Its good for the economy. We dont have a high savings rate in this country. One of the problems with Social Security is we havent figured out how if we prefund it, put more revenues into the system we can wall that off to increase national savings. Its been unclear and it seems they didnt increase net national savings. We havent come up with more ideas. You would like to see it increase national savings. That would be good for the economy as a whole. We do believe we theed to increase savings as a form of wealth for particularly low income, low net worth households. So child savings accounts is something we are in favor of. Baby bonds where you create accounts that allow children to acrew interest and earnings over a lifetime. These are things we are in favor of. Outside the Social Security system. There is a lot we can do for asset building in communities of color and low income populations. Its an avenue we should consider. The baby roth ira account has been proposed a number of times. Its an intriguing idea. Even with a small investment of dollars when a baby is born those dollars compound tremendously over a lifetime. Any other audience questions . I have one last for the panel which is confidence improves. It made me think as a member of the media what do you think of the medias role here in trying to inform the public better and what kind of grades would you give the press in doing that . It is no secret that the American Public has been done a severe disser vis when it comes to accurate information. Particularly Social Security. We allowed partisan politics and the message and talk points to guide the narrative. Regardless of the facts in many cases. Thats whats perfect about this report. They seek to educate the American People about the facts, just the factses. They find that when the American People are informed they make different decisions. We have to educate the media. The professional journalism has been decimated and Many Organizations are operating on shoe strings and people dont have the expertise they need to report accurately. We have to make sure they can discern the information and explain toyota people. Virginia, you have been an expert here for a long time. Getting better, worse in terms of press coverage . I think perhaps the it is press is beginning to get better. For a long time the story about Social Security, its strength is its own enemy its so fiscally responsible every year a Trustees Report looks 75 year spos the future and says how are we doing . This system cant borrow money. It hases to pay for itself by raising taxeses or cutting benefits if it should get out of balance. Through that fiscal responsibility the story every year is when is it going bankrupt . Well, its not. It has a short fall. Its time to talk in a different way. A couple of years ago michael astrub was begging journalists to understand the term exhaustion and not to use the term bankrupt. Sure enough all the stories were Social Security is going bankrupt. There is no winsing. Its important. The trustees look forward and say where we are going. The trustees are saying there is an imbalance. Its not like this is a perfectly rosy situation. Go read the trustee report. Some of the best information the Congressional Budget Office puts out great information if people want to learn impartial stuff. You can learn more than you have ever wanted to know. If you go to the fist documentses its a great place for people to start. Great point. I think we are out of time. We need to wrap up. Let me remind you about filling out evaluation forms. Let me thank the panelists for doing a wonderful job. Thanks to the academy for convening us this morning to hear about the important new study. Thanks and have a good day. This week epd on end on the cspan network, more reaction to the elections. Saturday night, a debate on the internet in the future. And friday night at 8 00 on cspan2, College Professor and author from germanoccupied paris during world war ii, saturday night at 10 00, and sunday night at 10 00, edward wilson, winner of two puli strks zer prizers. Medal of honor rescipients reflect on their service in world war ii, vietnam and afghanistan. And sunday night at 8 00, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. Find your televisievision schedt cspan. Org. The former undersecretary for Homeland Security said new york and new jersey made a mistake when they ordered a mandatory quarantine for Health Care Workers who treated ebola patients overseas. This is a major and International Public health quandary. There are lots of opinions flying around, lots of gut feelings, frankly, lots of fear. Theres very visceral reactions to this problem. Probably the scariest something about this time is were a week away sfr elections. Im hoping this morning will inject some reason, some facts, some calm. She works for me, too. That was not a setup. We wanted the bring together a panel that could really, hopefully, give some logic and reason for the whole thing. This hopefully will meet the needs of the group here. Before i introduce them, i will say this. Were going to give each panelist about 10 minutes to speak on various aspects of the issues set here. And then were going to try to get as much time as possible for q a. I really, really, and i say this every time i moderate, but we dont have time for floor speeches. Bob is the managing director of r. P. K. Con sulting. He has spent 26 years in the u. S. Air force. He had senior positions in the white house, the senate, the department of defense and was a special assistant to the president and senior director for biodefense policy on Homeland Security council. He has degrees from the air force academy. He has a doctorate in medicine and a mastzers in tropical medicine and hygiene from the uniform services, university of the Health Sciences and a masters degree in National Security studies from georgetown. Next to him is charlotte florence. Sharyl lot is the policy expert here at heritage for africa and the middle east, dealing with economic freedom, democratic institutions, development and security coop ragsz. She was also an expert on interNational Security and Foreign Policy issues for the senate and Government Affairs committee and for thensenator scott brown. She has lived and worked in africa before. Next to her is dr. Kevin troy. He and his actions there included implementing issues combatting bioterrorism and Public Health emergency preparedness. He was also the acting assistant president for domestic policy. He has a bachelors in science from cornell, and a 35i67 d. From the university of texas at austin. And then our fourth panelist is dr. Carol o tool who is a Mission Manager and senior fellow at incutell. Dr. O tool was the undertechnician for Homeland Security. She served november, 2009 to september of 2013. She also was a major designer and actor in two major biorelated exercises. If there any specific military aspects going on, i will try to field those as well. I think one of the things where he need to understand is that in issue of ebola is not something that has been firstencountered today. Weve gone through a series of events in the last daylight or two have highlighted the importance of and necessity for the kind of repairedness that, quite frankly, is not something thats a lexicon of National Security data. A cs let me be a little concrete on a. R. What they kind of outlined, which you can still get today online or in the library. Its worthy to note even then the identified need for some kind of deliberative manner to manage these kinds of outbreaks because, in all likelihood, they were going to happen with greater certainty in the future. And, again, the certainty they have was a lot of kpotic diseases. So they have identified the role of the organization. As we see here, that was a Critical Link in the current Ebola Outbreak as it relates to the likelihood that this would be something more than the flash in the pan than it has been before. People were limited by their ability to walk any distance or have access to health care capabilities. So many of these people who were affected perished in villages and the results of those outcomes, or the consequences of those outcomes were contained. We just highlight the fact that in some ways, the world has changed, we have chaenged and we really need to keep up with them. One of the areasives asked as part of this panel to focus in on was domestic appearance. So let me just spend a moment to talk about that in the next five min ts or so. My background wasnt really detailed by steve, but steve and i have a familiar background on the sense. We both spent time in special operations. I did so as a medical officer. When i was in my 20 some odd years of medical officer, i entered, if you will, the Navy Special Operations right after the tragic events of desert i chen we failed miserably in terms of rescuing hostages. And, with that, it was recognized by the Holloway Commission that there were certain essential lotments that we couldnt define today until we know that we encountered tomorrow. Four very simple findings. One was recruiting, one was training, one was equipping and one was exercising. With that, that became really the hallmark of what, again, American Special Operations Forces owed two decades focused on. Including the best people, training them, equipping them with the state of the art capableties with the ad and exercising them under realistic conditions. And people like general wane and stanly la crystal all basically em braszed that concept. And with that, they marked as this experience was the events some people thought about where we basically ended the was the events subject in the where we ended the life of osama bin laden. It wasnt something that happen nd one day, one week. One year, but decades. And so, im arguing today to you that theres no such thing as just in time preparedness. That the commitment we make around health care and preparedness for ebola as we see it today and future outbreak, influn ensa, other things just add bad or worse that could occur. These are natural events. Not even talking about terrorism here. Let me give you basic concepts about what were committing to today. Our Health Care Industry is about 2. 8 trillion a year. Federal government invests about 250 billion. We spend more money on potato chips in this country than Health Care Preparedness. We spend between 8 and 9 billion a year on national misill defense and if you look medical preparedness that includes the drugs and vaccines wed need as well as Health Care Preparedness is somewhere between roughly 7 billion. So were paying more to protect ourselves against the threat than a missile than were spending ton likelihood of a pandemic like the ebola crisis and if you will, even potentially some kind of deliberate act that could happen. So in some ways, we have not yet quite conceived of how we need the think of this capability. One thing you need to understand is that theres no political divide over this. During my tenure in the senate, it was a circumstance that two i would say where two opposites attracted to each other and were able to do extraordinary things. One was senator richard burr from north carolina. Called the conservative moderate and the other was ted kennedy you can call a liberal liberal from massachusetts. But they were famously together and their pairing wasnt by accident. Because in fact, it was created by a relationship that occurred between kennedy and former senator bill frist during the Clinton Administration when they realized these issues would figure prominently in the future. Subject of not only the world we live in, globalization, human behavior, but the likelihood these diseases could be likely to become significant in a highly connected world. So, with that, it was the idea they had, senator kennedy and burr that somehow we had the same institutions that in some ways that we have in National Security. Department of defense. Using a significant example, gold water nichols act of 1986 which reorganized the department of defense to give us what we have today, a highly capable joint fighting force was the mod l used to create the pandemic hazard act. May wonder about that, but it may in some ways reflect my military background. A coherent means to work across the agency, the federal government, department of vet r veteran s affairs, health and human services, department of defense who have Major Medical assets, as well as the state and local activities that were the front line fighters in this. But the point was to create someone in charge, which was the assistant secretary for preparedness and response. The other thing was to create an entity or activity that would really give the chance to develop account measures that wed need to fight an outbreak like ebola with vaccines and therapeutics and diagnostics that were necessary. In any case, it was a circumstance where it was recognized there was no commercial interest in a vak serene like this until something happened and that was too late given that it takes about ten years on average to develop a medical therapeutic or a vaccine and costs about a billion dollars. So you can imagine the reluctance of the pharmaceutical industry to basically embrace that cost without any guarantee of a market. And so, there were things that the federal government did that were extraordinarily important in the times right after 9 11. One was basically creating bio shield, which was a guaranteed market for countermeasures. The amount of 5. 6 billion. The second was the creation of the asper, which was really about how do we put somebody in charge of the overall federal effort and the third thing was really how do we make the medical countermeasures we need . Part of that was investing into nyad. Tony fauchy, a spokesperson during this ebola crisis and a true scientific expert in these areas, but also, the idea of how do we build not only what they take from research and development but to a product we can stockpile and use. That was the function of the agency known as barton. I would argue that over the period of time these things have been developed, in some ways, weve kind of lost our eye on the ball. That between crisis, we seem to take for granted, if you will, things are being added or funded when in reality, those things have suffered significantly from that. But it is a circumstance we need to look forward to. After this crisis, we theed to be prepared for the next in a way that may be different than this one. Were fortunate this is not an airborne transmitted organism. Certainly, it can evolve over time, but i dont think thats the estimate of the experts today and i think thats very reassuring. The second thing is that as far as ebola goes today, is that its limited in a Geographic Area that quite frankly, makes it manageable if we can get ahead of the virus. Michael noted especially deem yolgs from minnesota has talked about the virus time and that were behind it. Until we can catch up and use the resources we have to limit the spread of this disease on the continent, b in the world, i think were better off. And we have demonstrated we can manage these sporadic cases. If there was a greater influx, it would be more challenging, but right now, we have a bit of time to effectively train Health Care Workers to recognize and isolate and quarantine people who may have been exposed to this disease and who may have this disease. And thats functionally something we need to do and we do need to buy time so that for the, for the vaccines and therapeutics that we have in the pipeline if you will, that are being rushed, if you will, to be used through Clinical Trials that will be done here in the United States and africa, we can buy time and hopefully save many thousands of lives. By fielding them appropriately. With that, i think ive hit my time. Thanks. Steve, also for putting this panel together. Good afternoon, everyone. Today, id like to highlight some of the geo Political Considerations in west aftrica o combat ebola. Ultimately containing the outbreak will make the United States and the world safer as long as the outbreak continues to grow in west africa, everyone is at more risk. Of the three countries facing widespread transmission, the ebola crisis is just layered upon quite volatile or challenging developmental situations. Lie be liberia and sierra leone endured years of civil war. Guinea recently experienced in 2008. While it is ranked the highest in the three countries index of african governments, all thee countrys scores are below the continents average. Guinea is ranked with liberia not far behind. Looking at the index that measures continents on life expen tansy, among others, liberia is ranked 175 of the 187 countries measured. Guinea, 179 and sierra leone, 183. Years of bad govern despite h growth rates and increase in fdi in the post conflict era, significant governance challenges remain. This coupled with urbanization and increase in travel from rural villages to cities and across borders, create an environment much bigger than previous outbreaks that had been isolated to relatively remote areas in central africa. Ebola spread across the region in perfect storm, local governments did not act quickly and the International Community did not heed this alarms. Or even as the case of liberia, this past august, the liberilib government took measure when they quarantined west point, the capital of liberia. It created more internal problems, spread the disease further and eroded what little trust was left in the national government. More than 50,000 people live in shacks in west point. It is the perfect environment for the disease to radically spread. There is also limited education about the disease that meant Public Health officials werent able to get ahead of of some of the cultural that will challenges that speed up transmission. Rates of ebola, particularly around the bure yal of victimvi many wanted to ensure they were given proper bure yals, which meant removed the body or washing the bodies themselves