Good afternoon and thank you for coming. My name is siri worthington, executive director of the United States Energy Association and this is a us ea briefing on addressing Energy Poverty in the United States, a federal state collaboration. This is a little bit of a different topic for your sca. But one that we are very eager to have a conversation about and im hoping that this will be the first of a continuing conversation. Because the matters that were going to address this afternoon are taking on a degree of urgency. It always been urgent but i think myself that the urgency is growing so thank you all for coming. We have an excellent set of panelists here today. Or our discussion, we hope to have audience participationas well. Moderating todays session is mark will, mark will provide the discussion and moderate the discussion forthe need for Energy Assistance. He is an economist, and is an expert on local andregional energy and housing financing. He is consulted regularly for general