thrives. we believe that the health of marriage nationwide directly affects the social and economic well-being of individuals and families and that undermining families leads to more government costs and more government control over the lives of its citizens. therefore, we believe in encouraging the strength and stability of all families. we recognize that there are diverse and sincerely-held views on marriage within the party, and that support for allowing same-sex couples the freedom to marry has grown substantially in our own party. given this journey that so many americans are, including republicans, are on, we encourage and welcome a thoughtful conversation among republicans about the meaning and the importance of marriage and commit our party to respect for all families and fairness and freedom for all americans. i'm honored to be here with you today and to be serving as the

first openly gay member of the republican platform committee. [ applause ] thank you. this amendment that i propose today is simple. it acknowledges the diversity of opinion within our party on the issue of marriage. i'm not here asking you today to endorse my own constitutional rights, which have been made clear by the recent supreme court decision last year. i'm only asking you to recognize that many republicans, many of the republicans that sent us here to do work this week in shaping our party's platform agree with me and we should not be excluded from our party. as a committee member under the age of 40, i represent the majority of millenial republicans who support the freedom to marry. i'm also proud to be joined by 64% of young evangelical republicans who support allowing

same-sex couples to marry. if our party wants a future, we should be mindful of these statistics, and we must evolve. we all agree on one thing, the importance of the institution of marriage to our society. gay and lesbian americans like me are simply asking for the opportunity to join that institution, to share in that institution, and to strengthen that institution. we are your daughters. we are your sons, your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues, the couple that sits next to you in church, and one day, when i'm ready to marry the woman i love, i hope it will be me. freedom means freedom for everyone, including gays and lesbians, who should have the freedom to enter into relationships and receive the same protections as heterosexual couples. in high school, i chose to be a republican. my parents are not republican, so i wasn't born this way. [ laughter ]

i chose to be a republican because i believe in the same principles that you do -- freedom, individual liberty, and limited government. i'm here, 15 years later, still in this great party, despite the hurtful rhetoric and stance on these issues, and all i ask today is that you include me and those like me, and not exclude us by simply acknowledging that thoughtful republicans represent multiple views on the definition of marriage. thank you. [ applause ] >> is there a second? >> second. >> second. delegate from oklahoma. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate the sincerity of the maker of this motion. however, this issue was thoroughly discussed in our

subcommittee, and the majority opinion and position is in the original, is in the current language that is presented here. >> delegate from virginia. >> thank you, mr. chair. i call the question. >> the question has opinion called. is there a second? >> second. >> all right. all those in favor of voting immediately please signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed? >> no. >> i believe that's two-thirds. all those in favor of the motion from the delegate from the district of columbia please signify -- >> mr. chairman can i call for a show of hands on this vote? >> yes, you may. all those in favor of the motion from the delegate from the district of columbia, please raise your hand to signify aye. wait, let me go back. did you want it on the call on the question or you wanted a call, you want it on the vote itself. >> yes, sir, i'm sorry.

>> that's correct. this is on the adoption/rejection of the amendment. all those in favor of the amendment please raise their hand. thank you, all opposed, please raise their hand. the amendment is defeated. thank you. we have another amendment at this point from the same delegate in the district of columbia referring to pages five and six. >> can you, please, scroll

through? >> it begins with deleting on page five, lines 30 to 37. and then the first two lines of page 6. so on line 30, after the word "denied to them," it deletes the same provision of law is now all the way down 'til the end of that page, and all the way down to the first, through the first two lines of page 6. >> what's shown on the screen is deleting further than the first two lines. >> let's make sure we have that right. this should end with gender,

where it says biological gender. i want to make sure we have it correct. all right, so it deletes, i want to make sure we have it accur e accurately portrayed on the screen. so we strike starting at that same provision of the law is now being used by bureaucrats. that same provision of law is now being used by bureaucrats. through the rest of that page on page five, and then the first two lines on page five to the

word "gender." that's what i have as the written. >> i didn't submit this amendment, mr. chairman. i think perhaps it's the delegate from rhode island who i was conferring with earlier. >> it says rachel on it. so we can withdraw the amendment if it's not yours and it has your name on it, we won't -- >> yes i'll withdraw the amendment. >> thanks. i'll be happy to share with you the paper that i have, thank you. the next amendment is from connecticut, the delegate from connecticut, pat longo. >> mr. chairman, i have a very quick, simple amendment, requires no conversation. [ laughter ] page five, line 37.

beginning the last three words "we support and" and on to page six, the first two lines, that's duplication. that same information about privacy in locker rooms, et cetera, has already been stated in the sentence before, on page five. >> so we have a motion to strike -- >> yes. >> motion made and seconded. would you like to discuss it, any further than you have? >> no, sir. >> duplicative taken has been seconded. the delegate from louisiana. >> mr. chairman i second that. it is duplicative. it was discussed in committee. the committee has, several members of committee is, are in agreement with that. i support the motion. >> the delegate from vermont.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. we thank the delegate from connecticut and tony perkins for offering this and we agree it's cleanup and call the question. >> someone else needs to call the question. i think the delegate from west virginia's hand was up as well. >> yes, i'd like to call the question. >> the question has been called. and seconded to vote immediately all those in favor of voting immediately signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed no. we're voting immediately on the motion from the gentlelady from connecticut. all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed no. it is adopted. next we have an amendment from the delegate from florida, page five, line 35. i ask the delegate from florida to please address the amendment. >> thank you mr. chairman. joe greers from florida here. please take a look at page five,

line 30 to 33. i propose adding a period after categories and deleting beyond a person's biological sex at birth. the purpose of this amendment is to follow the general principle of keeping language pretty general rather than alienating one specific person so i urge everybody to support this. thank you. >> discussion, the gentleman from california. second. you second it, okay. additional discussion? yes? >> mr. chairman, darcy johnson of vermont, i call the question. >> the question has been called. all those in favor of voting immediately please say aye. >> aye. >> opposed no. the motion is on the amendment all those in favor signify by saying ay pe >> aye. >> opposed no. >> no. >> the motion is approved. next i have eric from maine, i have an amendment for page 13,

lines three and four, and i think we have on the screen exactly what you have and i'd like to you, please, go over your amendment. >> thank you, mr. chair. this amendment would strike out the language which states that many jurisdictions marijuana is virtually legalized despite its illegality under federal law. it would replace that language with many states are wrestling with questions of the legality or illegality of cannabis for both medical and adult use, as is the right of states under the tenth amendment. >> that has been moved and seconded. is there additional discussion? >> yes. >> the delegate from california. >> noelle irwin-henschel. i believe that language needs to be left in that is reminding people that it is illegal under federal law. >> additional discussion before going back to the original author? the delegate from maine. >> i'll just say that, you know,

the language that's there implies that federal law is in this case has precedence over state law in this case, and that's really a mps reisreading the supremacy clause of the constitution. the supremacy clause states that federal law is supreme when that law is constitutional and i would challenge anyone in this room today to look under article i, section viii of the u.s. constitution and find a place where the federal government was granted authority to prohibit and decide the legal status of marijuana. if anyone can find that enumb rated there, i will withdraw the amendment, but other than that, i would suggest that this really is a state issue. this language is not prescriptive. it clarifies that states can decide the legality or illegality. if states want to have harsher penalties and harsher laws in place than what the federal government has, that's their right as well. this just clarifies that we

recognize, we, the party of the tenth amendment and the constitution, recognize that the tenth amendment applies in this issue, not just those where it's convenient to us. >> delegate from minnesota. >> let's just be clear, this is once again asking us to support legalizing marijuana which again, is a very divisive issue that we do not have to have on the platform. >> delegate from south carolina. >> chairman i call the question. >> the question has been called to vote immediately. is there a second? all those in favor signify by saying aye. >> aye. all those in favor of the amendment from the state senator from maine signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed nay. >> no. >> nay. >> defeated. the next amendment from the delegate from louisiana, tony perkins. it's page eight, if people are heading to the, turning the

pages, line 23, after the text "health care professionals. we respect the rights of conscience of health care professionals and addition. >> we simply add doctors, nurses and pharmacists to this. this is in keeping with even legislation that will be voted on by congress on wednesday in the house, the conscience protection amendment simply states doctors and nurses and pharmacists have their conscience protected under the law. >> is there a discussion? hearing none -- is there a second? thank you. discussion? hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed nay? this is adopted. that is the final amendment of this, the second plank of the republican platform, and i'd like to call on carolyn from oklahoma to make final comments or ask for adoption of the entire plank. >> yes, mr. chairman i do make a

motion to adopt the report of the subcommittee on great american families, education, health care and criminal justice as amended. >> second. >> all those in favor please signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> opposed nay. the second plank is adopted. now before you get up to leave, we will be handing out, i think the staff is ready to come through to hand out the final three, the final three planks that you approved today in the subcommittee, number four, number five and number six. we've completed two. the one on the economy you got earlier. the deadline for amendments is going to be 7:30 tomorrow morning, so you have time to work on those. we want to make sure that we get those in so we can actually get them typed and you can have all the amendments in your hands. we're going to continue to try to provide them to you on the screen which i think is very helpful to understand exactly what's going on as we try to shuffle through the papers.

we are also going to have a benediction in a few seconds. i think we're going to have a couple extra comments from ben, but then thomas dady from new york is going to give us a benediction to close the evening. >> andrew bremburg our policy director will walk you through the timing for the final three sections. economy and jobs closed. andrew, would you share with the group? >> yes, we will begin tomorrow morning taking up the economy and jobs section first, the filing deadline for that was closed previously, so we have all of those amendments, we'll have them ready for you tomorrow morning, that's the first section we'll take up. immediately after the benediction, we will have the new drafts of the three remaining subcommittees brought in to you here in your seats. you can change out the old language and get new language in to your binders and again have a 7:30 filing amendment deadline for tomorrow morning for those three remaining sections as the chairman said so we can have those not just only on av but also presented to you in hard copy as well, so if there are

any questions, we can follow up with any delegates afterwards. there are amendment filing forms by the filing baskets outside and immediately after the benediction you will receive the language for the final three sections. >> mr. chairman? >> yes. gentleman from indiana. >> thank you jim bob, indiana. you are accepting today amendments for the first 45 minutes, when the section was open. i assume you're going to be permitting that tomorrow, as we open each section, you will permit amendments for the first 45 minutes. >> yes, those were only available, those were new sections that had just been done by the subcommittee today, so that's why we extended those filing deadlines, because that was brand new language that those subcommittees had just reported out so it was literally only a couple hours available. however now, you will have three full subcommittee reports and be able to have that language all

evening and tomorrow morning, so those amendments can be filed tomorrow morning. >> mr. chairman, it is 20 'til 8:00. we are being given, what, three sections that are all new, two of them are new to me, that we are going to be expected to read and prepare amendments before 7:30 a.m. that is unreasonable. >> delegate from maryland. you wanted to comment on the same? same topic, if not we'll go back -- >> just echoing mr. bob's statement as well. >> delegate from michigan. >> i do, thank you. >> doug, go ahead. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just i apologize to the part of the conversation at hand i wanted my colleagues here on the platform committee to, as they

lay their head down on their pillow tonight, we had yet another couple of folks in our law enforcement community that lost their lives again today, and just within the last few hours, two bailiffs, they were both retired police officers in a courthouse in southwest michigan, my home state, lost their lives and the shooter lost his life as well. as well as a deputy sheriff was shot and injured today. there's more information coming, but please, keep those folks in your prayers. thank you, mr. chairman. >> well, let us spend a moment of silence and reflect on the loss of this country and these communities have suffered today. thank you. mr. bob, we absolutely want to

be reflective of what the committee needs. i think it's very reasonable to say 7:30 is early but you can see the needs of everyone who would like to have written copies of the amendments, so i think that we can set a time for tomorrow. we can make it at 8:00, we can make it at 8:30, you could go as make it at 8:30, you could go as far as next amendment also by eric burley from maine, page 4, line 9:r 9:00 bp 9:00 b 9 tomorrtomorrow anp tomorto deadlip deadline well "then when people have had these copies for almost 22 hours is not reasonable either or something that the staff can handle so we can go to 8:30 if you find that would be more reasonable and it would work better for the members of the committee to push back that deadline time from 7:30 to 8:30, say you need 9:00. it's just a matter of wanting to make sure you have in your hands and the staff is able to have in front of us on the screens what the amendments are, and that's the best way to give people who are actually going to have to vote on the amendments a

knowledge of looking at them ahead of time, too. so i think if we can find a common ground in the middle of that, if i could call on the delegate from rhode island. >> just to be clear, mr. chairman, giovanni ciccione from rhode island. the first review that we will do of the plank on the economy and jobs, that is closed. themans have been provided to the staff. >> yes, sir. >> i wouldn't want to see the delays on that piece because we had a later start for the other sections. >> yes, we were going to keep that. it's now the other three that the staff is ready to hand out now. so we'll be doing that one while we can be bringing in -- mr. bob, please. >> all i'm asking is we do the same thing tomorrow, that we did today, and that is once you open a section, whatever you have as the early submission i'm not talking about that. some people will be able to meet

that, and at least partially meet that. what i'm talking about is the 45 minutes, once you open a section, that we have 45 minutes to do additional amendments. i have not seen an amendment, except for this one in writing, in front of me. what i have seen them is on the screen, and that can be done by the staff. that is not difficult -- you know, in the past, past committee meetings, we actually got paper amendments, and we were submitting them during the session, and people were copying them and distributing them. now, and i'm fine with what you're doing now, you're putting them up on the screen, that is a much less irksome task for the staff to type in an amendment. if you can give us 45 minutes at the beginning of a session to submit additional amendments, i won't have to kill myself, okay, trying to deal with sections that i have not read and that

i'm exhausted right now to deal with, that i can deal with them tomorrow and that is not unreasonable. >> i think it's also not unreasonable to say you're going to be given 25 to 30 pages to read tonight or tomorrow morning, and to have amendments done by a finite time tomorrow morning, but to say that, well, if we're not going to start our final section until 3:00 or 4:00 tomorrow afternoon, that then it would be at 4:45 where the deadline would be and there's going to be certainly adequate time, so it would be my recommendation that we set a firm time of 9:00 a.m., that would give people plenty of time to read the number of pages, come up with amendments and then we can get all of the amendments distributed to every member of the committee, and if there is no forceful objection to that, that is my plan and recommendation as chairman of this committee. the delegate from arkansas.

>> well, if we are starting at 9:00 with all the amendments, and i have no, nothing to add, mr. chairman, but i would say that i like having all the amendments first thing in the morning because i don't like having 45 seconds to review something, which is what happens, unfortunately, as we read on the screen, so thank you, mr. chairman, for being reasonable and come dating all of us. >> thank you. the delegate from north carolina. >> yes, thank you. as co-chair of the national defense and security subcommittee, with the comment just made about more casualties due to some kind of terrorism, i'm not going to get into what some kind of -- there's nothing strong enough in our document that i've seen and i thumbed through the whole thing just now, that i think we have to go head-on and put something in here about how this party

intends to deal with terrorism across the board, in a concise, one-part section. i'm available to work with staff or anyone else to try to get an insert for this document, if everyone agrees. i move that we do something to get something in there that focuses on terrorism and how we're going to deal with it, as a party, and as a nation. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. delegate from virginia. >> thank you, mr. chair. just briefly. if the deadline is 9:00 does that mean we're convening at 9:00 or convening at a different time? >> we are going to convenient at 8:00 and start the committee at that point. >> thank you. >> and the deadline for amendments has passed so we'll have all of those written at your table as well. great. if there's no other questions -- yes, the delegate from north carolina. >> maybe i was unclear. i made a motion that we do that and someone join me in writing the document and we insert it

someplace in this document to let the people of this country know we are absolutely down on getting rid of this terrorism threat that we face in all of its forms. i don't know who the staffers are that would work with me but i'm willing to do it through the night to get it done and get something out there for us to consider. it's not done well right now. thank you. >> as the chairman of that subcommittee, chairman of that plank, i would welcome anyone who wants to join one of the chairs of that subcommittee to work tonight to look at what your subcommittee has passed, and find additional language to offer as first amendment tomorrow on that plank, as these are being handed out, you can look at that and subcommittee chair we'll call on you when we open up that part of the hearing tomorrow. >> senator, we can offer staff that worked with them on the committee to help you write it, the amendment. do you want to put it in your own report? >> so we can -- we have national security staffing. >> i would need some help.

>> that's available. thank you. we'll get that to you this evening. the delegate from michigan. oh, you're -- sorry, i thought you were pointing to me. >> just reaching for the microphone. steve yates from idaho. we did have several hours to talk about national security on the subcommittee. the event today had to do with a perpetrator stealing a gun from someone in a court. i think it's perfectly fair for an amendment to be made that's germane but there's a lot of national security material to digest tomorrow when the subcommittee reports and the event today is not directly related to terrorism, unless we're told otherwise. >> okay. thank you. delegate from north carolina. >> i don't mean to get into an argument with the gentleman. you know, whether or not this was terrorism, we have a terrorism problem, and that

caused me to think and look through the book. we do not in that national security document that we've done focus on and direct a specific packet -- package or passage that deals with how we intend to beat this threat against us as a nation. somebody has to stand up and do it. it might as well be us that gets it started. thank you. >> thank you. the delegate from virginia. >> thank you, mr. chair. if there's nothing further i move we adjourn. >> we'll go with the benediction and adjournment so thank you for that motion. while calling the delegate from new york to lead us in the ben fiction if you would all, please, rise. let's bow our heads, heavenly father, we've had a very long day. we've worked for the future of our country, for the future of our party, for future generations. we've done it respectfully.

please give us the strength to unify as a group, give us the wisdom to continue our debate. give us the strength, knowing that we will have disagreements within this group, give us the strength to heal as a family, so we can come together as a family, so we can elect a true leader who will lead us in a very troubled times, after the last eight-year mess that this country has been in under the failed leadership. please, give us the strength, dear lord, to unify and to support each other as we support our party, as we go forward with our platform, and our discussions. dear lord, please give us the strength to unify as a group. in the name of the father, and the son and the holy spirit,

amen. >> amen. >> so breakfast at 7:00. we'll start at 8:00. deadline for amendments at 9:00. today's session ised >> make sure you get all three copies of the sections. thank you. please stay in your seat areas, please stay seated or near your seat. >> mr. chairman? mr. chairman? >> yes? >> this is a suggestion on logistics. if we have to get -- it's janet byhoff from minnesota. if we have to get three new sets of material, instead of waiting for them to deliver them one at a time, i suggest everyone put

version one v-1 on the three sections we're going to get, because we are not going to use those, and then they can stand at the door and give us the new copies without having to take time to put them in and out of the books and we'll label the new copies v-2 on the first page. >> thank you for the suggestion. we already have our people fanned out and we also have people picking up discards. anything to add to that? >> is this mike on? yes, i think it would be easier if you begin taking the old sections out of your binders so you can put them in. we want to make sure there's no question around the version. that's a good point. these new sections have subcommittee report typed on the header or footer of the section, so if you remove the old sections --

so, the republican national committee has meetings all week in cleveland ahead of next week's republican national convention, where donald trump is expected to be nominated as

the party's presidential nominee. the platform committee has day two of its meeting tomorrow. we'll expect they finish up work on the republican party platform for this year's election. c-span3's live coverage gets under way about 2:00 eastern. later in the week the republican parties rules committee meets. some members want to change the parties rules so convention delegates do not have to vote for the candidate they are pledged to support. that's part of an effort to deny the presidential nomination to donald trump. the rnc rules committee meets thursday and friday to consider that and other rules for the party convention. rules committee meeting starts at 8:00 a.m. eastern both thursday and friday. we'll have them live right here on c-span3. and now on c-span3, let's show you today's opening of this platform committee meeting.

good morning and welcome back to the platform committee for the republican national convention. for those of you who arrived a little late last night, i'm john barrasso, chairman of the platform committee, u.s. senator from wyoming, joined by governor mary fallin from oklahoma, governor, and congresswoman virginia fox of north carolina. so, welcome for those of you who arrived late. thank you all for those who agreed to come back after last evening, and we will start today as we do at each of our meetings with a prayer, the pledge, and

we're going to turn to melodie moder from west virginia for the prayer, and please remain standing after the pledge for jesse law of nevada with the national anthem. so please stand and melodie, please lead us in prayer. >> would you please join me in prayer? dear heavenly father, we thank you so much for this opportunity to be here, lord, and to make a difference in our nation, father. and dear lord, we just ask in the name of jesus christ, this morning, lord, for your guidance and your wisdom to help us, lord, stand for things true and right, father, and to do the things that would be pleasing unto you, lord, and i just ask, father, as we go throughout our platform today and tomorrow, father, that you give us a special anointing, stand for the things this country was founded

upon, father. we thank you we live on the greatest nation on the face of this earth, lord, and father we need to make sure we preserve it and our freedoms come through you, lord. father, as many of us support mr. trump, it's truly only you that can make america great again, so i ask we turn our eyes back upon you, lord, and as the scripture says in timothy, i ask you would give us oneness and spirit, lord, and unify us, father, and lord we just need your heart today. hard to heart, speak to each person, lord, because we depend upon you in such a mighty way. we just thank you, leave it in your hands, jesus christ of nazareth, name that we pray, amen.

>> please join me in the pledge. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. ♪ oh say can you see by the dawn's early light ♪ ♪ what so proudly we hailed ♪ at the twilight's last gleaming ♪ ♪ whose broad stripes and bright

stars through the perilous fight ♪ ♪ o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming ♪ ♪ and the rockets' red glare ♪ the bombs bursting in air ♪ gave proof through the night that our flag was still there ♪ ♪ oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave ♪ ♪ o'er the land of the free and

the home of the brave ♪ >> thank you, mellody, thank you, jesse, thank you, pat, absolutely outstanding. now i'd like to call on the committee woman from hawaii. >> thank you very much, senator barrasso. i would like to make a presentation from the 50th state, the state that's out in the middle of the pacific ocean, and is guarding all of those nations and our west coast with macadamia nuts that i promised to bring for everyone. >> thank you. this is a woman of her word. she said that in the conference call that she would bring

chocolate covered macadamia nuts, thank you very much, we'll have those up here and share with everyone. outstanding. i'd like to at this time call on benke with some housekeeping information. >> thank you very much, senator. i know and appreciate all the work you've done last night, it was a short night for many of you. some had instances and issues at home, so thank you for that. i'm going to recognize dave shopa, our parliamentarian. i've been encouraged to show some grace and dave is going to share new timings, working with some delegates and appreciate bringing things to our attention. so, david? >> can you hear me? there we go. thank you for your patience this morning and continued through the next two days.

there is a tremendous amount of paper flow, as you can imagine. a lot of logistics involved with making sure you get all the information you need, so we appreciate your patience as we sort of sort through this. we need to get those amendments in, we need to process them, sequence them, so we currently have for the first section that will be considered this afternoon a 1:30 filing deadline. we're going to continue with that, but we're also going to extend it. we'd appreciate if you can do your best to get those in at 1:30, but we're going to give a grace period of 45 minutes into the session for you to get those turned in, understanding you may have tweaks you can do or additional language you're looking at. we'll give an extra 45 minutes once the session starts for that first section. in a similar way, the second section we consider this afternoon, you'll get from the time that you receive that language an hour, one hour. that's a floating time, depending on we'll give you that language as soon as it's available, but in any event you'll get 45 minutes from when

we start that section here. whatever is later, obviously, will be the filing deadline. so we'll extend both of those deadlines to give you more of a grace period, we would appreciate it, because we have to take the amendments, track those amendments, make sure you get copies zlibted, stick to the original deadlines if you can, but please if you have issues, come and talk with one of us and we will work with you. >> we have a couple of housekeeping amendments, but first, anything, governor, you'd like to add this morning? >> once again, just thank you very much for your time today. i had the opportunity to meet many of you last night and i know you're taking off from work, being away from your families, paying for your own expenses to be here, but this is one of the most important jobs we have as citizens of our nation, to develop the republican platform and conservative principles and ideals, and as i was listening to the national anthem and listening as we repeated our pledge of allegiance, it just reminded me what a great nation

we live in and how we have such a wonderful opportunity to express our opinion, gather and assemble in safety, and to be able to have the freedoms that we enjoy today in america, so thank you for all that you're doing here today. >> thank you, governor. congresswoman? >> well, being the last person to speak gives me the opportunity to say ditto, i agree, amen, to what my colleagues have said. thank you all for being here and godless you, and let's hope that wonderful prayer is heard by god, so he will bless us with wisdom and unity, thank you. >> thank you, we have a couple of housekeeping amendments, the first has to do with allowing grammatical corrections. without objection we'll subject the executive director, legal counsel, and other members of the team to make edits that may occur in the final text on tuesday. if we make a mistake in the final draft, we're able to catch

those along the way, we'll be able to make all those corrections, things that don't substantively change the substance in the platform, is there objection? hearing none, so ordered. the next motion is to allow the chairs to set the order of the subcommittee reports, we mentioned this last night, so in order to keep things fully moving, without objection, the governor, the congresswoman, and i will control the order in which we address the subcommittee reports this afternoon and tomorrow. this will allow us to use the time more efficiently, give staff any time that they need to incorporate the agreed upon amendments from the subcommittees and for the subcommittees, so if there's any objection? hearing none, so ordered. and then i want to call on our counsel justin reimer. justin, if you would comment in terms of explaining the definition of state in the rnc rules and how the term includes

the u.s. territories for the purpose of this platform, as we are a committee of 112. >> thank you, mr. chairman. for clarification purposes in defining the term state and states, as it is referred to throughout the republican platform, we can look for guidance in the rules of the republican party, specifically rule 1 b, which makes clear the term states is to include the u.s. territories and the district of columbia. i'll quickly read the relevant part of that definition for the rule. for the purpose of this rule and all other rule, state or states shall be taken to include american samoa, district of columbia, guam, northern mariano islands, puerto rico, and the virgin islands. >> thank you. so, with that we now have an understanding of that. there is another motion that we need to deal with, and that is the fact that we are a temporary committee, and the full

committee actually meets next monday. we will meet together again at the convention center after the convention is gavelled in and then we are going to come together to actually approve the platform that we are approving here tomorrow and that you're going to be working on and crafting over the next two days. so with that motion i call on mr. dick shaner from wyoming. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i move that all issues to come before the temporary committee platform be debated completely and fully. members of this committee also agree that at the end of that debate we will take a final vote on the platform in our capacity as temporary committee on the platform by airing all issues fully and by taking the final vote on the platform, the members of the temporary committee on the platform agree that the only vote on july 18th, 2016, of the meeting of the

permanent convention committee on the platform will be confirmation of the final vote taken by this temporary committee on the platform. >> is there a second to mr. shaner's motion? second has been heard. is there discussion? hearing none, it's been moved and seconded that all issues be aired fully here and that we then reconvene on monday, july 18th, 2016, to take a single vote confirming the actions of our previous meeting. all those in favor of this motion please signify by saying aye. all those opposed say nay. the ayes have it. last night we talked about all the people with all the different backgrounds that are part of this platform and talked about the incredible number of folks. what we didn't do, and i would like to ask now, anyone who has served in our military, any of our veterans who are serving on the platform committee, could you please stand and let us thank you for the commitment that you have made to this great

nation? [ applause ] thank you. i know people are chomping at the bit to get to the platform subcommittees. i do want to call on utah member boyd mattison, who has comments to make. boyd? >> thank you, mr. chairman. to my fellow delegates, the concept that i want to share this morning that we talked about with chairman barrasso and others has to do with our focus on principles. it's been said that ideas go booming through the world like cannons, that thoughts are more powerful than armies, and that principles have won more victories than horsemen and

chariots. so inspiring ideas, transformational thoughts, and powerful principles, these have been the center and driving force of the republican party from the very beginning. when lincoln launched a movement to really save a nation and to form our party, years ago when i was chief of staff to senator mike lee, on occasion we'd get together with dr. larry arm from hillsdale college and philosophize the world to death and solve all the problems, and on one of the nights, dr. arn raised the idea of a platform similar to 1860, that lincoln ran on. it was 1,200 words in length, written directly to the american people, speaking very powerful language. it's convenient that i'm sitting next to our colleague, dr. david barton here from texas, because

david actually has in his possession the 1860 platform, and you're welcome to come see it after, but it is a platform of principle and what unites us as a party. because a platform to have power must be read, and if we are going to be the party of the hard working americans, we should deliver to them a message and a platform that they can read in a single sitting. if the millennials can do it in 140 characters, certainly, we can do better than 33,000 words. [ applause ] now, platforms like anything else in politics tend to get bigger over time, and unfortunately as they become more dense and gain more dimension, it creates a real distance between the authors and

the only audience that really matters, and that is the american people. now, certainly, we need to have discussion about the things that separate us. and the republican party, oneness is not sameness. we are always at our best as a party when we are the party of big ideas and open, even royaling debate, and i'm sure we'll have some of that over the next two days, and that's the way it should be. that's a good thing. it's part of what makes us unique as republicans, but it does not define us. we are not defined by our disagreements. we are defined by what unites us as a party, and we need to make sure we are sending a clear message to the american people about what we really are all about, so let's define those principles and let's lay them out to the country. rather than trying to hash out

every specific on every detail on every issue, let's go back to identifying and then powerfully communicating the principles that unite us. i was at a fourth of july party, and a friend came up and told me about a conversation he'd had with his teenage son about politics. and my friend wanted to know the answer to his son's question, why are we republicans? and that is a question we should all be thinking about on this committee today. and i would venture to guess that none of you here today are republicans because of some line item in the budget. or your position on whether the president should have trade authority. or that the tax code should be a certain percentage of gdp. you are here because of our principles. conservative principles that

have lifted more people out of poverty, fuelled more freedom, created stronger homes and more heroic communities than any set of principles in the history of the world. that is what unites us. chairman barrasso rightly said it yesterday, that there are many who want to convince us that we are divided, and whether that's the media, whether that's the liberal left, whether that's special interest groups, they want us to believe that we're just too divided. and so we have a battle to prove once and for all, not only as a party, but as a nation, we are not too divided to deal with the challenging issues of our day. we can't buy into this myth of division that tells us that we should just retreat into our social classes and races and parties and special interests. there's a lot that unite us, so simply put, we need to simply

put our principles first, last, and always. so -- thank you. [ applause ] so, i'm going to paraphrase madison, because hamilton's getting way too much publicity these days. he said it will be of little avail to the party or to the american people if the platform be so voluminous that it cannot be read and so prescriptive that it cannot be understood. our principles provide us power, but our desire to have an all encompassing document often weakens us as a party and as a nation. the 1860 platform begins very simply with a focus on reenthroning the declaration of independence as our unifying statement of principle and the constitution as the framework to

make sure those principles are preserved. it's a simple platform, 17 points of principles and a very few set of policies. conservative principles work. we know they work, and we should never bury them so deep in a binder, a paragraph, or a set of pages that the american people cannot readily recognize what those principles are. governor fallin mentioned yesterday the moment she recognized and realized she was a conservative. why? because she read principles of this party. it's principles. and i'm here to tell you, there are countless individuals in this nation, countless groups, and more important, countless communities, who need to have an experience with our party's principles. it will change the country. the american people are starving

for a dialogue about principles. now, they will never ask for that conversation in a frank lund-led focus group or a pugh research poll, but they are starving for it, and it's up to us to deliver it. we live in very uncertain times, in an uncertain election cycle. people want to hear the certain trumpet of true conservative principles. so, dr. arn and matt spaulding, also from hillsdale, we worked to put together a little draft. it's 1,177 words. just for you to think about and to ruminate on a little bit. now, some have told me that it's way too late to draft such a platform this year, and they are probably right, but i think we would also be very wise, particularly as we go to our committees, to recognize that in

an age when even positive, incremental change happens, we live in a quantum change world. we need to do things differently. the founding fathers just tweaking king george's tax code or adjusting his regulatory regime a little bit never would have sparked a revolution that touched and captured the hearts and minds of the people and stirred the soul of a new nation. so, you all have before you shortly a copy of this resolution, of this idea, and i would just ask you to ponder and consider it. at maximum, we should adopt such a platform, trust that our principles will prevail, and change this election cycle and every one that follows. at minimum, we should adopt this kind of language as some sort of preamble and then we should

barnstorm the nation and invite the american people to read it, read it in a single sitting, and join us in the conversation about the principles we know will elevate every single american. it's time for us to send our ideas, our thoughts, and our powerful principles as a republican party through this country like a cannon. at the very least, at the very least, all of us should take this document home and read it around the kitchen table and share it with the people that we care about. talk about it in coffee shops and high school gymnasiums, and even online. and we should begin a new dialogue. and when we are asked why we are republicans, it is my prayer and my hope that we will be able to boldly declare we hold these

truths, these principles, knowing that the principles of this party will not only create a better, brighter future for america, but a new birth of freedom. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, boyd, thank you. [ applause ] we're getting ready to break to the subcommittees. you know where the subcommittee rooms are upstairs. lunch is going to be on that same level. so when you come out of the subcommittee rooms, the lunch will be ready, and then we'll be back here to start promptly at 2:00 p.m. to consider the first plank of the platform for the 2016 convention. and that -- that will be the energy plank that we will start with at 2:00. thank you very much. see you back at 2:00.

our road to the white house coverage continues thursday and friday as republicans consider the rules for next week's convention in cleveland. live coverage on c-span, the c-span radio app, and c-span.org. while the rnc platform committee meets in cleveland this week, donald trump campaigns in indiana. watch live at 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span2. the fbi decided last week to recommend no criminal charges against hillary clinton for her use of private e-mail servers while she was secretary of state. next, a look at how this could affect the information that's available to the public from "washington journal," this is about 45 minutes. >> john wonderlich of the sun life foundation to talk about the issue of transparency of government. a lot of that came into play with the issue of hillary clinton's e-mail server. what did we learn not only from that, but government information and how transparent it is?

>> it's been an unusual year or so in the public discussion of what went on with hillary's e-mail, because it's not typical the freedom of information act or records management is such a huge issue it becomes part of the public debate, so what we learned is there were some serious failures on her part to manage information the way that it's intended to be managed, but also there was a variety of investigations and public oversight and interest in correcting the situation, making sure it doesn't happen again, and then, obviously, a great deal of political interests in sorting out who's at fault and how big of a deal it is. >> one of the phrases that we heard coming out of this situation was the freedom of information act. what is it? >> so the freedom of information act gives anyone in the world the right and ability to request documents from the government and the government is obliged to hand over those documents. doesn't mean we'll release

secrets or cause harm, but it gives a great deal of power to any requester to say i'd like the calendar of a cabinet official, for example, and if the government doesn't turn it over, we can sue if the government doesn't and that's a great deal of power, because judges can compel the government to release information. so that's responsible for a much more empowered press and lots of things that we know, only because there are people looking out for us and requesting documents so they can be analyzed. >> doesn't matter where that document lives? does it have to be on a government server or a private server, does it matter where a document lives in order to gain access to information? >> that was actually a question that was considered by the courts over the last week or so. it was decided that even if the information from a public official is managed in a private account, the freedom of information act should still apply. that means if you're trying to keep things secret or manage them on your own personal server, doesn't matter.

the government still has an obligation to release records responsive to what the person is requesting. >> one of the things you wrote about this, you said, and this was from the fbi recommendation, today's recommendations from the fbi re-enforce a sense that trying to vad the freedom of information act is illegal. can you expand on that? >> sure. so one of the things that's frustrated a lot of people, when the fbi over the last week announced that they are not recommending a prosecution, that offends people because they have a sense that secretary clinton was trying to hide something. that's probably right. she probably set up an e-mail server in order to prevent either public access to her records or congressional oversight of what she was doing. the problem is that's not illegal, and i'm not sure that it's possible to make it illegal. it's very normal in washington to set up a meeting for someone and them to say let's have a personal conversation and take

this off of e-mail because there's a greater sense of discretion or personal interaction. sometimes people do that because they don't want a record of what they've said. and that's not really an enforceable decision. that's very difficult to get in -- it happens in some situations, but it's very difficult to regulate speech in a way that says this must be written down in a way the records can be requested. that's really what we're getting at, the episode secretary clinton demonstrates it's difficult to require interactions to happen in a way they are subject to oversight. >> what would make it illegal or what would have to be done? is that something that has to be changed within the rules of government, or is it the rules else where that have to be changed? >> the way it currently works, the term illegal is difficult to use for this. there's an affirmative requirement that cabinet secretaries and government officials do their business in a way that is professionally

managed, where the records are saved appropriately and managed in a way that they are preserved. the problem is that over the last couple decades, electronic records have expanded so dramatically that almost every government agency does a terrible job of this. so if you said it's illegal if your records are not properly saved, then everyone is breaking the law and that doesn't help the situation at all, and that's not even getting into the legal question that was at stake in the fbi investigation, which was about the handling of classified information. so when you're talking about classified information, obviously, there's a much higher standard about how information is managed. >> john wonderlich with us talking about transparency in government. if you want to ask him questions, call. our first call comes from kay. kay is in missouri on our independent line. thanks for calling, kay, go

ahead. >> caller: mr. wonderlich, i -- i just don't have any confidence in the system. >> mr. wonderlich, would you share that sentiment? >> i think a lot of americans share that sentiment, and this has been re-enforced in polling that americans have a decrease in sense of trust for the government and that's a problem that's getting worse. certainly applies to congress and how our government is managed, happening in other governments, as well, and i think it reflects a lot of different shifts going on in how our society is being managed. >> democrats line, larry, good morning. >> caller: good morning. yeah, i think the reason the people don't trust the government anymore is because we let 9/11 happen.

it was a 401(k) investment, and the proof is in iraq. >> june from edenburg, virginia, republican line. hi, there. >> caller: hi, how are you? thank you for taking my call. what i want to say is, when it comes to transparency in government, this is the least transparent government we have had in all the years i can think back, and i'm an old person, so i know. but i tell you what, i think the political correctness is what keeps the transparency the way it is. and it needs to change, and that's the reason i support donald trump. i really think there will be change. he has a big mouth, and i think a big mouth that stands up and says what he thinks, they think he's a loose cannon, i think he's a smart cookie. >> thanks.

>> well, on the question of whether -- i would assume you're talking about the obama administration is the most transparent, that's certainly something that's up for debate and is hotly debated, and i think my estimation of that would be that they are, the obama administration, has been far more transparent in many important ways, and in some important ways has been far less transparent. the one thing i would say is certainly clear about the obama administration is they have repeatedly, rhetorically committed to openness and made it a part of their platform both at home and around the world trying to push the idea of stronger governments and accountability that includes transparency and that is something even despite all the points of criticism, that's something we shouldn't take for granted. >> as far as the far more, far less, how have they been far more transparent, how have they been far less? >> the first two laws passed dealing with the financial crisis and the stimulus, the

white house, this is an example of people we don't talk about very much, all the lobbying that happened to implement dodd-frank and the stimulus had to be disclosed on agency websites, and this meant as those really important laws were being implemented, we had a pretty strong window into the lobbying that was happening to influence what the government was doing, and i think that's an action they don't get enough credit for. on far less transparent, i would say the question of drone strikes is a pretty dramatic question in civilian causalities and one where the obama administration for years was very secretive, and one of the reasons that's less transparent is it didn't even exist in previous administrations, so we like to think of transparency as being proportional to power, and when a president claims or gets access to a new kind of power, then that certainly raises questions about how transparency is being yielded. >> who are the people within the administration responsible for making sure the information is

seized and making sure it becomes transparent? >> so, there are a lot of different kinds of ways that information is managed. one important way is -- two important ways. one is when information is being preserved for the historical record, the national archives, which is actually an independent agency, is responsible for setting the regulations that say, well, if it's in e-mail and you're a mid-level official that works at the treasury, then it should be saved for a certain period of time unless it pertains to a certain kind of decision. you can imagine how complicated that gets, but they are responsible for the regulations about retaining records and then the freedom of information act, so when someone requests a record through an official process, that goes to a freedom of information officer that's an employee of the agency and they follow regulations and guidelines that are set by the department of justice. but information policy can be a really tricky question with something as large and

complicated as the entire u.s. government. >> from oklahoma, democrats line, you're on. >> caller: yes, good morning, mr. wonderlich. question about the fbi director's testimony, e-mail, ask you to comment about his decision on that and also, it might not be a transparency question, but i think hillary clinton was -- when she said she was allowed, i think she was referring to at that time the former secretary of state did the same thing and one has a book out about it, talking about colin powell, and, see if you have any comments. thank you. >> sure, on the second part

first, secretary clinton's claim she was allowed to use e-mail, i don't think that was a defense that was offered in good faith. she was allowed in the sense that no one stopped her, but i don't think it was a thing that was permitted or encouraged by any means, not something she sought out clearance or permission to do, so i don't think that defense was a very strong one at all. and on the question of comey's testimony and the fbi's decision not to recommend prosecution, there's a number of different layers to this, which i think are complicated, but one of them is when the fbi director said the case history says that no one else or very few others would prosecute, to my eye that's correct. that is the tradition when you look at the statute and the way which cases have chosen to be prosecuted. the prosecutions are around cases where there's an additional layer of some sort of intent, and secretary clinton did not demonstrate that.

the intent that she demonstrated was to avoid oversight, and that's very different from intending to leak secrets or intending to be a spy or intending to whatever else. so in terms of the tradition, i think the recommendation is accurate. in terms of its consequences, though, that's why we're concerned about what that means for the future of oversight and information act. >> from tallahassee, florida, independent line, minnie, hello. >> caller: good morning, this is ms. minnie. my concern is i don't feel like there's any transparency, which is why i'm independent to start with. in reference to the fbi, he didn't exonerate her. basically what he said was that in the history of america, you know, there is no statute of precedence to prosecute hillary clinton, because no one's ever done what she did. so that's the reason that he

recommended no prosecution, because there's no history of it. so, and his reference to transparency, i personally would like to know, you know, where she and obama were in reference to benghazi. and i wanted to make another comment in reference to polls, and the gentleman had said something about the questions, and that's true, because some of the questions that i got were, you know, either and/or, black or white, and i didn't like either one of them, so i said i didn't want to make any comment. >> got ya, got ya. that was up from the last segment, we appreciate it. mr. wonderlich? >> sure, so something i think that's fascinating about fbi director comey's public statement and the congressional testimony is that was very unusual. the fbi doesn't do an investigation, decline to prosecute, then have a press conference about their sense of someone's intentions, but that doesn't mean that it's a

terrible thing. part of the situation is that we're talking about a major party's presumptive nominee for president, and that person will then be responsible for the department of justice, which the fbi is a part of, and so there is a great deal -- there is a very strong reason that the fbi needs to make it understood why they would make such a decision. it's an extraordinary situation where oversight is coming from a body that will eventually be overseen by the person -- assuming that secretary clinton were to win the presidency, then she would be responsible for the d.o.j., so the circularity is one of the reasons i think director comey made such a point of going out publicly and saying this is a professional decision managed by a team of people participating in good faith, so that we can have some faith in even application of justice. >> off of twitter, a viewer asked why do americans think they are entitled to classified

information, and a follow up, do other countries allow it? >> so, there is often a give and take about whether or not classified information should be disclosed and for how long it should be classified, and i think tug of war over that question is entirely appropriate, because without public pressure on secrecy and classification, public officials would just classify anything that they don't want to have, that they would like to keep secret, so that's why we have a rules and law-based process for determining whether things should be classified and reviewing that decision, and as long as we're not releasing secrets, which we don't really have a problem of freedom of information requests resulting in secrets that become public but harm people. that's not where harmful leaks have come from. i think we're on really solid ground defending the idea there are lawful fights over secrecy. >> oare texts open, texts that are exchanged within members?

>> within the administration, yes. now, in practice how often that's able to be tracked down i'm not sure, but if it's an official record and being used in correspondence in the administration, yes, it's covered by the freedom of information act. with members of congress, they are exempt. so they are not covered at all. >> why is that different? >> that's different because congress declined to apply the freedom of information act to themselves. which is something that happens often in the states, as well, in each of the 50 states, some of the legislatures have their state level version of the law apply to them and some states don't. so that's an active question for debate, is whether congress should have more of the freedom of information act applied to them, and certainly it should at least at some levels. it would be a great public policy question to determine what parts of congress would be better off with the foia applied

to them. >> no matter who's involved in the chamber, they've generally said we won't apply foia to ourselves. >> the law says this covers the agencies at a certain level and congress is not touched by this. you can try to request it, but you can't sue. the court, there's no jurisdiction, law doesn't apply to the congress or the president is the other big carve out, which is understandable, but there may be other ways of dealing with that problem, but that's the big limitation on the foia, congress and president is excluded. >> john wonderlich joining us to talk about transparency issues in government. dorothy from kansas, republican line. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i have a question. if hillary lied four times, and that's a felony, how come she's not prosecuted? and also her husband lied a

couple of times, and he wasn't prosecuted. now, how can we trust these people if they are going to lie? and if hillary gets in, it's going to be hillary, obama, and bill all in the white house all over again. isn't that true? >> so, one of the fbi director comey's comments before congress, and if you watch the oversight hearing, you can see the director answering a lot of questions about this, he said that they did not see any evidence of her lying to them, and that that would be illegal if secretary clinton were to have lied to the fbi while being questioned. on the question, broader question of politicians telling the truth, it's frustrating when politicians lie to the public, but making that illegal would probably cause an even greater problem, because everyone would be trying to prosecute their enemies and that might cause more chaos than it would prevent. >> from maine, democrats line, helen, good morning. >> caller: good morning.

my question is about the sunlight foundation. specifically, does your group look at so-called shadow government specifically regarding i.t. contracts by the federal government with private business? it's been years since i was a federal worker, but my experience with i.t. was that it was boondoggle after boondoggle and a tremendous waste of taxpayers' money spent on incompetent private contractors who never seem to be able to get things right. and i'm wondering if you could comment and perhaps it's better now, and what impact this has on the current sense of trust among public officials regarding their -- >> sure. so i would say the failures are just as bad or worse in terms of government contracting, i.t.,

healthcare.gov and the electronic records archive, expensive year-long projects that largely failed, with healthcare.gov until it was rescued, big, massive failures. what's changing is there are a number of people that have identified tractable, fixable problems with the contracting and the i.t. contracting system, and so if you look at the u.s. digital service or at 18-f, these are new government-led groups of people that are trying to change the way the government buys technology and to change the way the government builds technology. neither of which were a major source of pride in the past often. we went to the moon, so we shouldn't have no pride. that's a technical feat in itself, but in terms of procuring i.t., it's been a terrible failure, but i would encourage you to look up 18-f or usds and see all these incredible changes people are making it possible to have government contracts for a $500

project within i.t., just trying to change utterly how the system works and prevent these billion dollar ten-year failures that have so often characterized the i.t. system with the government. >> john wonderlich, republican line, john from pennsylvania. hi. >> caller: yes, good morning. thanks for c-span, and i benefit a lot by being a viewer, a c-span viewer, and the transparency in government, obviously, is essential to have a well informed electorate, and some of the guests that you've had have really contributed to transparency for me, so to speak. example, this gentleman sounds like he's well, but opensecrets.org with campaign contributions gives you, you know, these people are not making large donations for no reason. you recently had a guest who just recently published a book

"war on cops," heather mcdonald. she's a scholar at the manhattan institute. astonishing stuff, really good. using fbi statistics that are readily available, but difficult to interpret. and just anybody who's interested in exactly what's going on right now would benefit an enormous amount by reading heather mcdonald. you can -- she writes for the city journal in new york, and she's a scholar. >> okay. john, thank you. how often do organizations like yourself depend on a foia request to get information to spread to the public? >> we use foia very often to investigate even the foia itself, what are the number of requests you're receiving and how are you dealing with them. a lot of organizations that break original news do so

because they have people that understand the freedom of information act and are able to submit sophisticated requests and then can follow up with a lawsuit if necessary. and that really demands the government's attention and lets you see things that maybe are stories that haven't been told before. >> if i'm an average person and i make a request under foia, what's the likelihood, a, i'll get the information i want, and how long will it take me to get it? >> so, the law says it should take a maximum of maybe 20 days. the problem is, that's very rarely the case. you are more likely to get a request if your request is narrow, so i would like the calendar for this day two years ago, as opposed to i would like every e-mail that someone sent about the calendar. that's going to be a massive request and may even be unanswerable, so the narrower the request, the more likely you are to get a response. it also depends a bit on the agency. if you submit a request to the state department, you're much likely to get a response in a

reasonable amount of time. same goes to the cia, who generally takes the position it shouldn't apply to them at all, they tend to fight everything. >> is there a backlog of requests? >> yes, every agency has requests, i believe. and one of the goals that the president set with the agencies is to reduce the backlog every year so we're moving forward and not backward and that has been generally successful with some out liars. >> you are on with john wunder lick. >> with the public so focused on political correctness, i wonder how you can work between to see this holder and lynch and justice department and the way they -- the way they tray ang late -- like the irs and

benghazi and it is a joke to people. and then you wonder about apathy and it is easy to look at the justice department and the whole obama administration and you cannot give them any credit other than being able to polarize this country. now donald trump has kind of raised the issues of political correctness and you could see just the infusion of life and energy, not that it -- that the lobbyist and the street don't want because it fits into the corruption and the press who have -- msnbc sitting on one side and fox sitting on the other side. and you get the opinions that are over-run with just everybody's agenda. >> thanks, caller. >> i would say that it is easy to get frustrated and to find bad news and it is certainly the case that trust in government has decreased and polarization has increased. but i think it is also helpful to keep in mind how bad things

can get. and that in a lot of countries, it is commonplace to over-throw the ruler by controlling the military or the police in the capital city, like we have questions of who is -- whose voters are unified enough and is the party going in a healthy direction. we don't have the question of how many generals are lawyer to the president and willing to overthrow or we don't have presidents that assume office and then immediately throw the previous president and their staff in prison. in some countries, it is commonplace to throw the leader of the opposition party in jail for fake charges. so in terms of the rule of law, there are a lot of reasons to be frustrated or concerned but we still have a very orderly, reasonably representative political process that is imperfect but when you compare it against those questions, the parties fail and have their problems, but it is not a fight between the military and the church. that is another example from

around the world. so i think it is helpful sometimes to keep that perspective. >> mike is from ohio. and he's on our democrats line. hi. >> good morning. people talk about hillary clinton line and barack obama. let's -- there was a show that was aired last week, i don't know, you may have seen it, it was aired on pbs and it was called "the secret history of isis" and it was an hour-long program and my jaw just dropped when i listened to this program. the lies that came out of the bush administration, all the way from cheney, george bush all the way down to condoleezza rice and colin powell who sat in front of the u.n. and out right lied not only to the u.p. bn. to the uni states and the world. people who live in britain, they just released the iraq report, it was a long overreport --

overdue report and i talked to them over the weekend and they said it was amazing that the people in great britain point the finger at the united states because they lied to us about the intelligence given to them. there were intelligence reports that were changed. that were sent to people every day on daily briefing. libby, cheney and they exposed valerie plain and her husband because they said there were no weapons of mass destruction in iraq. >> okay, thanks, caller. >> so the -- the report that the caller was referring to, i followed that pretty closely as well and was trying to imagine an american analog to that kind of oversight into the decision to go to war and i couldn't -- i couldn't really think of one. there is also the -- the torture report, the intelligence committee report which there has been a great deal of back and forth and struggle about whether it would be released or a summary would be released and i

guess i'll go back to what i said before which is it is entirely appropriate there be big, difficult fights over when national security information should be disclosed because it is a matter of public policy and at the same time there is absolutely harm that can be caused by the kay it -- the way is disclosed. so that is going to remain a contested question given america's role in the world and one that is probably worth a lot more of all of our attention is the question of what is public and what is overseen and is congress doing its job in terms of applying oversight to the right places. >> we live in a culture where technology rapidly changes. what does that mean for the government as they try to preserve information and make it transparent? >> one thing it means is that our expectations for what we have access to have grown dramatically. i could buy something and immediately see the charge reflected on the ledger on the internet only by myself. so everyone has that experience and expects the government to

live up to it and it largely does not. so that is one thing that changes our expectations. north thing that has -- another thing that has changed is records are everywhere. everything we do leaves a trail of records that reflect every communication and every e-mail and data point that is collected so the information that the government has to deal with is increasing exponentially and the number of people that there are to deal with it and the policies that put that information up and manage it has not kept pace. this is a growing problem that means it is a challenge. and also the places that we interact and the way that we interact is not keeping base either. so there is a story about the san francisco city council and they were using encrypted communication channels -- i don't remember the name of the telegraph or telegram, but it was an encrypted communication channel that made it outside of the reach of the freedom of information law. so how are laws going to keep

pace when public officials start using encryption, that is a question. >> and on the republican line, dotty, hi, there. >> caller: my question has to do with hillary clinton. i have been hearing something in the last few days about her when she was secretary of state, they were burning information at the end of every day. do you know anything about that? >> i saw reports about the calendars being burned. but i haven't seen much beyond that. i think it is a good question. >> matthew from michigan. grand rapids michigan, independent line. hi there. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. my question is for john and how he came to the conclusion that that hillary clinton did not lie when trey dowdy gave the line of questioning to director combi which depicted her lying under oath and that is all i have, thank you. >> so what i was retelling is

director comey saying to the committee, including gowdy, that they didn't have evidence that she lied in her testimony to them. that they did not develop the kind of evidence that suggests she was misleading them in her -- when she was requested. and then there are a number of other contexts where she may have lied but there is questions because a lot of her public statements have been misleading about the whole affair, whether they were intentionally misleading is a different question but it is clear now that the claims that she made were misleading at the time. >> a couple of other topics to ask you about while we have you here. the supreme court handed out a decision looking at the former virginia governor mcdonald and about the issue of corruption and revisit the case for us quickly and what does it mean when it comes not only to how corruption is prosecuted but also information involved in those trials and process. >> sure. so the former governor of virginia was convicted on

corruption charges and that case went to the supreme court and the supreme court overturned or vacated that decision and sent it back to the courts. so what is at stake here is if someone with business before the government gives, say, $15,000 rolex or anything else of value to a public official, and then that public official does something, so there is a -- a quid pro quo, at what point is it a corrupt act that is criminal is the question and what the court said is it has to be an official act for it to be criminal and for what they did was to say the act has to be concrete. it can't be setting up a meeting because that happens all of the time. and i think the court's concern was that politics be criminalized but the worry is they made it difficult to track down criminals that are in politics. and so the ins and outs of what

is an official act and when something is corrupt is something people will have to take a hard look at. and even election lawyers in their private service are having fights with each other over what it means and where the line should be drawn. and it is not an easy line to draw. because if you look at russia, prosecution corruption -- or prosecuting corruption is not something that you can trust in -- for example in russia. it is something you do to punish your enemy. so you can't say anything that looks corrupt, you can prosecutor it. it is a line that we have to draw carefully. but in our opinion the court went too narrow and a bunch of things that anyone would say would meet a common sense definition of corruption suddenly it is not clear that you will be able to build corruption cases around them and that is what this case is about. can we draw reasonable lines around what constitutes public corruption and how politics works. >> and if i remember un aanimou

in this case, did that surprise you. >> yes, it did. that they were that confident in the line they drew. and the court itself, it operates on dialogue with people with lifetime appointments who tend not to have been legislators so their job is not to represent people, their job is to sit in a room and think big thoughts and talk to each other and in that context you don't feel you could be corrupted but in a legislator whose job it is to represent 500,000 constituents we have to worry about a legislator or a governor and the power that a governor has being corrupted by a contribution. >> matthew in georgia, republican line, you are on. >> caller: good morning. i was in the navy in the '70s and '80s and on john f. kennedy and when they threw trash off the ship and there were russian

trollers that would pick up the trash and try to get information off of that. today things have changed and they try to get information through electronic ways and different things. i think we do need to guard our information. one of the questions i had for your guest is there is military information that i don't believe the public needs to know. and i think that started so that the enemy can't see it so i think there is -- it is important for things that aren't transparent. but i believe that the transparency, that spilled over to covering people who are taking money and bribes and doing bad stuff and lying about each other. and i wandered what group or what person in our government was responsible for making that divide between this stuff can be transparent and this stuff needs to be really secret and not -- not let anybody know it until -- like nixon, his tapes weren't

released until after he died. so i was wondering what person or group is responsible for making that divide of the important things that we don't need to know in -- and things that the public ought to know. >> that is a great question. so there are a lot of lines that need to be drawn. and so one of the lines is what shouldn't be destroyed and what should be saved so that we have an accurate picture in history and that is the job of the national archives. one is what under the law needs to be disclosed as it happens or once a year. and so that is something that congress or the committees of jurisdiction are responsible or should be more responsible for determining, is making good decisions about what gets released and what doesn't. another level of agencies in the executive branch have an extraordinary amount of power to choose what to release and what not to. and that is something that often

happens in the department or cabinet level where they are determining what to release and what not to. and then there is also the -- when someone submitted a foia request and the officer has to determine where there is harm and where there isn't. and as you said, make sure our secrets are appropriately guarded so we don't create any harm. and then ultimately that decision is also able to be overseen by the courts that can disagree and order something to be disclosed. and then obviously within all of that is the press constantly hopefully pushing for more disclosure and our ability to tell stories and have a robust public debate. so the question of what gets released to the public and how is at the center of how modern government functions and i think it is right that there are a lot of different factions each pushing for their various sides. >> this is jim from missouri, democrats line. >> caller: hello. >> you already got on. james from massachusetts.

republican line. hi. >> caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. i want to ask mr. wunderlich, he mentioned that people from around the world can access the freedom of information act. and i'm just thinking of china doing that and russia and isis and is that possible through all of these people to do that and get information on whoever they wanted to use for their benefit? >> that is a great question. i think it is possible but i'm not sure it has happened. so foreign intelligence agencies for example, i don't know of any story where a foreign intelligence agency used the foia to try to get access to something. i think that would probably make it clear what they were trying to get and that would end up revealing as much as it disclosed. so i think that that is pretty rare. but if the freedom of information act was really, really strong, then i think we would tart to have to worry about that.

but because it is able to be managed and incoming requests are reviewing carefully, i don't think there is any significant risk of that happening. i think foreign powers are more likely to be trying to hack into things than to sort of publicly submit a request for what they want. >> one more call. tim from nebraska, independent line. >> caller: yes, my name is tim chen and i was wanting to ask a question. with hillary clinton being -- like going to the court system, my question is how she be going to -- wanting to be in the presidency? would she be able to run when she's got to go through court? how is that possible? >> so there is -- nothing prevents her from being able to run if she were -- the thing

that would prevent it is politics. if she were in serious legal peril, party would need to make a determination whether that is someone they want to continue with or not and that is part of why last week was news, is because any real risk of prosecution appears to be completely off the table now in advance of the democrats convention. but that is -- that is part of why it is such a concerning situation. any time a senior politician is under investigation, but certainly the president, because the president could pardon themself, because the president controls the d.o.j. and there is supposed to be a separation but in practice can you rely on it. and this is part of why we have a system of checks and balances, to make sure that it is not just one person that is in charge of everyone else. if the president could fire every judge, for example, which happens in some countries, then we would be in a mess quickly. that is part of the beauty of the checks and balances. >> so what favors other person

returning for president, as far as transparency, particularly with information. >> it is interesting, the presidential campaign has included themes about openness. i mean, donald trump has stories constantly every week that pertain to this, but i think most notably is the question of the tax returns that he's refused to disclose and congress is considering legislation that would require it to be disclosed. for secretary clinton it is the e-mail issue that brought foia and records management and classification to the front. i think for both of them, though, now that we move into the normal campaign season past the conventions, we have to wonder to what extent there is a vision for openness in the government. and if you remember when obama ran this was a major theme on both sides, the government should be open and moving beyond what everyone felt was secretive bush years. and it remains to be seen, at least for now, whether the presidential campaigns have a theme of openness. >> one of the things in -- the main things that the sunlight

foundation is the openness and the website, john wunderlich, thanks for coming on and talking about this. >> my pleasure. c-span washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. and coming up on tuesday morning, connecticut democratic congressman jim heinz will discuss failed efforts in the house to pass gun control legislation after the two recent shootings of black men by police and the fatal shootings of five police officers by a snipens -- snipers in dallas and the effect of brexit on the economy. and scott vigil will cover legislative matters. the presidential campaign and the future of the republican party heading into the republican national convention next week. be sure to watch c-span washington journal beginning live at 7:00 eastern on tuesday morning. join the discussion. road to the white house

coverage continues on thursday and friday as republicans determine the rules for next week's convention in cleveland. live coverage on c-span, the radio app and c-span.org. while the rnc platform committee meets in cleveland this week, donald trump campaigns in indiana. watch live at 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. attorney general loretta lynch heads to capitol hill tomorrow morning to appear before the house committee. a statement from the committee chair bob goodlatte said among the issues they will talk about, quote, the disturbing politicalization of the justice department under the obama administration. we'll have that live starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 3. now we'll watch a couple of sessions from a form on retirement savings plans. in this part, congressman jared polis of colorado and joseph crowley of new york talk about

legislation they are working on. this is part of the aspen institute financial security program. there is a critical mass of you seating on on your ways to seats so i'll welcome everybody here. i'd ida rademacher and i'm from the aspen institute and welcome to our forum. retirement savings goes automatic. looking at the key accomplishment of the pension protection act and the path forward. i want to start by first just acknowledging the collective leadership and expertise that is in the room today. and by that, i don't mean just the amazing speakers and panelists that we're about to here, i mean the people in this room, the collective wisdom and the fact that to a person, i'm looking at people who have dedicated most of their careers to creating a saving system in this country that helps american workers retire with financial security and dignity.

i'm excited to launch into the overall conversation. but before i do, i just want to say that if you take one thing away, and it is imprinted on your brain, as we leave today, i hope it is this -- i hope that we can see, from what we hear today, that building on the momentum that ten years of progress since the pension protection act has passed, that we have the collective evidence, ideas leadership and technology to really finish the agenda of creating an in collusive savings system in america that helps everybody advance and retire with dignity. that break-through, that -- i think that we can be on the verge of it we are working together and talking across lines and across industry sectors. it is more important than ever as we all know. every poll that comes out when you ask americans what is the

most critical financial worry that they have in their life, they talk about retirement. they talk about anxiety in that space. and add aspen we fielded a couple of questions on a national survey last week in preparation for this forum. and two important new -- or i would say reinforcing ideas came out of that. first nine out of ten americans think retirement issues need to be higher on the agenda that we are discussing for the election cycle and two-thirds of the people surveyed felt congress should do more to help americans save for retirement. over the course of the morning, we're going to get into this a lot more and we'll do it in three parts. first, we're going to hear from a great -- we're going to hear from some wonderful opening speakers and i'll introduce congressman polis in a minute. but the three parts of this morning are going like this. we really will take the time to reflect on what the last major

reforms to our nation's retirement savings accomplished and what was left undone. second, we're going to discuss a whole set of solutions that really could, if put together and were implemented, help us get over the finish line in terms of the unfinished agenda. and third and what i'm most excited about, we're going to talk together about what it will take to implement these ideas and others so that we do have an in collusive savings system that becomes a world standard and enables all americans to save, invest, own, and live dignified retired lives. so with that, i'm going to introduce our first speaker. and it is my pleasure to kick off with congressman jared polis who represents the second congressional district in colorado. that district doesn't actually include the aspen institute or aspen colorado but it should in the sense that he is the kind of leader that aspen really exists

to support and provide resources for because his leadership is very much in the guise of public servant. but also entrepreneur. and he's worked across many sectors. i think i first start-up was in college, still in college. but that spanned along to serving on the state board of education in colorado for six years as well before coming to congress. congressman polis is the ranking member of the help sub-committee with the house committee on education and workforce and in terms of the retirement policy conversation it is great to have leadership that is really looking at what pieces of bipartisan discussion can be moving forward. and two pieces in particular that congressman polis are working are on modernizing the way employers communicate retirement information to their employees, electronically and digitally and behavior economics tells us how important this is,

helping provide that 401(k) providers illustrations of the monthly income available when people are saving with the amount of savings they have at hand. so with that i'm thrilled to invite you up congressman polis for some opening remarks for us. thank you. [ applause ] >> well, thank you, aspen institute, for hosting such a thoughtful discussion and dialogue about an issue that is so important for our present and our future. i want to thank aspen institute for inviting me to share some thoughts and i'm grateful you've chosen the retirement issues to convene an important event around. you know, in congress we talk a lot about fiscal cliffs in different context. we face real challenges and how we can deal with our debt and how we can deal with our deficit. whether it is the automatic

sequester cuts under the budget control act or bend the curve on entitlement spending and of course more and more people are talking about the enormous looming amounts of student debt that we have. and if you are a parent, you are more and more familiar with some of the trials your kids are going through and paying the cost of college. but one issue we need to talk more about and this is a good step towards is the retirement savings gap. retirement security is absolutely critical for the overall fiscal health of our economy. and the overall well-being of our constituents across their lives. and it is just as important systemically as student debt, as the soundness of our entitlement programs, as our deficit and so many other issues deserves much more attention, because there is

a lot of mismatches and problems with how we do it today. study after study shows simply that workers are not saving enough money for their retirement. and even when there is seemingly enough saved, retirees outlive their savings, a trend that we hope continues as life spans continue to increase but one we should prepare for. the retirement savings shortfall is in excess of $14 trillion. one in five americans approaching retirement age have nothing in their private retirement savings line, completely effectively on social security. and when you look at overall statistics, the numbers are big when it comes to women and minorities so we have a real looming crisis with regard to retirement savings. that is why i'm pleased you're here to discuss these issues, yes, but more importantly to look for common sense solutions.

congress has shown that congress can come together to solve problems in the retirement space and that is one of the things that we're here to observe on the 10th anniversary of the tension protaks act in 2006. and without the pension protection act the crisis that we are talking about, the state of affairs today, would likely be far worse. and that is a -- a good thing to reflect on ten years on. automatic enrollment has had an enormous positive impact and potential impact on the retirement landscape. same thing with automatic escalation, expanding the use of target date funds has helped smooth the transition for millions of mid-career workers as they move into their preretirement years. and these actions are common sense solutions to real-world problems. but as we convene here today on the 10th anniversary of the legislation, every one of us who is here knows we need to be here

because it is time to take action again. we've seen labor department grabs and statist ikz for the next generation of the private sector workers, deferred benefit plans are no longer going to be an option. at the same time, there isn't enough entitlement reform in the world to adequately refund our retirement system through the federal government which social security was never designed to do. it is clear we have to findeno vative solutions and -- innovative and bipartisan and practical solutions and that is your job today. the group here today really has a great responsibility in the institutional knowledge to help find the solutions. i'll offer a few ideas of things i'm sure you are considering. is employers, planned sponsors wand to do the right thing and provide the tools workers need for retirement. in some cases current laws are

holding back companies and workers from doing what they need to do to save for retirement. without question, for instance, congress can expand the auto enrollment safe harbor. math is no secret. savings, including employer contribution need to be the 10% to 15% range but today they are far lower and i think there is bipartisan agreement that action should be taken to expand these safe harbors to increase contributions. congress could and should take action to expand the ability of late career workers to catch up in their contributions. we know that savings for retirement is a career-long exercise but for many workers something called life gets in the way, whether it is kids at home or trying to support them through college. as workers approach mid career to late career, there should be additional opportunities to invest in their future. we all of course know that those

early investments are so much more important, so much more leverage-able because of the management of compound interest but we shouldn't discourage through policy mid and late contributions while they might be necessary to close the retirement gap. congress could and should pass legislation to expand the use of multi-employer plans. an overwhelming majority of small businesses want the ability to provide a comfortable retirement to employees but are we giving them the tool to do so. allowing small businesses to come together and participate in meps is a bipartisan solution that should become law. there is a majority in the house and senate and i think a president who would sign a bill along the lines when it gets to his desk. in the shared economy, we're also dealing with issues of em employment. we see it in the world of franchise -- the definition of

employment. and this is important because one of those suite of services that some in a shared economy or perhaps in a franchise world might want to offer employees would specifically be retirement planning offerings and plans an others, but currently because those are tied to the definition of employment, they are, for many times of companies that want to avoid any of the gray area, near employment, they are actively prevented from offering those kinds of added value retirement information to their contract employees. those are just a few of the things that we should do with regard to access. but there is also steps forward we need to take with information, empower people to make better decisions from school age through retirement workers and savers, who need access to solid, useful

financial information to help them make responsible decisions on their own. that started with k-12 financial literacy and we need to do a better job with preparing children to be life-long savers. there are school districts across the country that have implemented ideas on this front. as we know, education is very decent rallized and there -- decentralize pd and there are kids with very little or superficial exposure to financial literacy in the k-12 years. federal government should promote the innovation through the use of federal funds for encouraging financial literacy because this is a major federal financial issue and of course while administered by school districts we have an important stake in raising the financial literacy of americans across the board. the next step when it comes to college and student debt. and when you talk to younger americans, there is no single issue more than student debt on their minds. so many of my constituents every

day ask how do i pay down my debt and save for retirement at the same time? and especially as people have student debt into their 30s and 40s, it becomes awfully late to start asking that question about when can you start saving for retirement when you are still dealing with your student debt. now tackling the student debt crisis is not going to be easy and there is no silver bullet but it will takeno vative solutions that -- innovative solutions that lower the cost of college in the first place and as well as looking at student loan programs to see how we can save borrowers money. with regard to reducing costs, programs like dual enrollment where high school students obtain college credit while in high school at no or little cost to themselves could go a long way toward reducing the cost of college. moving on the trajectory towards three-year degrees rather than four-year degrees with making

sure we have the same quality standards and outcomes in place. and options like open source textbooks which are free, and licensed resources could save students thousands of dollars, the average text book costs for those of you who were recently in college or parents of college students might realize this, it is over $2,000 a year in text book costs, after room and board and everything else. and we can do a lot to save students thousands of dollars on books through the course of their college career through open source textbooks. but the solutions start as early as high school but they don't end there. once a student graduates, they need affordable options for paying off their debt. so hopefully by taking action to reduce the costs of higher education, we can reduce that debt load. but then we also need to make sure there is affordable options for paying off that debt. one idea is one that i introduced with bipartisan bill with richard hannah last year which would set up a universal

income-base payment system for student loans, currently an option. but this would ensure that students pay off an affordable percentage of the income until the loan is paid off. it would eliminate the red tape and requirements for different forms of forbearance with a very simple income-based repayment approach. the obama administration has already made income based payment a priority and seen positive increases in repayment rates as a result by the participants in that program. my bill would make income-based payment more accessible for borrowers and help people save to buy a car or a home or, yes, for retirement, because people want to make sure that they have the confidence that they can pay off their debt in a way that is manageable for them. in a way that is predictable and that they know, according to a formula. and when the next generation matriculate through college or at least through high school and become workers, information like

financial literacy and the need for it doesn't stop. and i hope that we can pass another piece of legislation that i'm honored to sponsor, the retire act that allows for plan sponsors to electronically deliver information. if you look at how younger americans save, bank, et cetera, it is all online. that is the native environment for many american workers. the paper documents that are sent today often include only a basic outline of account balances and a few legal notices and i'm confident the innovators in this room and across the country can and will and do provide more substantial information electronically, in formats that are more comprehensible to today's savers. i should also note that unfortunately there are efforts on going that would undermine our efforts to update laws that require online disclosure. as an example of that is this very week there was an amendment

officers by representative pollic that would have halted the s.e.c. move to electron lick i deliver shareholder information. that is a step in the wrong direction. i've been working closely with darrell issa to encourage across government the adoption of electronic standards for information. i also believe we should act and pass the lifetime income disclosure act for so many savers, the retirement account is first or second largest asset they have to their name. their home and their retirement account. knowing what that number means tangibly and this is mentioned in the introduction, in terms of lifetime income, it is a very important piece of information that has a positive impact on savings. and not a piece of information that is necessarily intuitive to most americans who don't have extensi extensive financial training. so it is something that could be

provided that would help americans make better and more informed decisions about their retirement. and having that information and empowering people led leads -- leads me to income. now there is many different types of investment vehicles that savers may choose. but what is clear is that quality options are important. one of those options should be a better way to choose lifetime income products. as savers live longer, we're going to see more and more americans outliving their lump sum and it is a reasonable decision to move into those kinds of products. but it is far from the only type of product that can and will work for retirees but we want to make sure those kind of options are available for savers. now these legislative ideas are just a small portion of the ideas that i hope you have and discuss and that others have. that will help solve the retirement gap. some of the solutions i think are low-hanging fruit.

they are bipartisan, they are practical and they don't have intense opposition. and i hope that we can move on those in short order. but what i'm really excited to here about are the bigger -- hear are the bigger and bolder solutions that i know are out there. it might take more work to build a consensus around to pass all of the way into law. but are more important now than ever before. i know my colleague, representative joe crowley will be speaking with you later and he published an excellent report with many ideas about how to take steps to make sure more americans can enjoy a safe, secure and comfortable retirement. same with many private sectors participants on today's panels who have done extensive work in this area. lastly, i know that many participants here with the aspen institute have the sorts of innovative solutions that are going to be critical to solving the long-term challenges that we as an entire nation face when it

comes to retirement security and certainly look forward to you sharing your thoughts and your ideas on what we do to move forward to address this retirement gap as we observe the tenth anniversary. i want to thank you for having me here today, for opening remarks and i'm excited that you are convened around this topic and look forward to looking over the results of your deliberations. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you so much, congressman polis. so we've now had another opportunity to hear from another congressman who has dedicate a lot of of time in office and prior -- lot of time in office and prior to coming to office looking at strong financial futures for kids and adults in the u.s. and most of you know who i'm

talking about. congressman joe crowelly representing the 14th congressional district in new york. and so i will just take a minute to introduce you before you come up, congressman crowley. he is the vice chair of the democratic caucus and sits on the ways and means committee which, as most of you know, has jurisdiction over the tax code and social security. like aspen's financial security program, congressman crowley has been a long time supporters of helping americans save, especially around children's savings accounts and has recently offered comprehensive blue print ideas in a report entitled -- building better savings, building better futures which you should check out, on the front page of his website. it comes up first. specifically on the retirement issues that we're going to hear from today. just this year congressman crowley has done three things that i want to just make a quick note about. in february, he introduced the my r.a. act which would codify

the new program put out by the department of treasury into law, into statute. last month he sent a letter signed by more than 60 of your colleagues in the house calling on president obama to require that all federal contractors automatically enroll their employees in retirement plans and if they don't have them, into an ira. and also i know that there is plans underway to introduce a pretty comprehensive, a bold idea like the ones that congressman polis was talking about around a more inclusive retirement savings concept which is going to be entitled -- the save-up act. and that is a little bit of background. congressman, i want to call you up and thank you for all you are doing to help americans save both young and old. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, ida, very much. i very much appreciate being here this morning.

if you notice, my voice is a little bit rasp. a little bit used. but we had a very interesting week this week and i was engaged in a good portion of that so i hope you forgive me. moving from one issue of security, personal safety and security to the issue of retirement security. so thank you, ida, once again. and thank you to the aspen institute for having me here to participate in this discussion about the state of retirement security here in the u.s. i'm pleased to join you hear for a much-needed conversation on what we are, and where we are and where we need to go as a country in terms of working towards ensuring a more secure retirement for every american. particularly in the ten years since the enactment of pension protection act. the act was the most sweeping piece of legislation since arissa and it deserves credit for making it easier for employees to participate and

contribute into their own retirement. for example, we have drastic increases in both auto enrollment and auto escalation. but these victories are overshadowed by the growing number of americans who do not enjoy the promise of a secure retirement. the fact is our nation is facing an urgent saving and retirement security crisis, one that we must address now. with too many americans not saving enough for their future, fewer private sector workers being offered pensions and a host of other challenges facing potential retirees, the dream of a secure retirement is slipping away for millions of americans. as an example to highlight this problem, half of all people going to work today in america are not offered a retirement plan from their employer. even for those who are saving,

the picture doesn't get any rosier. as so many families have no savings, the median, 50th percentile, family has just $5,000 in savings today. the problem starts even in the years before retirement. we're seeing a new generation of americans growing up with little or no savings to help them climb the economic ladder or simply weather a difficult period in their lives. this is a crisis and we must address it now before it gets really too late. but there is a small bright spot. we know that many americans know the value of savings. they want to save. they just need the right tools to help them save. our country needs a multi-prong approach to address these problems so we could create a culture of savings at every

stage of a person's life. that is why i proposed an action plan to help americans build better savings, to build brighter futures. we have to put the ability to save back in the hands of america's families. the first part of my plan deals with addressing the lack of savings and financial insecurity at the earlier days of a person's life. right now in america most working families in america lack savings and face financial insecurity as a result of that lack of savings. 44% of families are what is known as liquid asset poor. meaning they lack accessible savings to survive for three months at just the federal poverty level. families with children may face additional barriers to building savings. but saving is even more

important for these families. facts show that even a small amount of family assets can have a significant impact on college success, a key driver of economic mobility. low and moderate income children with even $500 or less save for college or are three times more likely to enroll in college and four times more likely to graduate than children with no savings at all. working with the aspen institute, i introduce legislation to create universal child savings accounts to give every child and their parents the right start for a lifetime of savings and begin real asset creation. my bill launches individual accounts for every child and provides federal seed money as a down payment into their

accounts. it would also expand the child tax credit for families who save on their own for their children, giving them an in sentive to put even more -- incentive to put even more money into these accounts. this may seem like a small idea. but the data proves that if you give the tools and resources, parents said even the lowest economic levels, they will save. in the year 2011, the city of san francisco began offering child savings accounts, expanding them to all children enrolled in public kindergarten starting in 2013. data from san francisco kindergarten to college account, that program demonstrates that families, even though of lower income, are contributing their own funds towards their child's education at a rate four times higher -- four times higher than americans of all income levels

are towards -- or given the opportunity to save through 529 college savings plans. and in the five years that the san francisco program has been in existence, families have deposited $1 million in savings, helping to build assets for participating families, proving that parents want to and will save and invest in their child's future if they are given the opportunity to do so. under my bill, when the child becomes an adult, that can use that money to pay for college, or the funds can be rolled over into a roth ira account. helping young adults with other important expenses or to just simply start a long-term savings for life, putting them on the right foot path. so these young adults will grow up with not only the real assets

of savings, but also the experience and the routine of saving to help them to continue to save throughout their lives. the second prong of my action plan addresses the need of working americans with no savings at all who need to start building for their retirements, or at least have a cushion for emergency needs. according to the federal reserve board, almost half of all americans would not be able to cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money or selling off some possession. we have millions of americans who not only have no savings for retirement, but are on the verge of poverty itself. if their car or their water heater bill or the water heater breaks down. that needs to change.

that needs to change and it needs to change fast. that is why i've introduced legislation to codify, as i mentioned, the president's ira accounts, and to codify and put them into law and not simply executive order. my ira builds a culture of savings by breaking down the traditional barriers to savings itself, such as high minimum contributions or concerns about the fluctuation of our markets, as i know many of you are concerned today. it will allow a worker to open an account with as little as $25. and it gives them the ability to make automatic payments every pay period. there are also no maintenance charges or fee as associated with these accounts. meaning every dollar -- every dollar that is invested will be

returned, plus interest, to the account holder. my r.a. addressed one of the biggest savings deterrents out there. by allowing access to these funds for emergency purposes. employers, though, benefit as well. by allowing them to provide a hassle-free, no-cost, fringe benefit to their workers. this program was recently launched. now it is our job to spread the word. we need to spread the word and we need to make it permanent. the third prong of my -- the third prong of my plan deals with addressing the retirement security crisis in america. and the data is startling. a recent gallop poll shows that half of all current workers think they will not have enough money to retire.

with the decline in employer-provided pensions, retirement security has become an even greater question, a greater question mark for many americans. while many employers already offer retirement plans to employees, too many workers find themselves falling through the gaps. the department of labor estimates that one in four americans working in full-time private-sector jobs, are not taking advantage of the employer-provided retirement plans. there are steps we can easily take to improve participation in the plans. such as increasing the use of auto enrollment, which has been shown to increase this participation rate above 90%. that is why i wrote a letter recently signed by 65 of my house colleagues asking the president to take executive

action to require federal contractors to auto enroll all of their employees into retirement plans. but that is simply the low-hanging fruit. we need to help those workers who aren't even offered a retirement plan through their employer. as stated earlier, one out of every two people going to work this morning, one of them does not have a retirement plan through his or her job. and for some, believe it or not, the picture gets even worse. for example, only 38% of worker age latinos are employed in a business with an employer-sponsored retirement plan. that is why when the house returns in july, i will introduce legislation to shake up the status quo and address this problem head-on.

my bill will create universal pension accounts for those workers employed in a business with ten or more employees that do not already offer workplace retirement plans. known as save-up accounts, these pension accounts will partially -- will be partially funded by the employer and partially funded by the employee. an employer will directly contribute 50 cents for every hour worked into the individual's save-up pension accounts for each of their workers. this 50 cents allocation would increase annually to keep up with the cost of living. aside from the employer contribution, once enrolled, employees will automatically begin contributing 3% of their pre-taxed income, which increases gradually over time.

while the employee cannot opt out, the employer will continue to contribute to give their employees a solid retirement option. to help with the cost of contributing to those plans, small employers can receive a tax credit worth the value of contributions to ten employee accounts. for a small business with fewer than 10 employees, while they are not required to contribute, this tax credit will make it financially possible for them to do so and offer this fringe benefit voluntarily. these pension accounts will work similar to what we have here in the federal level, savings plans. which are offered to federal employees, including members of congress. with government oversight, and private management, and a limited number of low-fee index

fund options. and these universal pension accounts are portable. they are tied to the worker, not to the employer. also, allowing employees to change jobs without fear of putting the retirement and their future at risk. these accounts will make a big difference to employees. at the 45 -- after 45 years of work, someone who has only been employed in a low-wage job $380,000 saved up. with these funds, paid out through a monthly annuity, providing retirees a form of guaranteed income that they can rely on. i'm only talking about a single worker. if you match that up, it doubles. when you add that to social security benefits, these workers will see a much more stable

retirement picture. and that is not just good for them, it is good for everyone. that means continuing to fight to keep keep the strengthening defending social security as well. with a large and growing surplus of over $2.8 trillion, social security will be able to pay out full benefits for years to come. in fact, the most recent report of a social security trustees projects that social security can continue to pay full benefits until at least 2034. with some modest tweaks to the program and a strong defense against drastic changes we can ensure the program will remain

strong and be there for everyone for decades to come. in particular, we need to address the cap on a worker's earnings that are taxed to pay for social security. congress must also oppose changes to the cost of living allowance for social security known as chained cpi, or as i call it, chainsaw cpi. as it cuts benefits for retirees and for veterans. but my plan is just the start of what we need to do on all these important issues. as you know at the aspen institute a policy center focused on sense solutions from experts on all sides of the political spectrum, there can be good ideas everywhere. i certainly don't have a monopoly on good ideas. i often look for guidance from my colleagues from both sides of

the aisle. some of whom i know are participating in today's conversation. members like congressman ron kind, richie neal, and peat teaberry from the ways and means committee a good friend, and jared poelson we just heard from. i'm glad we have this focus on retirement security and savings and the discussions and brainstorming have been tremendously important. but we also need to see some action. i look forward to working with you to champion the best possible ideas to ensure we can create a country where everyone is able to build better savings, to built brighter futures for themselves and for their families. and once again i just want to thank you all at the aspen institute for your wonderful work. thank you all. and enjoy a great weekend.

>> more from the aspen institute's financial security program now. in this portion researchers reflect on the tenth anniversary of the pension protection act. then a look what employers, employees and congress should do to improve retirement saving in the u.s. great. good morning, everybody. so we're going to shift gears now building on the remarks from representative poleus and representative crowley. as i just said when we began, we really want to do three things this morning. first, we want to have a conversation about what the ppa accomplished, and also what was left undone, and that's really

the purpose of this part of the conversation. we're going to get in depth into -- with some really great speakers who i will introduce in a second into what's happened in the ten years since the ppa was passed, what it means for retirement security in america, what more needs to be done, and that will hopefully tee up the rest of the day. we'll be followed by keynote remarks at 11:30 from edmund murphy, the ceo of empower retirement. thane we'll take a short break and we'll have a second panel that's going to be all about the path forward, what's the next -- what's an agenda for the next administration. so what i'm going to do, just a note on logistics, the way we'd like to do it is people are going to make brief remarks. i'll follow up with one question per person. we'll go down the row. then we'll have plenty of time for dialogue between the panel and questions and answers from the crowd. as you noted -- as you may have

noted in your packets, we have longer bios, so i'm not going to go deep into people's bios here, but i will say that to have this conversation we have this incredible depth of experience between the four panelists, many, many years of deep expertise on retirement security from the financial industry, from research, and from philanthropy. so we're excited to bring a number of different perspectives to this important conversation. we're going to start on my left with lew minsky, who is the president and ceo of the defined contribution institutional investment association. it's the second time this week i have had to say that and i'm pleased to say i didn't mess it up either time. lew helped found that organization in 2010, and he brings many, many years of deep expertise in retirement

securities. so without further ado, lew. >> all right. are we on? all right. great. well, let me, first of all, thank aspen for including me. this is my second opportunity this week to join you all and really appreciate being part of this broader conversation on retirement security. earlier this week in oregon, got to talk a little bit about the coverage gap, and i'm going to primarily focus on retirement adequacy, which was primarily addressed by ppa, but we'll talk a little bit about coverage as well. probably useful for me to give a brief description of dca. we'll go with the acronym because i don't know if i would do as well of getting the full name out. so as jeremy mentioned, we're

about seven years old, and really comes from the aftermath of the ppa. so what i found following on ppa was a real emerging interest from those in the retirement savings world to -- they were really yearning for a place to come together and talk about what we all agree on, which is that it's critical that we figure out ways to improve the retirement security of american workers, and really the existence of dciia is testament to the fact that there is this desire out there from the key players in the industry, and i think through forums like this, we can really figure out how to take the next steps forward, but let's, first, take a quick step back. i'm going to try to walk through at a very high level where we were ten years ago in the

evolution of the retirement savings industry, the primary themes that we saw in the ppa, agent least on the defined contribution side, how the dialogue has changed post-ppa, and as i said, i think the existence of dciia is testament to that. what we've learned about driving successful outcomes which i think jack will pick up on, and then i think jack will particularly pick up on how the dciia system is positioned moving forward to really survive better outcomes. and, you know, i think before i go into much more detail on that, the other thing i'll share that i've learned now at dciia after 6 1/2, almost 7 years is that you -- and i think aspen has known this for a lot longer than that, you get really smart people in a room. you get them focused on important issues, and then you

get out of the way. and so we've got really, really smart people here, the right people here. we're focused on a really important issue, and so after some framing remarks, i'm going to quickly get out of the way. so, you know, where were we ten years ago? well, you know, as i said, there was a lot of interest and passion, but maybe a lack of direction around what we could do as an industry to drive better outcomes, and ppa really did a solid job in getting people focused really in two key areas. so, you know, one, ppa did a great job in clearing a path for the use of behavioral techniques

primarily around automation and driving better outcomes, and then really also set a path for how we can get participants in the system access to advice on a mass commoditized basis and also on an individual basis, and then finally as most of you know, importantly, solved the looming concern about permanence. but i'm going to focus on the first two in where we are now post-ppa. really there are some key themes to driving retirement security that we've learned now. one, ensure that people have access to the system. i'm sure people are going to talk today about that as being an important gap left, and i share those thoughts and would

be happy to share my potential solutions if we get into it, but that's clearly an open issue left. but then once people have access, we need to make sure that they utilize the system, and we've made a lot of steps forward, and i think we have a lot of opportunities to further move forward. then once they're accessing the system, we need to make sure that savings rates are sufficient, and we clearly have tools from ppa in order to do that, and we'll talk a little bit about that. and then, finally, when people are saving at sufficient initial rates, we have to make sure that they're continually saving appropriate rates as they progress in order to meet their retirement security needs and that those savings are ultimately targeted toward appropriate institutionally priced investment structures

that will get them both to and through retirement. and once we've met all those needs, then we're in pretty good shape. so where are we today? well, there are definitely a leading group of employers who have instituted best practices and are saving -- are defaulting their employees at robust initial rates. auto escalating up to levels that are designed to get them to retirement security. some are re-enrolling people annually in default investment structures and then sweeping employees who are not participating on an annual basis, not just new hires, and for those employers what we've learned is that they're doing an

amazing job at getting their workers to a level of retirement security that will get them both to and through retirement. unfortunately, we're not at a point where those practices are universal. so i think a constructive conversation is how do we get to universality or at least close to it with the tools that we have from the ppa and the knowledge that we've developed since, and i suspect we can get pretty close, and then once we do, then it's, you know, critical that we start addressing the coverage gap and we figure out how to bring those solutions to the rest of the population that currently is uncovered. but i for one am very optimistic that we have a path forward, that we have the tools we need, and i'm going to defer now to jack, who i know has a lot of detail behind that. thank you. >> thank you, lew.

so i will ask one follow-up question. as you said, right, there are a lot of tools, but practices aren't universal. so say a little bit more about why you think -- what are the primary challenges that plan sponsors are facing that are preventing greater adoption. >> yeah. so, you know, clearly we still have a challenge to get employers comfortable and focused on the adoption of plan designs that incorporate the robust implementation of automation and focus on outcomes. we're definitely seeing significant movements in that direction, particularly in the larger employer space, but there is are some very critical headwinds. one important one is the fear of litigation. you know, we really have to do

something about the -- what i view as often frivolous litigation that's out there that causes employers to really resist their otherwise natural inclination to innovate and to focus on outcomes. i think there's also, you know, a number of misperceptions that are common out there about what is allowed or even encouraged in the current law, and there's a lot we can do to educate plan sponsors and those that advise plan sponsors, and then i'd say, finally, there's really a lack of discussion right now about the mutual benefits of retirement security, both for the employer and the employee and a real opportunity to get people to understand that those interests really are well aligned. i know dciia is getting very close to releasing a paper. i'll put a little plug in here. what's in it for plan sponsors,

which really tries to focus the plan sponsor community on the fact that not only is this the right thing to do for your employees, but this is actually the right thing to do for your workforce plan and for your company, and that will be coming out soon. >> great. we look forward to seeing it. jack. so now we're going to hear from jack vanderhei, who is the research director for the employee benefit research institute, and as many of you know he's also the director of the ibri center for research on retirement income. jack has more than 200 publications, if you can imagine that, devoted to employee benefits and insurance with a major focus on the financial aspects of private defined benefit and defined contribution retirement plans. for those of you like many of the people in the audience in the retirement space, jack has been a leading voice for many, many years, and we're delighted to have him here this morning.

>> thank you, jeremy. on behalf of myself and the employee benefit research institute, i'd like to extend my appreciation as far as the opportunity to talk about such an important topic. we've been doing research on employee benefits at ibri since 1978. we got into the defined contribution database building process back in 1996, and i think it's easy to conclude that certainly ppa and the aftermath of ppa was one of the most important developments that we've seen in our entire research. what i'd like to do today is just very quickly go over an existing research. we want to set the stage as far as what we've already seen happen with respect to automatic -- in terms of what has happened with respect to the participant behavior. going to look very quickly at participation and contributions as well as asset allocation, but

before we get into that in any detail, i really want to have a huge caveat that you really should not look at any of these aspects in isolation. for example, there was a front page story in "the wall street journal" back in 2011 that ended up making the big conclusion that ppa was bad for 401(k) plans, that basically if you look at 401(k) participants, deferral rates had gone down. well, the problem is if you're not going to look at what's going on with respect to participation at the same time you look at deferral rates, you're ignoring the fact that a lot of those people in automatic enrollment plans that admittedly have low contribution rates because of the default deferrals of maybe 3% would have had 0% had there not been an automatic enrollment provision for them,

so you have to keep that in mind as you look at some of this. what i'm going to try to spend much of my time on is a study that dciia is going to be releasing in a few months that will look at how each of these components that we're going to be talking about today will impact outcomes, retirement outcomes, instead of just looking at individual snapshots year by year. and basically if you want to be able to do something like that, you need a model that's going to be able to look at the behavior of eligible employees under different types of automatic enrollment plan designs because as lew mentioned, there's many different types of designs out there, and if you're wanting to get a comparison to how much of an improvement there has been, you're still going to have to be able to figure out what these people would have done had there not been automatic enrollment, so we're also going to look at what happened under voluntary enrollment designs. for that you have to look at job change activity. we all know that so much of the

leakage is still occurring when people change jobs and basically cash out those accounts, so we have to take that into account. we also have to take into account the impact of hardship withdrawals and the impact of loan defaults. in addition to everything else, basically you need a microsimulation model that can take into account uncertainties like uncertainties in the financial markets, and that's all going to be part of what we're going to be looking at today. very quickly, and this is from vanguard's latest report that was released earlier this month, how america saves. the two things people focus on the most are participation rates and deferral rates when it comes to automatic enrollment with a comparison against voluntary enrollment and, again, much of the action has obviously taken place for the lower income individuals. if you take a look at the individuals under $30,000 in the most recent vanguard report, you see a jump in participation rates from 29% all the way up to 82%.

even for those $30,000 to $50,000, you still have almost a doubling from 53% to 90%. the other side of the coin, of course, is if you go to the right-hand side and you look at those deferral rates, the deferral rate for an automatically enrolled person under $30,000 in the vanguard database comes in at about 3.6%, just a little bit over the 3% deferrals many of them have whereas the voluntary enrollment, people who basically got in on their own initiative and are probably being much more influenced by rates are up to 5.1%. so, again, if you look at only the right-hand side, you can come away with the kind of conclusion "the wall street journal" did back in 2011 that maybe these things aren't necessarily a great improvement, but if you look at the left side at the same time and keep in mind that you would have had a number of people otherwise having no deferrals who are now

showing up at least with a 3% deferral, that goes a long way to explaining what we're going to be seeing in some of the next charts. certainly there's been a lot of conversation about what happens with asset allocation, and for this i just want to quickly highlight some results that i co-authored a couple months ago where we went back and looked at what the asset allocation was at year end 2007 and compared that to what we had for the most recent database year end 2014. we break this down into three different age cohorts. on the left side you see the 20s, middle is the 40s, and the right side is the 60s. in each case i'm comparing what's going on in 2007 with what's going on in 2014. if you look at that red rectangle on the bottom, what you're seeing is the percentage

of equity that these participants have. in fact, back in 2007, almost 1 in 5 401(k) participants in their 20s had zero, and this is all equity components put together, direct equities, it is the balance funds, it is the target date funds, and it is company stock. 1 in 5 had nothing in the equities market. in 2014 largely because of automatic enrollment, largely because of the qdias, largely because of the shift to target date funds, you see that number has been reduced all the way to 7.7%. if you want to go to the other end to the people in the '60s and look at the green rectangle, what we find here is in the end of 2007 on the verge of the financial market collapse, you had 30% of the people in their

60s that had more than 80% of their 401(k) balance in equities. because of the glide paths that many of the people have adopted in the target date funds, that number has come down appreciably and in fact is only 22.1% now in 2014. so not only did automatic enrollment have a huge impact on contributions and participation, but because of the fact that many of these people are being put in target date funds and leaving that money alone for age-appropriate asset allocation, you've also seen a shift away from the extremes for both the young and the older participants. so what i want to do is very quickly give you a little bit of background on the model i'm about to take you through. we're very fortunate, we've had a collaborative effort with ici going back to 1996 that's given

us information on extremely detailed participant information as of year end 2014, we have participant information on 27 million individuals, so we know to the penny what they're invested in, what their account balances are, their contribution, and their loan activity. that's coming from more than 75,000 different plans and represents about $2 trillion in assets, and the database is longitudinal so we can track individuals from year to year to see how their activity changes with respect to age, wages, et cetera. what we've been able to do is a number of different simulation studies like i'm about to go through with ibri retirement projection model. we've got some results of that in the appendix if you'd like to see it, but the important point, and this is why this collaborative effort we're doing with dciia is so important, even though we've had an extraordinarily rich participant database, we've never really had the plan level data to go with it to be able to bifurcate

between voluntary enrollment and automatic enrollment, for example. so we've been able to get that recently from a number of different participants -- a number of different record keepers, and what i'm about to run you through just very quickly, i just want to make sure everyone is understanding what's going on. the model you're about to see will look at employee contribution activity as a function of many different things, demographics certainly, but also what's going on as far as the plan is concerned. different plan matching formulas will have different incentives. some will stop the incentives after 3%. some will go to 6%. some will stretch it out even further. all of that is factored into this model. just as a quick note, what i'm about to show you does not

include any amounts from iras or balances from previous emplers, but it does allow for job change and leakages and basically what i'm going to assume is if you're a 401(k) participant when i see you today, that every time you change jobs you will continue working for an employer that sponsors a plan. it doesn't mean you're going to participate, but at least you will continue to be eligible. we have other versions of the model that give it more of a random version, and we also have participation and opt-out simulated on annual basis. so what i'm about to show you deals with eligible employees, okay? these are employees under voluntary employment that may very well choose not to participate. same thing with automatic enrollment, and what i'm going to focus on is the age 65 balances in 401(k) plans plus any rollover money that originated in the k plan. if you change plans, if you roll it over to an i.r.a. we're going to count it as part of this bundle. it's going to include both employee and employer contributions, and basically the numbers i'm going to show you are just simple multiples of final earnings. i'm going to take your account balance.

i'm going to divide it by what you were earning right before you retired at 65 and show you the differences you're going to get between automatic enrollment and voluntary enrollment. so basically what's the best way to try to illustrate this difference? i mean, certainly there's a lot of debate going on. just very quickly what i tried to do today to get something relatively simple and quick to show is we're going to look at improvement in simulated retirement outcomes, as i said, measured as increases in the medians of these multiples of final pay, and i'm going to break it out for you by age and by salary quartile to see whether there are differences. many people have alleged you're going to see different types of reactions among the low income versus the middle income versus the high income. and basically this is probably the single most important thing i want to focus on is if you take a look, broken out by age

and by income quartile, so i have the middle 50% together under the red line. the blue line is the lowest income quartile and the green is the highest income quartile and also broken out by age. regardless of age, regardless of income, the movement from voluntary enrollment to automatic enrollment with auto escalation is giving you at least a 15% increase at the median as you move from the voluntary enrollment to the automatic enrollment with auto escalation. now, the next steps and certainly we're going to have to be talking about ways to improve the system sometime during the course of today's conversation. certainly leakages is going to be one of the most important things to look at whether it's cash outs or job change, hardship withdrawal. remember, the hardship withdrawal will include a six-month suspension and hence

the inability to get the employer match at that time and loan defaults so what i want to leave you with is the last graph is how much of a difference, again, at the median do these leakages make. it should come as no surprise to individuals that the younger you are, the bigger the impact leakages will have, and because the low income are so much more likely to cash out their 401(k) balances at job change, also you have a bigger impact for the lowest income. so if you want to just focus very quickly, for people 25 to 29, the lowest income quartile, their median reduction relative to this optimized portfolio is about 15% reduction whereas it's about 9% for the middle 50% and about 6% for the highest income quartile.

so overall we've come a long way. it certainly appears in terms of retirement outcomes, this is going to be a big improvement over where we were pre-ppa with the voluntary enrollment but there's still a lot that needs to be done and certainly leakages should be one of the aspects we take a look at as soon as possible. thank you. >> thanks, jack. that was fantastic. [ applause ] so clearly, i mean, a quick summary of a really comprehensive presentation, a lot of great evidence that shows that auto enrollment works for those who benefit from it, of course. you pointed out leakages as a major problem. what else would you say? if you were redesigning ppa or you were there at the table, what do you see as other perhaps significant shortcomings?

>> one of the problems with ppa involves a safe harbor. now, not everybody who goes automatic enrollment takes a safe harbor approach, but if you look at the safe harbor with auto escalation, there's basically a maximum cap of 10%, and if you take a look at what the individual plans are doing, there is a huge percentage, i believe it's over 1/3, that are capping the maximum auto escalations at 10%. i don't know the political rationale behind this, but i would say especially if you're a midcareer hire and you didn't have coverage before or perhaps you inadvisedly cashed out your 401(k) on the previous job and you're now in essence starting over at age 40, 10% plus whatever you're getting from the employer match is just not going to get you where you need to be. and i think if you could somehow

increase those maximum limits under auto escalation, that would be a huge improvement. plus i agree with everything lew said, that coverage has to be the primary concern in the cases where the employer is not offering something, but for those that do, they should be allowed to escalate the employees much beyond 10%. >> thank you, jack. right now we're going to shift to kilolo. so kilolo kijakazi is an institute fellow at the urban institute. we're delighted to have her here with us today. kilolo in her capacity at the urban institute works with staff across the entire institute to develop collaborative partnerships with organizations and individuals who represent those most affected by economic and social issues. as many of you know, before she joined urban, kilolo spent many years as a program officer at the ford foundation where she focused on building economic security for working families

and on incorporating the expertise of people of color in all aspects of ford's work. she's been a leading thinker on retirement issues for many years and we are delighted that she's here with us this morning. >> good morning. it's a pleasure to be here, and i also want to thank aspen for inviting me. we've heard from our previous speakers about the progress that's been made with pension savings since the enactment of the pension protection act. i'm going to talk about who still has not been reached and also tee up remarks for the panel -- the second panel which will discuss additional solutions that are needed. my remarks are reflective of my own views and are not

necessarily the position of the urban institute where i work. i'm not going to use slides, but i did provide a handout that looks like this on the table outside because i'm going to be talking about quite a few numbers, and it allows you to follow along if you would like to. the information, the table that's in the handout is taken from the employee benefit research institute's data comparing 2006 and 2013 percentages of all workers who worked for an employer that sponsored a retirement plan. and similarly, there is a comparison for 2006 and 2013 of the percentage of all workers who participated in a plan. so before and after the enactment of the pension protection act. this includes workers who have access to plans through their employers and those who do not. the data are disaggregated in several ways to get a better sense of who has access to a

plan and the extent to which different workers participate. one of the first things you'll notice is that there is generally some improvement after the enactment of the law, but that change is modest, and this is consistent with research by my colleagues at the urban institute. automatic enrollment affects workers with employers who offer a retirement plan to which they have access. it does not affect workers who do not have access to a plan through their employer. almost 49% of all workers do not work for an employer that offers -- who sponsored a plan, so let's take a look at the disaggregated groups in the table to see what that shows. there's a difference by race and

ethnicity in the percentage of workers who are employed in jobs that offer retirement plans and a difference in the rate of participation. about 55% of workers have jobs with plans, compared to 52% of african-american, 36% of latinos, and 48% of other groups. in terms of participation, almost 45% of white workers participate compared to 39% of african-americans, 27% of latinos, and 38% of others. african-americans and latinos are less likely to have jobs where employers offer retirement plans. discrimination in the labor market results in occupational segregation that leaves them disproportionately represented in service occupations, farming, and construction. only 34% of workers in service

occupations had employers with retirement plans compared with 66% of workers in professional occupations. in addition, workers of color are less likely than white workers to have earnings levels and job tenure that facilitate participation in retirement plans. factors including employment discrimination mean that workers of color are more likely to face unemployment, have longer stints of unemployment, work in involuntary part-time jobs when they would prefer full-time jobs, and have lower wages than white workers. the table shows that part-time workers and workers with lower earnings are much less likely to have employers that sponsor retirement plans and have much lower participation rates.

only 34% of workers who are employed part-time for the full year have jobs with retirement plans compared to 59% of workers with full-time jobs all year. workers participate -- i'm sorry. only 18% of part-time workers participate compared to 52% of full-time workers. with respect to earnings, only about 34% of workers earning $10,000 to $20,000 have jobs with plans, and they have a participation rate of about 17%. by contrast, 71% of workers with earnings of $75,000 or more have jobs with plans and 67% participate. it is important to note that when workers of color and white

workers have similar circumstances, they make similar choices. a study by the center on retirement research found that, and i quote, for comparably situated individuals blacks whites and hispanics respond in a similar fashion in terms of joining a 401(k) plan and deciding how much to contribute. a study showed that african-americans and white wage salary workers with the same earnings have participation rates that are nearly the same. in fact, for workers earning $75,000 or more, the african-american rate of participation in retirement plans exceeds the rate of white workers at the same level of earnings. 73% of african-americans compared to 71% of white workers participate. and for latinos, country of birth appears to be a factor. latinos born in the united

states had retirement plan participation rates similar to african-american and other workers of color but still lower than white workers while latino workers born in other countries had rates that were much lower. so we've talked about race and ethnicity, occupations, full time versus part time, and earning levels. i'll talk about two other groups, and then i'll stop. women and men overall had similar rates of employment in jobs with plans and participation rates that were about the same as well. but if we look at marital status, it may give us a bit more insight about what might be happening in terms of gender differences. single workers, particularly widowed, separated, and never

married workers, have substantially lower rates of employment in jobs with plans and participation rates compared to married workers. divorced workers overall -- divorced workers are a bit better off than single workers, but overall these workers could be vulnerable to economic insecurity in retirement. and, finally, young workers. they have much lower rates of employment in jobs with plans and lower participation rates than older workers. 49% of workers who are aged 25-34 are employed in jobs with plans and 37% contribute. by contrast, 58% of workers ages 45-54 are in jobs with plans and 51% participate. given the increased importance of beginning to save at very early stages in one's career, this disparity needs to be addressed.

the pension protection act is important, but not sufficient. there is a need to expand coverage for workers employed in establishments that are offering a plan or establishments that limit their eligibility to a plan. thank you. >> thanks, kilolo. [ applause ] you've laid out some pretty important shortcomings across a number of different factors. i'm curious if you have a thought -- we'll probably get into this later in the conversation and also i'm sure it's going to be one of the things that we talk about in the second panel, but just to focus on one part of what you talked about, the sort of breakdown between full time and part time. the economy appears to be moving towards a place where many, many more workers are either not

getting -- are underemployed and don't get enough hours or are the growing number of contingent workers. how do you see that playing out as we look into the future? what kind of reforms do you think are necessary to bring all of the workers who have new contingent relationships into coverage? >> so i'm sure that the panel later on will address some of this, but clearly there is a need to reach smaller employers. i think that a lot of the part-time and contingent workers are obtaining jobs with relatively small employers who are less likely to currently offer plans. so there needs to be an encouragement or a requirement for there to be more universal coverage of all workers, and even among employers who are offering plans, they may not be

providing access to some of their employees who have not had the same tenure or the -- who have part-time positions within those organizations, and so that needs to be addressed as well. >> thank you. okay, now we're going to shift gears. we seem to be shifting gears a lot in this panel. to bring in an international perspective, we're delighted to have keith ambachtsheer who is the director emeritus of the international centre for pension management at the university of toronto. keith has been a leader globally in the pensions and investment industry for more than four decades. he's an award-winning analyst. he advises governments, industry, associations, plan sponsors and money managers on governance, finance, and other investment issues. he's also, as many of you know, the founder of kpa advisory

services and cem benchmarking, which are highly respected organizations in the global pensions and investment industry. he has a lot of experience working with countries with funds around the globe. and he's going to bring some of that experience, particularly that in the launch, related to the launch of the uk's recent n.e.s.t. program and this experiment that's going on in ontario, in the province of ontario. keith, we look forward to hearing your perspectives. thank you. >> thank you. [ inaudible ] try this. yes. okay. the other comment i was going to

make was that at the border we're not non-americans, we're aliens. i qualify twice, actually. i have a dutch passport and a canadian passport, so i'm twice over an alien. so my perspective obviously is to look from the outside in, and then the question is, well, how to best do that. i think the place to start is with the melbourne mercer global pension index, gpi. how many people here know about the global pension index? about half of you. i think it's a terrific effort because it allows us to have comparative conversations about retirement income assistance, what's good about them, what's not so good about them, and to see how we can all get better at it. the premise for this index,

which was started in 2009, i actually happened to be in melbourne when it was originally launched. it was i think a very interesting and important occasion. it was put together by mercer actuary david knox in australia and his colleagues around the world to give an international perspective. so what drives retirement income system quality? they posit three things. one is adequacy, income replacement. second criteria is sustainability, the ability of the system to not only do it now but to do it 10, 20, 30 years from now, and the third dimension is integrity. is the system actually well put together, is it being well managed, is it being well supervised, if you like? this initiative started with 14 countries in 2009. the last report was with 25 countries and this year later on

there will be 27, so it keeps growing every year. the top three are denmark, netherlands, and australia. the dutch used to be on top until denmark came in. it was a devastation to the dutch to actually lose their first place. along with not being in the euro cup this year, which is another tremendously sad event. so what's with the top three here? what does it take to get into the top three? you need a sustainable pillar, one, the government piece that actually looks at poverty issues and covers the poverty, elderly poverty aspect of retirement. second, all three countries have compulsory participation in workplace pension plans. that's number two. all three countries have strong regulatory processes that cover all workplace pension plans. public sector, private sector, union, it doesn't matter.

everybody gets the same treatment. and what that means is because pillars one and two are well thought out and well run, there's little need for pillar three. and pillar three is where informational symmetry sets in, which basically means if you leave people to figure it out for themselves or advised by advisers who aren't necessarily totally unbiased, then you get a lot of inefficiency into the retirement savings system, and they don't have these issues because of the way these three countries have organized their retirement income system. so where is the usa? out of 25, where do you think? 14. and basically you get cs in all three categories, c for is adequacy, c for sustainability, and c for integrity.

you have a ways to go. we'll see how things turn out this year. so what comes out of this global pension index in terms of how you raise the bar from cs to bs, and as? one, raise the minimum pension, deal with the poverty issue, which is really a pillar one issue. number two, mandatory pillar two with a sensible net income replacement target for middle income workers. three, minimize leakages. came up in the conversation already. and, four, income for life back ends to dc plans. in other words, don't stop at retirement. figure out how to do income for life at the back end. so that's it. that's all you have to do and you'll become an "a" country in pensions. a little bit on your closest cousins, arguably, the uk who had an interesting event

overnight, and canada. by the way, uk ranks nine, canada ranks seven. we're somewhere in between the top and where you are. and what's interesting is in both countries have -- they've both taken on this question of the middle income workers without pension plans. that's been the big thing. the uk went through a major research process in the 19 -- in the 2000s which led to legislation which effectively required all employers in the uk to offer a workplace pension plan. interestingly, offered by a private sector provider or by default n.e.s.t., the national employment savings trust, which ends up with everybody if the employer doesn't make an active decision otherwise. it's now been operating for about three years, and things are going well.

it's actually unfolding as it should. what they decided to put in their system was on opt-out option for employees, and they thought the opt-out rate would be 20%. and what do you think it actually was? the ones that know can't answer. you've blown it. 6%, right? very low dropout rate. which surprised everybody by how low it was. that's very encouraging for an approach where you have auto enrollment and you don't want to go totally mandatory, you want to create this safety valve. it seems powerful to get people in and get people saving. the 7% that are dropping out are actually rational decisions, people close to retirement in higher income brackets. it makes sense. so that's interesting. now, the great white north, your neighbors to the north. we've been dealing with the same issue, middle income workers, no retirement pension plan.

what are we going to do? this has been going on for ten years. and effectively, there's a group that says we already have the canada pension plan, it works very well. it's a relatively modest system. let's expand it. let's do two things, increase the benefits, cover more income. and but we have this rule in terms of changing the cpp/qpp. quebec does its own thing on this. is that it requires 2/3 of the provinces with 2/3 of the population as well as the federal government to make any change. so that's a pretty high hurdle. so we've had a federal government for quite some time who said, no, people should figure this out themselves. so it's been a nonstarter. so ontario a few years ago, largest province, said enough already. we're going to start the orpp, the ontario retirement pension plan, because it looks like we're never going to agree federally on anything. and so that started a couple years ago.

legislation was enacted last year. there's a process now in terms of actually creating the delivery organization, and then we had last monday. i don't know whether with all the news going on down here, whether you get any canadian news whatsoever, but in our world something really big happened on monday. and that was there was agreement to actually increase the cpp. so we had a change in government last october. that was a positive on enhancing the cpp. frankly, ontario would rather do something nationally with the other provinces than do things on their own. so the between ontario and the federal government and doing some further work, there was actually agreement on monday to do two things with respect to the canada pension plan. one was to increase the benefit, and number two is to increase the amount of income that's going to be covered by the

benefit. so it's a big deal in canada right up there with stabilizing the cpp in the 1990s. so there's a lot of detail to be worked out as to okay, exactly you get down to the bottom line what does it all mean in terms of implementation. a long window on implementation, starts 2019. seven-year window to implement the whole thing. that got agreement -- that's what got agreement from the hesitant provinces to have a very long runway. so that now changes the conversation in canada in terms of, okay, given we're going to do that, what else do we need to do? it's quite a change in conversation. so good things can happen. there can be agreement between governments, apparently, if you get the right vibes and somebody called trudeau in the room and it happened. so where does that leave you all here? three things.

one is that i think it's important to have the ideal system in mind. ideally if you could wave a magic wand, what would it look like? and then number two is realistically, how close can you get there? because there are a lot of barriers, a lot of path dependency on how they got to where they are today, some of them nonchangeable, but still i think this notion of the ideal, what can we do, you know at the margin, where should we be spending our time? and it seems to me, firstly, that the poverty alleviation for seniors is one major issue that i would look at in terms of what can we do about that, and then i think with respect to middle income workers without pension plans, the question really does become is -- you know, how forceful can you become about getting that participation up? and it's interesting that in the uk, they went through this and they said, you know, you've got

to mandate it, and now in canada through expanding the canada pension plan, it is mandatory. so all employers will have to be involved in this. so i think the question for you is to what degree can you require, number one, participation, but also, number two, getting the contribution rate up to a level where it actually matters, where you can get the income replacement. so those are my opening thoughts. thanks. [ applause ] >> thanks so much, keith. so we've got about 15 minutes left. and i want to make sure we have lots of time for -- well, lots of time, some time for audience questions. so i would say i would like to pose one question to all of you that you can answer or not, as the case may be, based on things that everyone has said. everyone's pointed out that coverage is a huge issue. keith has just put on the table

the idea that the key to it internationally is compulsory participation. is that the key to it? and, you know, related to what -- the way he framed it at the end which i thought was really useful, right, is like there's an ideal system in mind and then there's realistically how close can you get there? we all know the prospects for compulsory systems in the united states are particularly challenging in the aftermath of the affordable care act, so comment, if you would, on whether you think compulsory is the solution or what a different alternative might be that would get us there. >> do you want me to start? >> sure. >> so i'd say to start, the first thing i would suggest is we don't use the term compulsory. >> how about mandate? >> probably not that one either. so i've been at a number of events with the folks from

n.e.s.t. and others from the uk that were part of their reforms. they always start using the term compulsion. and i think, boy, that will never sell here. to be here later, and i think the critical thing is to think about how we build on, you know, the start that they got on the auto ira and think about the framing in a way that makes people in policy circles comfortable with the fact that we're not talking about compulsion or a mandate. we're talking about putting in place a series of defaults that puts people on a path towards retirement security, towards success, and that if we don't, we're doing the same thing, we're just choosing a negative default. we're putting them on a path toward failure.

so why as a society would we do that? i mean, it just doesn't make any sense, and i think if you frame it that way, it's a lot easier to get the 90% of the way there that we can get to and not make the search, the -- for the ideal be the enemy of good enough here. that's my thought. >> thank you. >> sure. >> i like the term universal as opposed to compulsory. i like the sense that everyone, all workers, would be covered, would have some way of providing for retirement. and targeted universalism perhaps -- by that i mean doing something for those who are the lowest earners through tax credit, expanding the saver's credit and making it refundable, something to that effect so that there is an additional boost in terms of ensuring that there is enough for them at their

retirement age. [ inaudible ] >> maybe this is the time where i'm supposed to remember to say my views are my own and don't reflect the trustees, et cetera, et cetera. i think you really need to focus on how to best draw employers in as part of the solution. we modeled what would happen if auto iras were basically available on a national basis, and of the $4.13 trillion in retirement savings shortfalls, we were only able to decrease it by 6.5%. the reason is, of course, you don't have any employer money coming in and you don't have any incentives for the employees to go beyond the 3%. so whether we're calling it mandatory or universal or

compulsory, i think we should do everything we possibly can to incentivize the employers to become part of this process and to come in as contributions. the other thing i think you have to be really careful on is what is your objective? i mean, do you really want to have every single employee, quote, covered every single year? we look at these snapshots and we look at a huge percentage of individuals that don't necessarily have coverage or aren't participating in a particular year, but that doesn't mean they're going to go through their entire career without participating or without coverage. so you have to look basically over a full lifetime. then you get to the end and what is it that you want to have available for these people? we find in our modeling that a lot of individuals look like they'd be in good shape financially, and then because of nursing home costs for one or both spouses, basically, the account balances are ravaged.

is it really a problem with not enough savings, or is it a problem we are retirement expenditures that are not being dealt with sufficiently. whether it's through long term care insurance or some government program, what have you. >> thank you. i'm going to give you the last -- give you the last word on this and we'll open it to the audience if that's okay. [ inaudible ] >> i think behavioral economics is important and understanding it. the framing is really critical. i was going to give an example of that and this relates to my friend david knox -- this goes back to the inventor of gpi. he's on a mission to invent the back ends on dc plans, income for life back ends. and we just had a work shop in toronto on that. and i wrote it up, and i used in my language, i used income for life guarantees in my draft.

and he came back and he said don't use the word guarantees. use protection. income for life protection. and, again, i think it's classic example of something that goes down a lot easier because, again, with protection, it's not necessarily a guarantee. i mean, you can actually do a lot of shifting between the people that die too soon and the ones that live longer than they're supposed to without guarantees. and that's the focus. so i think there's a whole open question of the language we use and how we rethink getting to where we want to go using language that facilitates rather than creates barriers. >> thanks, keith. that's a great point. let's go to audience questions. i would ask -- remind you that we're on cspan, not because

anybody should be afraid that are on tv. but if you would wait till we get a microphone, stand up and also if you would please identify yourself before you start. i think melissa, did you have a hand up? >> thanks, melissa kahn. and i agree about all the comments about language. language is very important and framing is very important. i like the term of universal as opposed to mandate. lou, i'm sorry to put you on the spot. we're a member and support you greatly. i'm curious, you know, i think auto enrollment, escalation, changing safe harbors is important here. but i still think you have the gap of workers who don't work for companies, especially in the small employer sector who don't

and won't have access. so how would you get them covered? >> yeah, great question. so i think the first thing you want to do is understand as jack was alluding to who is left out of the system and i think we often reflectively fall into the trap of looking at a snap shot that at any given time there's a significant percentage, maybe an overreported percentage, but a significant percentage of the population that at that moment in time is not covered. a significant number of those people that are not covered are going to cycle back into coverage and maybe out of it and back in. so i do think it's important for us to understand through a working lifetime, you know, whether people have access to enough coverage to get them where they need to be. but that aside, who is left out?

so part-time employees are clearly in a position where they're more often than not left out. we need to figure out what the incentives are in the system right now that are causing employers to leave their part-time employees off the table. i think there are rules in place qualification rules that are probably an akronistic we need to rethink. we need to make sure the incentives are to cover people and not leave them out. it goes well beyond that. the self-employed are often out of the system. you would think there's a way for us to incentivize them to take care of themselves. i think that's going to be further exacerbated as we see the emerging gig economy where a lot of people are technically self-employed even though they feel like they're working for others. and then, you know, we clearly have issues with very very small employers and with the service industry.

and you know, i think once we sort of define where that coverage gap is, it helps us to think through what the appropriate solutions are. you know, there are definitely different paths to take. i do like the idea of focusing on the framing around universality. i think there is going to have to be a nudge there somehow. i think practically it's a nudge and not mandate. but, you know, it has the same effect. you know, ultimately i think the other thing is it may be a little beyond the scope here, but we have to think about the critical role that social security plays in providing for the retirement security of the least among us. and you know, social security was conceived as a social insurance program.

we've gotten to thinking about it as a retirement savings program. and i think as part of the conversation we have to think about there is going to be a portion of our population that whatever we do are not going to have enough periods of coverage through working to provide for their retirement security needs. we have to make sure that their security is provided through social security. i think it's a critical part of the total calculus. >> other questions? >> thanks so much, everyone. i'm justin king from new america. congressman crowley did a great job offering up the idea of the need for savings, for a variety of needs over the course of one's life. and i'd love to solicit reactions from the panel about the tension between people's emergency needs and retirement

savings. and whether or not there's potential to adapt the retirement savings system to more holistically meet the needs of americans. whether we can address withdrawals and leakage in a way that supports families, emergency needs and the fact that life happens going forward. >> anyone want to take that? >> that's a very good question. definitely there is the need to acknowledge that people are going to have requirements for the use of savings before they get to retirement. and to have multiple ways of saving.

we have research that shows that people of all income levels can and do save when they have the structures in place to facilitate savings. like upper income households have had for a long time. so there are options to have bifurcated savings strategies so some are going into retirement accounts, at the same time some savings are going into accounts for other uses. which could be emergency savings. i think we need to keep those on the table and explore that as we go forward. >> i want today quickly comment, so i think it goes beyond programs. i think we have a real need for cultural change. we need to change the mindset, change the beliefs in our country around the savings and the taking control of your financial future. there are definitely programs that can put in place i would

suggest outside the retirement savings system instead of detracting from it. i think it's important we get people focused on a gut level on the need for taking control of their financial future. >> thank you. so i think we have time for one more question. lenny, i saw your hand up. >> first of all, thanks for a wonderful and comprehensive panel. i wanted just to note that what was about closing the coverage gap is more than just about providing options for retirement income. it's also addressing an issue with social justice and helping us become a more perfect union. i wanted just to ask jack a question about the 3% glitch in the ppa itself.

is there somewhere in the bill, jack, where there's a reference to 3% as a starting point and you're not necessarily required to escalate from there? because perhaps that legislation inadvertently caused a lot of people to use 3% and create the issue that the "wall street journal" story brought up. >> haven't read ppa for about ten years, so i might be a little bit rusty on the details. i don't know if mark is here yet, but i would bet anything that the vast majority of the people who came in at 3% were coming in because of what was written back in the '90s when they were getting the guidance that a 2% or 3% default was going to be okay with irs and the treasury. whether or not you are basically going to be compelled to follow

3% for anything other than safe harbor, i don't think that was the intent of ppa, certainly. >> great. so we're going to move on to our next thing. please join me in thanking a wonderful panel. [ applause ] and ida is going to introduce our keynote speaker. >> thanks, jeremy. so when i started out this morning saying there was a room full of experience, was i wrong? it's really been an amazing conversation. and honestly an amazing set of careers dedicated to these issues and the path forward. so it's my pleasure to get the opportunity to introduce yet another one of the leaders who has amassed many years of experience and many years of expertise to share with us today from an industry's perspective

on the unfinished agenda of the ppa. from one particular company's perspective. so please join me in welcoming edward f. murphy who i'm going to call ed for the rest of the introduction. he is president of empower retirement with over 8 million savers, 35,000 plans. and serving all segments of the employer sponsored retirement plan market. ed brings as i said over 30 years of experience to his role with empower and has been with putnam since 2009 and in 2014 took over the role as president of empower. prior to that he was head of defined contribution and investment and prior to 2009, he was in executive leadership with fidelity for 20 years. a lot of publications, a lot of thought leadership exhibited by

you, ed, and also you're frequently here in d.c. i think it might be your second home. speak ing with congress, department of labor, department of treasury, the irs, around many of the kinds of conversations about reform and inclusion and expansion of retirement saving systems and their effectiveness to our policy leaders. earlier this week, at the spark conference, an industry conference that was here you got headlines for your call to your peers in industry to speak with one collective voice on public policy issues relating to expanding and improving retirement saving systems in this country. so i want to thank you for that leadership. i can't wait to hear what you have to say. i know we have slides for you, ed, if i can invite you up and everybody please give a warm welcome to ed murphy. [ applause ] >> good morning, everyone.

thank you, ida, and thank you to the aspen institute for hosting this event. i do think it's timely, particularly in light of the election and what we can expect in 2017. i think we're optimistic about the opportunity for retirement legislation. today is an interesting day for us at empower, we have 5,000 associates. and we're really busy today. our call volumes are up 25%. as we've got 8 million americans that we support, but one of the things that's interesting is unlike years ago when we would have periods of volatility like this in the market, we're not seeing the panic selling and capitulation. i think investors through their own experience, are not reacting hastily. they realize that the investments they have in retirement plans are 20, 30, 40 year investments.

so i think that's good to see. particularly with the market down 500 points. i think this is a great group we have here today. many of you were involved in helping to shape the pension protection act of 2006 and others are working on the next iteration as we look to build off the ppa. i have a little bit of a multimedia show here, but some really interesting data, empirical data we want to share with you. i'm going to cut right to the chase. and say the keys to solving america's retirement savings challenge are right in front of our noses. first, as a baseline, we must all foster the political will to make social security solvent. we heard the previous panel address this and also the congressman. beyond that in the savings arena

we've conducted a mass investing experiment for well over a generation now. and the results are in. and we know that it works. in fact, we can trace the most beneficial factors that lift retirement readiness directly back to the ppa itself its endorsement of automatic plan features, qualified default investments, legal safe harbors for plan sponsors who offer these features was a qualitative change in the american retirement policy. indeed, the benefits of the best practices that the ppa endorsed literally jump off the page in the lifetime income score survey that empower retirement has been conducting for the past six years. these surveys take stock of the total net worth of more than 4,000 working americans ages 18-65. it's weighted to match u.s. census parameters.

the assets we count are comprehensive. social security, db planned benefits. contribution rates, other savings. real estate, equity in the home, equity in small businesses to the extent it applies. our analysis projects the share of preretirement income that people are on track to replace once they stop work. to generate a lifetime income score or lis. because we see income replacement as the prime goal, the best, arguably the only measure of success or short fall for any retirement system or plan. you can see on the far left of this slide, we project income replacement of just 44% at the

median for 20 million plus households who have no access to savings plans on the job. and that was a topic of discussion in the previous panel. at the far right, nearly 11 million households who stand at the median to draw incomes in retirement well over full replacement. 117% in fact. overall, as the dotted line shows, we estimate that the median working americans are on track to be able to replace roughly 62% of their current incomes in retirement. clearly tens of millions of americans may face a sharp falloff in living standards in retirement or at least real financial stress. that's the challenge. but what i'd like to suggest to you today is that the chart also provides us with something like a road map or action check list to identify priorities and solutions for america's entire retirement challenge.

for example, since our data includes protected social security income, we can see how vital this program is and why making it solvent should be retirement policies job one. let's take a look. here's how retirement readiness would drop in the absence of social security. tens of millions of people would fall into absolute destitution. many millions more would be sorely stressed. that's why all of us who care about retirement policies should urge our political leaders to make social security solvent. it's a high priority because the system is under threat and time is not on our side. many of you know roughly 17 years from now, the system's own trustees protect the last of the trust funds will be drawn down.

all recipients will face a cliff drop of 23% or more in their social security benefits. unless we act soon to make the system solvent. every american under age 48 today who plans to retire at age 65 in 2033 and beyond, faces a nasty retirement income pay cut. that's the very predictable price of inaction. so let's hope the next president and congress have the courage to take on this challenge. compromise fairly and shore up the foundation of americans' retirement security. and let's help them do that. they need prodding, they need support and compromise and sacrifice. if people like us here today don't offer the help who will? let's also come together on the

next most salient priority, and that's getting every working american access to savings plan on the job. here's the difference between having a payroll deduction plan and not having one. pretty stark. access alone raises income replacement by fully 35%. from 44% to 79%. at empower we believe that everyone who pays mandatory fica tax should also have the option to set aside part of their paycheck for retirement. data from the employee benefits research institute shows roughly 70% of workers earning $30,000 to $50,000 who do have access to work place plans choose to save

at some level. workers who don't have a payroll savings plan, less than 5% open up an individual retirement account. payroll deduction is roughly 14 times more effective than the tax incentive itself. to us this suggested the only real path to retirement readiness runs straight through the workplace. this isn't rocket science. that's why we support robust solutions to the access or coverage gap. at the national level. auto iri, simplified 401(k) are things that will improve access to savings. we know the primary reasons why small business owners do not create new plans is tied to

complexity, the concerns about fiduciary responsibility and cost. and it can be addressed by the industry and many of us are working on it. savers who draw on professional advice, for example, step up their median income replacement rate to 87% at the median. it remains to be seen whether the dol fiduciary rule will help. particularly among small savers who need the advice more than ever. workers whose companies adopt auto enrollment in their plans take a further step up. they are on track to replace 92% of their work life incomes.

again, at the median. firms that go on as they all should, to add automatic savings escalation bring their median you workers replacement rates to just over 100%. which i think we would agree is success by any measure. lastly, we come to the highest success category on the far right. these are workers who not only enjoy fully automated savings plans on the jobs but who are deferring rates of 10% or more. a median replacement rate of 117% this cohort of workers may be able to step up their living standards in retirement. this group, by the way, is not some tiny number of well heeled outliers. it includes between 20 and 30 million people from a variety of income levels. we have advocated for the ten

plus savings deferral rate for years. we are very pleased to see the financial services round table endorse the goal through their great save ten campaign which we've been very much a part of. so we don't expect to win the nobel prize by pointing out more is more and that higher savings compound over time. but we do think that setting a target of 10% system wide is actually an ambitious target and well worth pursuing. today's defined contribution participants savings rates, deferral rates are just over 7%. what we're calling for with a save ten is a step up of nearly 40% in the savings rates of tens of millions of americans in d.c. plans today.

we don't serve anybody well by allowing them to believe they're on track for retirement readiness at savings rates of 3% or 5%. or 7%. if americans want financial security for 20-30 years after their work lives ends, we'll simply have to save more and a lot more than we're doing today. so let's just tell people the truth. one last point on this six step x-ray of retirement readiness. you might think that what lifts people to the solid readiness we are seeing on the far right is sheer income. but that's just not the case. it's true that higher income people are somewhat more able to save. though surprisingly large number of higher income people don't. but our survey also finds that

plenty of low and moderate income people do reach high levels of readiness because of plan design features that get them engaged in savings and allocate them to solid default investments. planned design matters critically. it is possible and should be our goal to create a defined contribution system that makes success easy and failure hard. one example of this year's survey suggests progress towards the goal may be gaining traction. we're seeing uptick in retirement readiness of young workers, millennials, 81% in this year's survey. this data set is too short to be definitive. we suspect it reflects the fact

that many more companies have been adopting auto enrollment. we see that in our own business, particularly new hires, recent years. we're going to continue to watch this space to see if we see consistency and momentum going forward. i don't think we need a lot more data to tell us the main policy implications of the great retirement savings experiment that americans have been living through over the past 30 years. we simply must spread the best practices found in the universe as widely as humanly possible. access itself is vital. with 50 million americans outside of the dc system is a scandal. besides coverage we need auto plan design as universal as possible.

we want to support measures that can close the coverage gap and make success contagious by make being these best practices and plan design the national norm. because our data tells us we can really solve the accumulation of the retirement challenge just by implementing the proven successes that ppa helped foster. once we do that we should move on to finish the job that the ppa started and that means solving for the distribution phase. the next slide i want to touch on, at empower we call our vision for the next generation a workplace savings in this country, workplace savings 4.0 because it follows three previous sometimes overlapping generations of workplace

savings. 1.0, if you will was the initial explosion of dc savings plans from the mid-'80s to mid-'90s. workplace 2.0 took hold in the mid-'90s when progressive plan sponsors and providers began experimenting with features like target day funds and trying out auto enrollment and savings escalation. workplace 3.0 began in 2006 with the protection ake and essentially codified these best practices. but today with nearly 10,000 baby boomers moving into retirement every day, we're entering a new phase in the evolution of workplace savings. we still have to finish implementing ppa endorsed best practices, take the dc system to a new level and then move on to solve the new challenge of lifetime income.

this slide shows our workplace 4.0 agenda in a nutshell. we start by preserving all existing savings incentives and seeking to correct the bogus scoring methods that make retirement savings such a juicy target for budget hawks. the ask here is for honest arithmetic. distinguish between tax deferrals in once and gone tax expenditures and doing that before any major tax reform. the next major goal is close the access gap at the national level. so we will actively support regulatory efforts to do that. as i mentioned earlier auto i.r.a., starter plans, simplified 401 (k)s. we favor more generous and refundable tax credits to encourage employers to establish

plans as was touched on earlier today by others and we support efforts to engage the large and growing share of the workforce doing part-time work or contract work. that's the big challenge, because these workers have no regular w2 payroll income to take deductions from. they need strong, new incentives to engage retirement savings. across existing workplace system, it's time for regulators to guide, nudge and even mandate the adoption of full auto plan designs. these designs are qualitatively better than purely voluntary plans without auto features. they have vastly more, in short, they work. to get to a new auto system will require legislation and planned legal safe harbors for planned

sponsors who do the right thing. we need to continue efforts already under way led by treasury to make it easier for workplace savings plans to include guaranteed or as keith would say protection options. annuities, partial and deferred annuities, longevity insurance, guaranteed drawdown plans, these are all going to be critical as we move through the massive demographic shift that's occurring in our country. we would prefer tax preference, perhaps allowing workers to draw first $10,000 a year in guaranteed income tax-free.

last but not least we believe congress should deliver major help to many millions of retirees by allowing tax-free withdrawals from qualified plans to cover medical expenses and health insurance. these changes taken together will go far towards fleshing out next generation of workplace savings in america. i want to close by emphasizing the great opportunity that all of us in retirement services have to make this country more prosperous, more dynamic, and, indeed, more just. keeping is the promise of dignified retirement after a lifetime work is not just a decent goal to fight for, it's the way to turn what could be a crisis into an opportunity for renewed growth ins in confidence. imagine america in 2020 where every worker has strong incentives to save and plans designed to actually deliver a dignified retirement.

with those savings flowing through the markets to finance growth, entrepreneurship and job creation, imagine a country that knows that it can meet real challenges because it has just done so. that's what solving our retirement challenge can do for america. so let's go from here to empowerment. let's set the agenda for change in retirement policy this year and then drive it forward in 2017. thanks for listening. [ applause ] >> i know stand between you and lunch. >> we have a few minutes. anybody have any questions for ed?

>> just an opportunity to push an 8-year-old book called "fixing the future, how candidates usually fractious government work together for pension plan." it's a very interesting story, the same issue as the social security except we ended up with a situation where we actually doubled contribution rate in a relatively short period of time and built up a reserve fund that stabilized contribution rate into the foreseeable future. it's a fascinating story, actually. you have to figure out how to carry out the u.s. equivalent of that story. >> i think it's a great point. as you and i discussed earlier, we're owned by a canadian entity and we've spent a lot of time studying the canadian system and the way public and private came together to shape pension policy in canada. thank you, everyone.

once again, i want to thank you for asking me. [ applause ] i had a rough upbringing and i got involved in the streets and they were selling drugs. and i started selling drugs, we were selling marijuana and cocape, and crack cocaine, and we started selling that. i was in the streets from ages 13 to 18 years old, five years. cory mcgee will discuss his book, he talks about his former life as a drug dealer and a police officer. >> i criticize the police, but i'm talking about the bad police, and it's a small percentage of the overwhelming majority of cops, they are just

doing their jobs. you don't hear about them. you hear about the cases the bad cops or bad policing, and once law enforcement starts to weed them out. every time you see a case, where a man gets killed, seven complaints of use of force, five s substantiated and the guy is a mess, and we don't find out about it until he has killed someone. >> next the discussion on the legality of the cost sharing in the healthcare law.

good morning, we know there's a number of things happening over the capitol building and on the floor, we will move as quickly and readily as possible, i appreciate members patience and trying get

through to the witnesses. thank you. if somebody can get to door in the back of the room, i appreciate that. this is a hearing on the cost sharing reduction program. we say the constitution is clear, no money shall be drawn, this means that the executive branch cannot spend money unless grass says it k yesterday, the assistant secretary for tax policy testified before the ways and means committee, if congress does not want the monies appropriate, it could say, don't appropriate the money from that account, it's a direct quote. it's in contradiction to law. we are hear today to examine the recomme ramifications of the legal

decision. we are not here to discuss whether or not the decision illegal, a federal district court has decided that it is. we are here today to talk about the consequence of the attempt to grab the power of the purse from congress. the program was established and not funded. it was requested for an appropriation in the 2014 budget request. congress however denied that request. a few months later, csr payments were made anyway. how? with he will they raided the tax refunds and credits fund, which violated law. in february, 2015, along side the committee on ways and means this committee launched an investigation in to the administrations actions. they sought to understand the acts behind the decision to fund the program. through a permit appropriation. our questions were straight forward and included when and

how the decision was made and who made it from the on set the administration has refused to -- we were able to shed light on the administration's decision. the details and findings are outlined in the joint report that was released yesterday and this is the report. you should all have it. don't judge my actions judge my intentions is what it boils down to. again, this administration seems to believe it's above the law, and let me be clear, are none of us are. it's not about the ability to provide healthcare for anyone, i believe we should be doing to help those that are low income, struggling with health issues, but this is about a constitutional question and will had this committee and congress uphold the constitution and we should all agree that we must all follow the law.

today's hearing will companion the consequences of the findings of the committees investigation in to the decision to unconstitutionally fund the program through a permit appropriation. the impact of the aca and appropriations law and congressional oversight, there are clear problems with the law. it's not just a csr program, there's problems with the transitional reinsurance program, the risk corridors of basic health program, the lists go on. the constitution states that the power of the purse lies not with the executive but with congressional branch. this provides congress an important check on the executive branch and that applies to any president of any party at any time. the president has turned the constitution on its head and threatened the important power of congress.

finally we must confront the executive branch's position. oversight is critical to a functioning democracy that is why the constitution grants congress extensive authority to oversee executive branch activities. it's now we eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from government. as it's made clear, the executive branch has gone to great lengths to keep the information from the congress and the american people. if they think what they are doing is legal, i invite them to come before the committee and explain it t subcommittee cannot and will not accept any -- any witness tactics to delay and deny. in fact, again today, we have another instance of the administration's obstruction, the committee invited secretary burwell or a someone of her choosing but the department has failed to provide anyone. this administration is trying to

avoid congressional execuscruti and that begs the question, is someone trying to hide something. we look forward to the hearing the witness's experts opinions. i want to personally thank the committee for what was done for mental health reform, particularly my friend, stead faf fast in investigating an important question of the nation. it's powerful what came through and i want to thank you for that. now i recognize mr. gat for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you for the praise on the mental health bill, it was really a joint effort, there were a lot of bumps in the roads and difficult negotiations, that is an example of what this committee can do when we really work together. and as i said, in this committee, and on the floor, it's a really good first step, now we need funding and i think we all know that.

unfortunately, today's hearing is not a productive hearing like all of our mental health hearings were and it's really not intended to improve the aca, or to improve the affordability of healthcare for low income and middle income people, it's another opportunity to bash the administration as they tried to implement the affordable care act. this is the 17th hearing that this committee has had since the aca was passed in to law in 2010. and the congress alone, nearly one-fifth of the hearings have focused on aca oversight, as i have said repeatedly in my statements in the committee. i would not mind that if there was an attempt to do something to improve the way the aca works. now, obviously, we try to enact

constitutional legislation in this congress, that's our job. that's the thing we were sworn to uphold. but we do have a judicial branch, which is there to give checks and balances just in case people get it wrong. and in this case, the house republicans decided that they thought the csr program was unconstitutional. well it's not this committee's job to determine whether this program is unconstitutional or not. it's the court's job, and guess what, the house republicans filed a lawsuit in federal court. they asked the judge to decide between conflicting interpretations of the law, and guess what, the trial court judge ruled on the merits of the case and the judge ruled for the house republicans and said, in fact, according to that judge's

position, that the -- this provision of the aca was not constitutional and now the administration is appealing that decision. so, what are we doing here today? this matter is in the courts. i'm not here to say whether it's my opinion, even though i'm a lawyer, about whether this is constitutional or not. but i will say, that everything i knew in the deliberation of this bill was everybody believed this provision to be constitutional. and so, once again, we are having this oversight where we are hauling in the administration, we are hauling in other people to talk about whether this provision, this cost sharing reduction program is constitutional, or not. but in fact, what we should be talking about is what are we going to do to improve the aca so that the middle class and lower income taxpayers can

afford healthcare. mr. chairman, i was glad to hear you say that it's not about the merits of healthcare, or provision of healthcare to low income people, but isn't that really what we should be worried about? shouldn't we let the courts worry about the ins and outs of the constitutionality and if in fact the appeals court upholds the trial court decision, shouldn't it be our job to try to figure out how to give some sort of subsidies and offsets to low and middle income people so they can afford healthcare? there's nothing i have seen since 2009 to indicate that there was any ill-will on behalf of the administration with respect to the low cost fund or the cost sharing reduction program. there's no, no indication that the administration knowingly violated the constitution. they in fact thought that it was

constitutional. so, why are we here? once again, we are here to bash the aca, to rake the administration through the mud, and to continue to question this policy. i think it would be much more useful for this committee to look at legislation or to look at policies that would help fix this program and help make it affordable to get healthcare. with that i yield back. >> recognizing mr. upton for 5:00. >> thanks, mr. chairman, kudos on mental health, it passed the full committee, 53-0, that is not a bad mark. it was nearly 18 months ago. when former weighs and means chair paul ryan sent our first request, requesting documents and information of the source forthwith the csr program. chairman brady now continued on with me in this investigation,

after he became chairman of ways and means late last year and we believed then and still believe today, that the president illegally and unconstitutionally funded this program through a permanent appropriation used primarily to pay back tax refunds. we have spent more than a dozen letters and interviewed just as many administration officials. we have been forced to send subpoenas for document on the issue. we have learned a lot during this time, despite the obstruction from the administration, but there's basic facts that the administration is withholding from the congress. yesterday, the majority staff of this committee, along with the majority of staff of ways and means released this report, detailing our investigation. we did it because folks at home and my state of michigan, but frankly across the country and elsewhere deserve to know how the government is spending their

hard earned tax dollars. and we are taking billions, talking billions in this instance. the federal government has an obligation to each and every taxpayer to spend the money with full transparency in accordance with the law. with the csh program, i'm sorry to say that the federal government has failed to do so. this administration has gone to great lengths to prop up the health law. going as far to break the signature law to keep it afloat and here the administration will not even give congress the documents or the testimony that we need to fully understand how they came to the decisions that they made to fund the program in my view, illegally. without access to the information from the executive branch, we cannot conduct effective oversight, and without that, we cannot protect the public's interest. i introduced a proposal to replace the affordable care act once and for all. i believe our plan offer as better way forward. one that makes better changes to

improve access and decrease costs. and a way that won't require the federal government to secretly shuffle around billions of dollars and violate the law like we have seen this administration do from our report with the affordable care act. yesterday's hearing of ways and means oversight subcommittee focused on the findings detailed in the report. today we are here to talk about the long-term implications of the findings. our findings go far beyond the csr program are important to the affordable care act, appropriation law and principals and our powers in the legislative branch. we deserve answers and we are not going to rest. our work continues and i yield to dr. burgess the balance of my time. >> i think the chairman for yielding. and i certainly want to second his comment about the department

health of human services owed us a designee to continue to investigate this issue. as we discovered the administration has transferred money from the authorized and funded premium tax credit account to the cost shares program. throughout the investigation, the administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to delay providing the information, often citing not authorized legal privilege. this trend toward an all powerful administration must not continue in the next administration. i look forward to hearing from the witnesses, about the importance of transparency and oversight and what the committee could do to prevent this type of activity in the future. >> i thank the gentleman for yielding and to the answer as to why we are here today, we as

congress have oversight, and that is exactly what we are doing because we have found that there's money that is being reprogrammed and shifted as dr. burgess said from one account to another without our agreement and appropriation. it is called article 1 powers. we are talking as chairman upton said, about billions of dollars. it is inappropriate, we should be doing the oversight and making the determination of what is happening, with the dollars and with that i yield back the balance of my time. i thank you, and now recognize mr. green of texas for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. it's my job to give our ranking members statement today because i think he is locked down in the capitol, but, before we do that, the issue of litigation brought by the republican majority is

not unusual. the litigant would not show up and come to a hearing while are you in the course process. we know the district court made a ruling and that's on appeal. i don't think there's any problem with somebody from the administration not showing up simply because we can decide, you know, we have an opinion between all of us on what is constitutional. that doesn't matter. the folks that make the decision are sit engine black robes in the supreme court building. since the litigation was brought by the majority and let's let the courts work their way through that. but, now, i go to my colleagues opening statement, when we pass the affordable care act in to law six years ago, we dramatically changed the healthcare landscape in the united states. the law has made access to affordable healthcare a reality for the american people. and at the close of the third open enrollment earlier this year. nearly $13 million people had

selected health plans or were reenrolled in to federal or state exchanges. an insured rate has fallen to historic low. and estimated 20 million previously uninsured adults have gained coverage since the passing of the bill. to help limit hoik costs and consumers the law includes several mechanisms. the cost sharing or csr program. assists low and middle income americas to affordable their deduction ables. csr are a help that out-of-pocket healthcare costs do not place a crippling financial burden on american families. many have taken advantage of the benefits offered by the csr program of the approximately 11.1 million consumers that were enrolled at the end of march. 57% or 6.4 million individuals were benefitting from the csrs to make their coverage more affordable. the csr program has proven

effective in accomplishing what it was designed to do. one study estimates that americans that are eligible would save $479 each year. if you listen to my colleague on the other side of the aisle, you would hear nothing about the benefits or the affordable care act at all and despite the overwomening success of the law, this committee has chosen to hold yet another hearing to attack and under mine the affordable care act. this is nothing new the republican majority spent six years promising to repeal and replace the affordable care act, but we have yet to see a meaningful piece of legislation until the last week. they recently unveiled a plan that falls laughably short in providing quality, affordable coverage for our constituents and their constituents. those watching this hearing need to understand that the republican majority is exclusively focused on taking down the affordable care act. they have now voted 64 times to under mine and repeal the

affordable care act. they have held hearings, sent letters, document requests, conducted interviews and issued subpoenas. they have challenged the cost sharing reduction program in court. there's ways we could be conducting meaningful oversight of the affordable care act and i'm sure we could come together and approve the law and improve the law for our constituents. but this hearing and investigation is, will do no such thing. hearings like this only serve to hurt americans, reverse the progress that was made for millions that now benefit from the law and it's time our republicans stolen property litigating the past and to work with us to continue improving the healthcare quality of the country. and i -- anybody else want time? a minute? >> well, i think the -- >> being former state senator, i could continue to talk for a minute, but i'm glad to yield back. >> well, senator, thank you.

i ask that the written opening statements are introduced in the record. without objection they are entered into the record. first we have doug badger going to lead off the panel. he is a former white house and policy adviser, currently a fellow at the galen institute. and we want to welcome mr. tom miller. a resident fellow at the american enterprise institute, he studies healthcare policy including insurance and market based alternatives to the affordable care act. thank you for appearing today and we appreciate your testimony. next, we welcome legislative consultant, morton rosenberg. he is a specialist with the american law division of the congressional research service, where he focused on the scope and application of congressional oversight and investigative prag prerogatives.

finally, mr. simon lazarus, we thank you for being here today, and thank all of the witnesses. quite an steesteemed panel with century or more of experience. this committee is holding an investigative hearing, do any of you have an objection of taking testimony under oath? do any of you desire to be advised by council, rise and raise your right hand, i will swear you in. do you all swear the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. thank you, you are all under oath and subject to the penalties of the united states code, ask you each for a 5:00

summary of the schedule. pay attention to the yellow and red lights there. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ranking members of the subcommittee for this opportunity to appear before you this morning. to discuss the affordable care acts cost sharing reduction program. it is part of the aca implementation. there's a serious miscalculation of demand for health insurance of young and healthy, people. my colleagues, brian of the center and heritage foundation and university of houston and i, have published the insured

performance in the 2000 benefit year. our first study provided information on how insurers faired selling qualified health plans. we found that the payments were made in the form of reinsurance payments and risk, card or claims, averaged more than $1100 per enrollee, or 25% of premium. put another way, had risk card or payments been made in full, there was $1.25 in revenue for every dollar collected in premiums and still lost money. our second paper examined the perform as of the issuers that sold qhps in the individual and small group markets. we found that insurers lost three times as much per enrollee selling qhps to individuals than they did to small groups. those losses occurred despite billions of dollars in

individual and corporate subs y subsidies that were available for individual qhps and not for group qhps, the main reason, individual enrollees included medical claims that averaged 24% more per enrollee than group qhps, those groups were 110% of premium dollars. these losses continued after 2014, and mckenzie and company, estimated that they may have more than doubled in 2015. now, why has this happened? i think they have laid out why the rules governing the individual qhps have produced such a disasterous result for insurers that billions in lawful and unlawful corporate subsidies cannot cure. he said, the aca largely replaced risk-based insurance in the individual market with income redistribution, based on

age, health and income status. congress cannot redistribute health. the aca's rule structure for the individual market seeks to do this by requiring insurers to sell products that are not attractive to younger and healthier people. and over charge them for those products. while discounting premiums for people who are older and less healthy. the result is a so-called market that attracts high risk enrollies and repells low risk ones. such a market is dysfunctional. the administration made a sudden series of policy reversals. this included unappropriated money. and the diversion of billions of dollars to the insurance companies, repeated restructuring of the reinsurance program to make payments 40%

more generous to insurers than at the time they submitted their premiums and a slow retreat from the agency's prior position. an effort to turn it in to a tarp like fund that forces taxpayers to bear the cost of bad business decisions made by big corporations.