I want to start by just getting a show of hands and seeing how many of the people in this room think they will get at least a penny from Social Security. All right. Probably twothirds. Threequarters. So theres a gallup poll that crime out a year or two ago that asks all working age americaned that question, and 51 of them said they didnt think they would see pane you from Social Security. You can interpret that self different ways but i think its shocking to see how little faith people have when theyre planning for their own retirement. Whether they actually believe that or more ceremony bow lies symbolizing their lact of faith in the political situation is a different question. Today were looking at Social Securitys longterm sustainability and the financing structure and how we do make it sustainable for the long run so it will be there in some shape or form, probably with Police Officers for when you all are in need and ready to claim benefit us. So,ed just want to start briefly by letting appear know about a commission that we had at the Bipartisan Policy Center called the commission on Retirement Security and personal savings. It was cochaired by form are senate kent conrad and jim lockhart, in the number two the Social Security administration they had a group of 19 members who worked for two years. It was a labor of love. They met about a dozen times, fullday meetings, debt with not only Social Security and the private sector and how personal savings contributes to Retirement Security. They ultimately came to agreement on a package of policies that would make Social Security sustainable itch didnt think they would get there several members said i think we should put Social Security aside because we wont reach agreement, but ultimately with steve and karens help with modeling reform proposals they were they reach it took them two years and theyve not even elected official sod no one that had to responsible to and vote on this back home. But they were able to reach that agreement, and i think it shows a model. Other groups have done this but shows halls our policymakers need to do in the near future in order to get the system back on track. I encourage you to check it out. Gives you a good overview of the system and the options. You can find it on bipartisan policy. Org. Today were here with steve and karen, and im so luck to have them. Theyre people i have long admired in the Social Security policy space. Theyre very few people who know more about the program than the two of them. Theyve been working on it for a number of years. What i love bat both of them is that they are wonks at heart and act wears of the mind and so you can ask them a question of, what percent die need to increase the payroll tax by in order to solve half of the Social Security problems and theyll give you the answer like that. If they try really hard they can dumb it down enough for the rest of souse we can actually understand what is going on in this issue. You can find their bull bios in the packets you have but steve is the chief actuary, has been for many years 0, the Social Security administration. He is responsible for scoring all the proposals that members of congress, out outside groups and submit and seeing the impact on the program and contributing to the trustee records and other responsibilities. And karen is the deputy chief actuary of the Social Security administration. ll turn it over to them for a brief presentation on the financing and some of the policy options that are on the table for fixing Social Security. If you have a question at the end, please raise your hand and well do to q a. When your turn ask a question, speak loudry. Think karen will start off. Could i make one little comment on your initial question to the group here, just cant resister. Something like 20 years ago or so, something about which a lot of people in the room would not have familiarity there was survey that was asking a bunch of young people if they were more likely to see social benefit order space aliens . The answer almost unanimously was space aliens. So i was talking to a bunch of people, they role administrators for various corporations. They were all people pretty much in ir20s and i raised the question to them all the hand wet up for space aliens. I said so youre miking a pretty good income here now and since you know youre not going to get anything from Social Security youre probably saving a hodge huge portion of your salary and all kind of mulling around and one guy said, well, we didnt really mean nothing from Social Security. Now, so i think really it is kind of the cool thing to say to be cynical, not expecting stuff, but when it came right down to it they were not walking with their not voting with anywhere feet about something. Tells you more about the psychology than maybe their actual belief. Exactly. With that, sorry, now karen well tell you the real story. All right. Thank you so much and welcome everyone. We are just go to give you a little bit background on Social Securitys financing and some options to change it for the future. So, to begin, Social Security is two legally distinct trust funds. Theres the oasi find the old page and survivors insurance. Thats the retirement and survivors find and then theirs the disable Insurance Fund which is for disability benefits. Those or two separate legally. Often times well talk about them on a combined basis, but really theyre separate and cant borrow from each other. The Financial Operations are overseen by the board of trustees. Theres stick it trustees typically. There is the secretary of the treasury, who is the manage are trustee. The secretary of health and human services, secretary of labor, commissioner of Social Security and then two Public Trustees dominate bid either party. Now, right now those positions are vacant but hopefully well will get some phoenixes onboard folks onboard soon. The two funds are often looked at on a combined basis, by the end of last year there were 2. 8 trillion in the trust funds. Those combinedded funses have run surpluses since the early 80s and and expect to do so through 2021. Beginning in 2022 the reserved will go down until we expect them to be depleted in 2034. So thats 17 years from now. When theyre depleted, we still expect that about 77 of benefits will be able to be paid, and thats if nothing else is done, if no legislative changes are made, still 77 benefits will be paid. Looking separately, the di fund is in a little bit worse shape. Its expected to be depleted in 2028. So, attention needs to be identified that a little bit sooner. All right. This graph here just shows you as a percent of gdp how much the trust funds hold in reserve. So you can see there that back in the 1980s, the fund was getting very low. At that Time Congress got together, made compromise, and passed the 1983 amendments which brought revenue and cut benefits a bit. So assets started to go up until about this is all a percent of gdp but until very recently, assets were going up as a percent of gdp and now theyre expected to decline until 2034. So, how does Social Security bet its income . I think most of you have seen in your own paychecks, employees and employers each pay 6. 2 of their earnings into the trust funds. Selfemployed pay both pieces. The employer and me employee piece to make it 12. 4. That is on earnings up to 127,200. Thats the taxable maximum, the tax cap. But a chris hi earnings before that level are not taxed for Social Security purposes. Another piece of the can is income is taxes on Social Security benefit. Retirees and disabled folks, beneficiaries with high incomes, pay some taxes on their benefits, and that goes into the trust fund as well. And finally theres interest on those trust fund reserves. The trust funds are invested in interestbearing securities, and we get interest from treasury on regular basis. So now where does the money go . Mainly benefit payments. The vast majority of outgoes are benefit payment us. 61 Million People were getting benefits as of the end of last year. 44 million of those were retired workers and theyre dependents their dependents six million were survivors disease ceased workers and 11 million disabled workers and their dependents. Administerrive expenses are another piece of the outgo. A very low,. 7 of the expenditures. This just a little graphical way to see what i just told you. The stuff on the top is the income so youll see the payroll taxes for the vast majority of the income. Tax benefits are pretty small. Interest is a little bit bigger, and on the bottom of the graph youll see the benefits going out, the vast majority of the outgo. A little bit of this little technical thing but an exchange with the Railroad Retirement board to sort of true up our benefits with theirs. Request then theres the administrative ands. 6 billion sound like a lot of dollars but in comparison with the win fits its really pretty small. The trust fund provide benefits when theres no income coming in. You knead as least a years reserve to make it rome. Right now we have three years of reserves. We do expect those to go down. Is a said before we expect them to become depleted in about 2034. One important thing to note. The funds cant borrow. They can only spend what has been collected. So when there is not enough money coming into the fund they wont be able to pay full benefits. One thing you often hear is are the trust funds real in are they just an oiu in a filing cabinet . What does real mean . I guess is the question. So, if reserves depleted, full benefits cant be paid so these funds are real in the sense they have consequence. The trust funds really do force congress to act in order to keep benefits going. As happened in 1983. Trust funds were about to deplete. They didnt just let them deplete. Theyre real in the sense that congress has to change things in order to keep the program going. Okay. Quickly, we want to get to questions eventually. Have we typically expressed the future shortfall . To look at things on a comparable basis, we usually look at things as a percent of the taxable payroll of the program. So this is a good way you can look at something in 1940, look at something now, and put it on a comparable basis. So, for example, in 2045, we expect taxable payroll to be 24. 1 trillion. This is all the earnings that will be taxed by the program. Income to the program is expected to be about 3. 2 trillion. So if you divide those two, income is 13. 24 of payroll. Similarly, we look at the cost of the program, which is expected to be about 4 trillion. And that is 16. 72 of payroll. So to get the shortfall in that year you just take the difference between the cost and the income and thats really the gap that needs to be built. And this shows the exact same thing graphically. If you focus on the 2045 line we just talk about, you will see the cost of the program, the dotted blue line at the top, is a good bit above the income we expect to be coming into the program. So there is a gap. There is a shortfall at that point. Its the job of congress and all of you to figure out the dui fill that gap. And now steve is going to go over a few slides and then i will come back and talk about some of the options that we have for fixing the program. [applause] okay. Thank you, karen. Thank you all for being here. And look out for they space aliens and an eclipse is not the same as space aliens. Just the moon is just sort of going to be moving over. So, i want to just add at bit to what karen but forth about the basic nature over the Social Security program and how its innocences and i talk about the size of the shortfall which youll address later, and beyond that even sort of the reason why we are looking at having a shortfall coming. First of all, as karen indicate were looking at this notion of when he reserves deplete and as kearn mentioned, reserve depletion is what actually forces congress into action because who Congress Wants to have a 77 payable, want to have a 23 reduction in the monthly benefits from one emergency to the next. Youre constituents wont be happy. Heres a picture of where we are. This is the expresses the level of the reserves we have been building up and are now bringing down as a percentage of the annual cost of program. So its called the trust fund ratio. We historically a desire to maintain a contingency reserve one years of outgo. Why . Because recessions happen. Discovered that renally at the end of 2007 and they can take away reserves reserves and havia reserve allows congress to pay attention, realize what is going on and then take timely action. You can see the interesting one here is the light blue line, the Disability Insurance program. Back in 1994 at the reserve ratio was dropping down precariously low and projecting nat 1995 it would hit devotion, depletion, so congress acted and enenacted a reallocation putting the oasi rate to the di fund and that caused buoying up of the di fund. That would bring a lot in 1995 we project that would carry the di found reserve depletion, not in 1995 but we were estimating 2016, fast forward to 2015 we were still estimating that the reserve depletion would be in 2016. Lucky guess back in 1995. We projected 2016 and congress acted again with another tax reallocation, the temporary threeyear reallocation, putting revenues into di and thats given a further bump. Now, well get to this in a moment. You can see the dashed line, the little dashed line on the blue, thats where we projected reserve depletion just a year ago and that was he help of having the tax reallocation. Now were not talk about 2023, were talking about 228 for disability . Whoa do with hand an extra five years . You keep in mind as karen indicated we have were in much better financial shape in teches of reserve depletion for the oasi, the pinchish pinkish line. So why has things have gotten bet . We have an a disability incident rate. That is just the number of people newly becoming disabled. Filing for and starting to get Disability Insurance benefit its. As a permanent of people informed and not already severing a benefit. The exposed population, the number of people that potentially could come and file for benefits and get it. At averaged to over 5 historically, and that is what, 5 per 5. 4, believe, per how to well, whatever, 5. 4re thousand which is half a percent each year of the exposed population actual becomes disabled and files for and starts getting benefited. Goes up and down. Not real surprisingly. Goes up in a recession, the last real pick peak around 2010 and 2009, 1011, we had a peak level. Why . Because people lose work in the recession and a lot of people . A Strong Economy who could qualify for benefits and have significant impairments will nonetheless be able to hold down a job. Theyll be able to retain the job, still productive. When a recession comes look and they lose their work like everybody else theyll try to find a way to feed themselves and their family so many if people can file with a benefit, whether it be retirement benefit or disability benefit, people who file for it elm actual allowance rate goes down in a recession because a lot of people file for benefits that are not sufficiently quad, but a number are. So we have a boost in the incident rate but look at what happened to solid line going on after the peak in 2010. You sneak successful truss ye reports the 2012131415 and the 2016 report we have been projecting the drop in incidence rate from the peak after the recession would come back to the longterm expected average and just has not been. The disability incident rates have been drop, dropping, dropping to levels we have not been expecting and are kuwait frankly surprising and we are trying understand why. Because of the drop we have seen this extension going the solid blue line and its be netter shape than we thought a year ago. For the broader aasdrdi program, we look at that combined most of the time, in because even though we have two fund, one is in trouble and one isnt. Congress will seven as they need 1994 and 2015 and do some reallocation of tax rates to make them operate more on the same path. So we look at them on a combined basis and as parent indicated in 2034, project north combined Social Security trust fends to deplete returns which means at that point we would only under the law be able to pay out as much money as we have continuing to come in. Whichs the sort of reddish line here, our income rate. This all expressed as percentage of our tax base, our taxable payroll, all the money you all earned, up to the first 127,200. Upwe would drop down to pay only an what we can and at the point of reserve depletion, we 0 an have 77cents of continuing tax revenue for every dollar of benefit obligation and that actually modifies a little bit over time. Not dramatically to 73cents for every dollar of obligation. In 2095. Something at more important for some of yall than maybe to me. 2095. Why is the cost rising so much as you can see on this slide, you can see the cost rate, the blue line, which continues a dash line. Thats what the cost of paying the full benefits would be. This is rising. Why . We really try tome fa size this because for try to emphasize this for policymakers, understanding why you have a problem, i would you have a challenge, is kind of important to decide what you want to do about it. The first cut of this is the number of beneficiaries compared to the number of workers is capacity it important. If you look at the black line here this gives you another ratio to look at thats a pure Population Based ratio in the number of people 65 years or older divided by the number people of working age in a rough approximation of what the benefit group is compared to the people who are contributing in working in our society. You can see that was rising from to about 2008 and when we had this big blast up in the skirt that will happen in the question is why is that hint and look at the blue and purple lines and you can see this will continue to grow at a very low rate in those lines are ones that weve done a simulation of what if at the end of the baby boom. On which average we have 3. 3 kids over a lifetime and since it dropped to two what is the number of kids for every couple in society had stayed at three or 3. 3 . You can see the age of dependency ratio would not have this big hop up that we have. It would of stayed on a very gentle increase and we wouldnt be talking about medicare medicare and the rise would be from the continued aging. We see here the big shift that has occurred in the age distribution population is not that we are living longer but its really a matter of change in the birthrate. The simple way to think about it is it back in the day when there was an average of three kids born for every couple, a retired couple would have three kids back in the work force contributing directly or indirectly to support them but now when we move into. Where we have two kids on average for every couple and there will be two kids back in the workforce supporting them. Two kids either have to contribute more to support the two elders than three or the elders will get less. Basically, thats the question that faces congress. A little further look at this demographic movement and this is some of the same and tells us more. This just tells you that age 25 and older population in our country going back to 1940, first year of any multi benefits paid out of Social Security all the way up to 2100 and what share of that adult preparation was in these different age groups. The reason for this is significant is because it tells you in the span between 1970 and 1990 will notice is the sheer of those under 65 that were in the older group which is the pinkish purplish man, 4560 and thats working age people but people who were older are more likely to be disabled than the 2544. You can see the share of the 2564 is in the older group is shrinking. Thats a problem because it was paying attention. However, between 1990 and 2010, look at the relationship in this graph. The sheer of the people up to 64 there were about 45 was increasing dramatically and this is basically the reason the cost of the Disability Insurance was rising so much during that period relative to our taxable payroll. People got excited about that but we had a hard time conveying to people was happened beyond when we go to 20102030, in particular, as the baby boomers move out of 4564 age group and into the higher age group theyre moving out of the prime disability ages in which they receive disability benefits from us and as a result, the cost of Disability Insurance program is no longer a big issue. Its dramatic about how much the cost of Disability Insurance group and is dropping out. So, what are the other aspects of aging . I got the not hear from the folks in my office and its obvious, when you talk about something its good have experience in it and i have more experience than anybody else from our office today on aging. Speaking of aging we look at the aging metric which is mortality rates, death rates and you can see death rates are dropping pretty consistently and this is the age sex adjusted rate for all ages combined and you can see thats been dropping and a lot of people up to about 2009 were saying this would drop really fast for ever and ever and you can see from 2009 on that death rates have not dropped nearly as fast and you can see weve been projecting several drops that have been occurring and a lot of people were out in the passing we were not projecting it up and weve been projecting too much. On the next graph you can see a little more about what matters most to the cost of our programs which is whats happening forever death rates over 65 and older and this has leveled off since 2009 and weve had very little drop in death rates and we predict too much and were hopeful, expecting death rates will decline again or more rapid in the future but the key on this is when youre trying to protect something from the future dont be surprised if things turn out different from what you are expecting. You have to look at a longterm average and not just get upset and think there will never be a decline in death rates just like in 2009 when we tried to tell people dont get so encouraged that we will have a dramatic drop in death rates for ever and ever. Benefit levels. To give you a sense of the benefit levels which is something to think about as you work through the afternoon work of making your pick of how we should make changes is look at the benefit levels we put these in benefit replacement rates and this is a ratio of the benefit amount you would start to get and in this case if you start receiving benefits at 65 the benefit level you would get as compared to your career average earnings level as we measure it is actually and its a wage index dispersion and you can see for a low learner about the 25th percentile of earners youd be getting around half of what you earned in Social Security benefits for a high earner thats like a quarter. Part of the deal here is to say that sosa security is one of the three legs and you should have personal savings in your employer is doing something but Social Security gives you this much. If people come on the rolls in 62 and we have a reduction for starting our benefits earlier than the normal return retirement age you can see the 50 for the earner drops down in the high earners drops down to only 20 so if you start the benefits early you hopefully will have a better augment from the other two legs of the scho. This is the other unpleasant picture of if congress doesnt act what would have to happen in terms of the benefit that would be payable and the shows that 2327 reduction in the levels would be payable in the replacement rate would drop if congress doesnt act by 2034 and we dont have enough money to pay off the full scheduled benefits. The last thing i want to mention here is how we fix it, bottom line, and this is evident on the cost relative to payroll that i have showed you and the cost relative to gdp that karen showed you and basically what we have here is in the future 4. 6 of gdp is the amount of scheduled revenue we have coming for the current law but the cost of paying the full scheduled benefits is more like 6. 1 gdp after the point of reserve depletion. What does that mean . We have to pull up the amount of revenue by about a third from what scheduled in current law in order to pay the benefits or we need to pull down the level of the scheduled benefits have to be pulled down by a quarter or some combination of those two. As karen said Congress Gets together and their compromises are used and they do a little of this and a little of that. We will have to make that change in one other item not sure if its in your docket is our 2. 85 trillion that we could invest in something other than Treasury Security and perhaps get a higher gain that must be discussed but probably not likely to go to anytime soon but we will see and from that, we passed back to karen. [applause] i will skip over most of these because i know we want to get to questions but as steve said, the bottom line is how can this financing and shortfall be covered and we need to lower cost by 25 , increase revenues by about 33 or some combination of those approaches. One other thing i thank you will both consider as you put together your own packages later today is whether the current benefits as they are structure now are adequate and maybe we will want to increase them for some targeted population. You will hear more about these in the next session and in the upcoming session so i will skip through these right now. This afternoon he will be coming up with your own solution and we will give you the details on all of these policy options and we look forward to seeing what you come up with. Additional resources is a great place to go if you want more information about anything we talked about today or anything we work on in the actuarys office and its www. Ssa. Gov oh hte and theres a wealth of information there and changes that have been proposed and analysis that is what is going on under current law and lots of data sets for any of you who are data people and theres a ton to dig into their. Please, go there and take a look and you know where to find us if you have any questions. Thank you both. Incredibly insightful as always and the problem with actuaries is they know too much. We are short on time for questions but wed invite all of you to raise your hand and we can bring a mic over and ill start off with one or two of my own and we have about ten minutes or so. One thing id encourage you to do is to visit that website and click through several of the dozens and options that steve and karen have scored already because it shows you the magnitude and the Pc Commission package which we talked earlier and its really interesting to spend time there. One thing i want to start off with we just happen to bring along a copy of our 150 plus individual provisions, not that we made up but members of congress and other entities made up and will have a copy for one for each table in case you want to make a reference to that in addition to that available. Great, i wanted to talk about this frequent discussions that have been watching whether its raising the retirement age and what are some of the more creative ones that you have all come across and scored. Obviously, in your position you dont endorse the civic option but one that you found more interesting and addressed certain elements or aspects that dont get discussed as much. One of the things that has come up a little more recently is that we havent seen too much in the past is whether the program should tax Investment Income and not just earning. Were saying that more and more and the aca introduced a tax on Investment Income and doesnt go to Social Security but some folks were proposed doing something similar that would go to Social Security. I would add not to encroach too much on one of the things we found was interesting is back in 2010 in addition to a Bipartisan Policy Center there was one called the sensor Bowles Commission and we worked with them on developing a variation of retirement age increase and most the time we have a current law which rises up for everyone was getting Retirement Benefits but they had members who said people who are long career high stress jobs that maybe cant be expected to work as long we dont want to raise the retirement age for them so we worked out for them, as you can see, provisions here for the proposal we worked at a variation for 25 years and have had their average career earnings at a low level for less than two and half times the Poverty Level for their average career earnings that they would have no increase in the retirement age but people above that would have some increase and they would have the full increase that was put forward. This serves as modifying the degrees to which we would be doing this. Theres a lot of research that even heard about about mortality rates seem to be improving more for high income than low income people thats a creative item and we will see on our letter to those cochairs but you wont see the commission report. They had not gotten the details of this worked out in time to schedule the report for they worked it out later for us to do for them. You both are working on Social Security and his policies for many years and im curious, obviously, weve known for this problem coming for a long time, several decades now with the baby boomers aging into retirement we didnt know the exact magnitude but we knew there would be a shortfall. How do you think of the policy debate has changed over the course of the several decades that youve seen from when this problem was a generation or more off to where its now stain us and staring us more in the face . I would offer one thing. Back at the 19 of the 1983 amendments were not in a position to, literally overnight, do estimates for the proposals on a year by year basis to see what was happening therefore, the Greenspan Commission was coming up with their proposals and we werent able to instantly tell them what the trajectory of these trust funds would be rising up and dropping down and back at the Conference Committee on the hill we had our estimates at the time but they ended up being locked in and we suggested making it smoother but they were able to do that. Now we can do estimates overnight and weve actually succeeded, as a 1985, we suggested that policymakers would not just. [inaudible] called sustainable solvency to make sure the trust funds reserves expressed as a percentage of cost of our program, not only that they stay above zero. Next 75 years but they be stable or rising and not be dropping down. That was the as you saw, even at the time when we found out our annual stuff together and showing the trust fund reserve would dropping in a dramatic and we knew wed be depleting. Ever since 1995, most proposals we scored and a bipartisan policy also strove to achieve ended by our estimates. Thats one point i think we cant emphasize enough here. While the trust funds are scheduled to exhaust in 2028 or 2035 or 2034 if you look at the combination of disability and old age trust funds that is not the date by which action needs to be taken because if we think about it in a sense of making a Sustainable Program once you reach that point you saw those lines on a steep start and theyre taking a nosedive. To turn those around to write that ship you cant start before that. You could immediately raise taxes overnight on everybody in the entire country by three or 4 in the exact metric is but its much more preferable to spaces out in gradually phase things over time. With that, let me see one or two questions in the audience. Thank you for joining us today. My question is from an actuarial perspective, why is the payroll tax rate fixed at sixpoint to percent when the whole system has so many features that have dynamic adjustments for things such as the cost of living adjustment in the wage index adjustment in the primary insurance amount formula and even the ceiling uncovered taxable payroll. Thats a really good question. I think generally when Congress Sets levels of taxes they like to do it in a way that people are able to plan for it and they know what is sixpoint to and everyone knows it will be sixpoint to each year and it wont fluctuate depending on the status of the program. Remember also that peoples earnings levels tend to rise and are taxable maximum is automatically indexed to increase for the average wage going forward. If earnings levels are rising over time the sixpoint to represents more dollars every year just as the new benefit levels. It is kind of interesting. Our rare issue is the change in demographics and we have fewer workers relative to beneficiaries in the future which it means sixpoint to percent which was just fine, a generation ago, is not just find going for. We need to have more revenue coming in from the workers and sixpoint to plus sixpoint to with the change in the demographics. Any other questions . Let me add one quick thing. The value of making decisions sooner is we know that our trustees layout is it would be really good not to wait to the last minute as sometimes happens to enact changes for Social Security and the Real Advantage of exacting changes earlier, even if they dont get implemented to later is that you have more options to consider in doing and you can give more advanced notice, obviously, if you enact changes soon and you can phase them in more gradually. A classic example was the 1983 amendments when everyone remembers the increasing retirement age didnt have an effect on anybody until 2000, 17 years later. Here we are now 17 years later from reserve depletion so maybe not such a bad time to be thinking seriously about this and maybe connecting changes, even if they arent affected to later. Thats a general relational equity plan as well, steven. Current baby boomer generation moving through is the reason for the increased cost of the system and if we wait another 15 or more years to enact changes than that generation is a generation coming up into retirement system now is not going to be major contributors to the solution. Going back to the demographics, if you want to its not because there are a lot of them but because they didnt have as many kids. By the way, this is not to say that having the birth rate dropped from three plus down to two is a bad thing because there was a time way back when a guy name elvis was talking about wed overpopulate the world and run out of food. We dont have that challenge but we have a different challenge. To live with the idea that we have a different age distribution and we have to meet that challenge to make any final questions otherwise will wrap yes. Although incomes grow,. The question about the cap. Although incomes grow and theres a time that mechanism, with respect to that in Social Security there are considerable number of income earners in the country that are paying their full sixpoint to percent or 12. 4 depending on their Employment Status and within days of the fiscal year. Im wondering if you could discuss solvency and sustainability with respect to the cap. One interesting fact is for a long time now there have been about 6 earners over the cap and thats a pretty steady over the last 30 years or so but in the time the amount of earnings over the cap has decreased, i mean, increased quite a bit because earnings at those higher levels and theres been a huge income dispersion and income at the top has gone way up not as much as the bottom so, whereas back in 1983 about 90 of all earnings was below the cap an hour down to about 8283. Back in the early 1980s, Congress Actually specified a dollar level for the texmex and they did on the basis of asking the question what level do we have to have in order to have about 90 of all covered earnings fall below the texmex. [inaudible] the higher earners had better gains in the lower earners and has changed earnings to solution an hour down to the roughly 8283 and thats one of the things will be looking at. Jason can be talking about this later about whether or not we should raise the capital to something more than we have in our current law now. Remember its been indexed over all the time since back in 8384 and the average wage and there was an expectation that we stay at 90 below the cap but because its redistribution of earnings amongst our earners that has dropped. Should we do something about it . We look for to hearing. Tonight President Trump addresses the nation to outline his strategy for afghanistan. The us military has been in that country for 16 years since just after 911. The president speaks at fort meyer in arlington, virginia. You can see his speech live on cspan in the cspan radio apt and online at cspan. Org tomorrow night President Trump holds a Campaign Rally in phoenix, arizona. If the home state of senator john mccain who cast the deciding vote against repealing the Affordable Care act but also, senator jeff who the president is called weak and a nonfactor in the senate for that rally scheduled for 10 00 p. M. Eastern tomorrow, live also on cspan. The navys top animal today ordered a fleetwide review of the seamanship and training in the pacific after the Services Fourth major accident and see this year. A collision of the uss john mccain of singapore that left ten sailors missing. Here are brief comments from the defense secretary matus on the uss mccain collision and the investigations underway. I want to begin by saying my thoughts and concerns and prayers are with the families of the sailors from the uss john mccain. Honesty, we have an Investigation Underway and that will determine what happened. I also fully supports the chief and Naval Operations admiral john richardsons efforts right now. He has put together a broader inquiry to look into these incidences and determine the cause factors to determine what is going on both immediate contributors to this incident but also any related factors. Once we have those facts we will share them with you. [inaudible] chief naval of operations water inquiry will look at all related accidents at sea and that sort of thing. He will look at al all factors,t just the immediate ones but that will fall rightly under the fleet commanders investigations of what happened to his ship. This is a broader look at what is happening. [inaudible] yes, it is. Supreme Court JusticesRuth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer along with Appellate Court judges here all arguments in a mock trial based on a scenario of William Shakespeares play, mcbeth. Whether or not the sisters are guilty of using witchcraft to aid and abet mcbeth in the william of king duncan of scotland. This from the Shakespeare Company of washington dc and its an hour in 20 minutes. [applause] thank you everyone for joining us in this event which is now our 25th trial. [applause] this is one of the events that we do which is a labor of love and is because of the people you will meet in a moment that it becomes that way