and doug holtz eekin, president of the american action forum. their bios are in the packets. so if you want more information on our speakers, please look there. with that i'd like to introduce steve to begin talking about the program's finances. >> great. thank you very much, ben. and karen and i are going to do as we described, sort of a tag team run you through some of the material. we have a number of slides. ben will yell at us if we're taking too much time. so let me just run through the first couple slides, karen will run through some. we'll go back and forth, to keep it interesting. because it's been said that some actuaries are not as about interesting. so tag team will be better. why are we here today because of social security, but in particular the date of yesterday the annual trustees report came out? every year, starting 1941, there's always been one. why are we doing it? because the congress demands it. we do what they say. it's required that every near an annual trustees report comes out, april 1-ish or so, when we get it completed. that speaks to three basic t