Peoples ability to withstand financial shocks and one quarter of u. S. Respondents were financially fragile in the sense they could not come up with 2,000 in 30 days. Including respondents who reported probably being unable to come up with 2,000, half would be viewed as financially fragile. Low saving was the reported. In addition, Many Americans report that adequate saving for retirement is a challenge. In a 2014 gallup poll, only half respondents reported being confident they will have enough money to live comfortable in retirement. Research validates this concern and households in the lower distribution are most likely to be squeezed. So, for example, lower income households are much more likely to experience a material drop in their consumption at retirement than their higher income counterparts. Okay. So this brings us to the crucial questions of why people dont save enough and how federal policy can encourage them to save more. So to start, its not uncommon to hear people say they cant afford to save. We lack research that concretely documents this phenomenon. Surely is the case that at least some of these people are not prioritizing saving, for one reason or another. However, it does seem plausible some households are stretched too thin to put any money aside. This has problem has been stagnated by the Income Distribution the last several decades. Although my remarks on policy will be focused on initiatives that directly encourage saving, this consideration adds to the measures like many of those proposed by the administration and policy measures being researched by cap that are designed to support Income Growth for house holds in the lower and middle parts of the Income Distribution. A second problem is that many of the tax incentives that have been put in place to encourage saving have little affect on the return to saving by lower income households. In particular, as this crowd knows, householding in lower tax brackets achieve smaller reductions in their tax liabilities for each dollar of saving in tax deductible form. Households so low they have no income Tax Liability at all received no benefit from savings, tax preferences that are not refundable. A third and broader challenge is that many people arent making the sort of rationale calculations about savings that economist models often assume. They predict that a person saving and dissaving will depend on several factors, including the return to saving, as well as how they expect their income to evolve over their lifetime. The incentives policy has encouraged saving by changing the return on saving through the tax system seem to have limited effect on many peoples decisions, including people who would benefit from the savings tax preferences. So, for example, in a very comprehensive study that was cowritten by john friedman, who was talking earlier this morning, researchers examining the danish pension system, similar to ours, find only a minority returned on saving in a way that was consistent with traditional economic theory. Most individuals, about 85 , were what the researchers termed passive savers, who did not respond to these incentives. So what is it that blunts the response of many households to change saving . Probably one significant factor is that people are focused on other aspects of their lives. So they use simple rules of thumb to determine their saving rather than complex calculations. So thats not necessarily irrational. I could probably do a show of hands in this room this morning to demonstrate this fact. The thing is that making the theoretically optimal decisions about saving takes both teams and financial sophistication. And many households may rationally decide not to spend that time or require that sophistication. In addition, research has demonstrated that some households lack basic Financial Literacy, have particular difficulty planning and are prone to making rudimentary financial mistakes. These findings can have limited response among some types of households to complicated prefpbss in the tax system. Low Financial Literacy has contributed to limited use of Retirement Savings vehicles like iras, not just because the tax benefits are not understood, but also because these individuals have to take active steps to research, set up and maintain these accounts. The lack of Financial Literacy is even more worrisome because of the shift from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution, which increased the need for personal responsibility. A share of workers participating in defined Pension Plans fell from 32 to 13 . While a share of participating in defined Contribution Plans increased from 25 to 38 . Okay. So given these findings, what can we do to help people make savings decisions that will serve about better in the longer run . A key step in the right direction is to make saving easier or more automatic. For example, again, as this crowd probably knows, a large number of documents that employer provided programs with automatic enrollment or default contribution rates can raise saving particularly for low income households. The challenge is 60 outside the military and federal government currently have employers that offer 401 k s. And the last point of my talk i want to describe four specific changes in federal policies that would encourage saving. First, we should pass legislation consistent with the auto ira proposal in the president s budget to ensure americans without access to a workplace Retirement Plan are automatically enrolled in an ira. Under this proposal, every employer with more than 10 employees that does not offer a plan would be required to sign up their workers for an ira. Workers would be allowed to opt out of saving through the ira if they chose. But many would save and would appreciate having this opportunity without having to figure out the logistics themselves. Second, we should provide support for firms that enroll their workers in Retirement Plans. The president s budget proposes a 3,000 tax credit with any employer with 100 or fewer employees that enrolls in an auto ira. In addition, the budget proposed trickling the existing startup credit so small employers who create Retirement Plans would create a 4,500 tax credit. And small employers who already offer a plan and add automatic enrollment would receive a 1,500 tax credit. These would offset the expenses that employers would bear and provide incentives for more firms to enroll their workers in Retirement Plans. Third, we should ensure that parttime workers who have worked for their employers for sustained periods can contribute to their employerss Retirement Plans. Less than 40 have access to a one in their workplace. They can skphraoud employees who work less than 1,000 hours a year. Fourth, we should encourage broader participation in the my ira program developed by treasury. It is a new simple, safe, nofee Retirement Savings options designed to people without access to a Retirement Savings plan at work. You can arrange for contributions every payday. The account stays with them if they change jobs. And there is no cost to opening an account. The it is backed by a u. S. Treasury. Contributions are made using aftertax dollars. They can be withdrawn without penalty whenever one would like. And and accrues tax free until withdrawal. This year, treasury worker, a small Diverse Group of employs years to give feedback and make sure it is as simple and straightforward as possible. We are looking to broaden more broadly soon. You can visit www. Mira. Gov. Each of the policies can make a difference. Together they can make a significant difference in the total amount of saving available for investment in this country and a significant difference in the Financial Security of any households. Thank you. And i look forward to taking your questions. [ applause ]. Opening this up to questions from the audience. Then ill open with the first question. How does the promotion of auto ira at the federal level interact with interest from the administration to promote estate plans . So thats a great question. Were viewing there is a lot of interest at the state level. My understanding is the last statistics i saw suggested that there is a handful of states pursuing it concretely. If you add those to the states who are considering doing it you are getting half of states. We are taking this and as a strong signal that the president s proposal to do auto ira at the state level or at the federal level is something americans are interested in and people would really value. One of the complications that has arisen around these state plans is there are some complications related to the erisa rules. And the administration is working on providing clarification. They have said they will that the Labor Department will be issuing some clarification by the end of this year. Finally, my other question that i had i wanted to ask everybody here. That is when we talk about tax incentives. We talk about miras. Are we making it more complex . So the complexity issue was a running theme in my speech. I do think the complexity facing individuals is a true barrier to saving. I think the point of mira is to present something that is actually very simple and easy to use from the persons point of view. It does add to it makes the system we have to encourage saving bigger. But it is filling a necessary hole. It is moving things in a simpler direction. If theres any yes. I want to ask you a question. Thank you for your presentation, which is very, very good. The question is has the administration thought about a program for retired people to lets say giving a tax credit to employ employers to motivate more senior people or retired people . That might be a solution of the retirement crisis. For older people who are work and are capable of working. So thats not something thats currently in our batch of proposals that we included in the last president s budget. I think we are thinking all the time about Labor Force Participation issues. I think we would like to reduce barriers to Labor Force Participation for all age groups. But certainly older households would be contributing there. We dont want to be pushing people into the labor force who dont want to be in the labor force. But certainly part of our agenda to create more creates a workplace that is better suited to Work Life Balance includes encouraging employers to take steps that would give Older Workers kind of the flexibility that they need to be able to be in the workforce if they want to do so. One more question. The last question in the very back. Hi. Im diane from the National Institute of retirement security. I was just on the last panel. The question about miras. One of the things that some people have been talking about, the states moving ahead with auto iras at the state level have heard some criticism that while you dont need auto iras anywhere because you have iras, can you share any thoughts or comments that would be a good way to respond to those . Oh, yeah. Thank you for asking that question. Mira is meant to be a starter savings account. In fact, contributions are limited to i think its 5,000, 6,000 a year. And the total amount that can build up is 15,000. They are roth iras. You can roll them over. One important design feature is making sure we were filling a hole and complementing the system, not in any way undermining the existing 401 k system or ira system. That when done well, when done right, it was actually serving people well. A number of american muslin leaders are meeting to talk about domestic and Foreign Policy priorities ahead of the 2016 elections. We will have live coverage at 2 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan3. And israeli Prime Minister netanyahu continues his visit to the u. S. He will talk about security in the middle east and israels relationship with the u. S. You can watch comments live at 3 00 p. M. Eastern on our companion network cspan. Cspan has a full lineup of veterans day programming for you. Join us tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Former First Lady Laura Bush and labor secretary thomas perez on on on wednesday, veterans day, cspans washington journal from 7 00 to 10 00 a. M. Eastern with the latest on veteranss issues and your input via calls, facebook and twitter. Seth moulton, a former marine who served four tours in iraq. And a former army ranger whose unit helped hunt down saddam hussein. And the wreath laying ceremony at the tomb of the unknowns. Then at noon, more from freshman members of congress. Representative ryan zinc as a former navy s. E. A. L. And ruben galle g o. He decided to join the marines and fight in iraq. Watch on tv or online at cspan. Org. Well, right now 10 states and the District Of Columbia passed laws allowing Illegal Immigrants to obtain drivers licenses. The Pew Charitable trust held a decisionmaking process. This is about 90 minutes. Hello and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for coming. Im tom conroy, Vice President for government performance at the Pew Charitable trust. Thank you again for sharing some time with us today. On behalf of our president , rebecca reimel and all my colleagues at pew, it is my privilege to welcome you all here today to this very intriguing event. I think youre really going to enjoy it. As many of you know, the Pew Charitable trust is an independent nonpartisan, Public Policy institution dedicated to serving the public. And we do a lot of work with state governments. And we are speaking today on the topic of immigration in that vane. Our immigration and the States Project was created to really explore this intersection of federal, state, local policies and practices. I would like to thank our panelists for joining us today and sharing their experiences on how this federal, state, and local policies and practices actual lip affect their communities. And with that, i will turn over this program. I am going to focus on drivers license in these communities to our host today adam hunter. Thank you. Good afternoon. And thank you, tom. Even while we dont see broad eupl operation reforms enacted in the horizon on the near term, states have been active in passing immigration laws. 171 laws were passed in 2014 alone as wideranging as Law Enforcement, health, and education. As tom mentioned, pews immigration in the States Project explores this dynamic. Our approach as a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy research is not to take a position on any particular policy but to explore them across levels of deposit and where we can to assess the state policy choices. Todays panel will focus on an issue that is gaining attention in many statehouses across the country and the subject of our most recent report, extending driving privileges to unauthorized immigrants. Under the federal i. D. Act of 2005, states can choose to comply with seller standards and issue licenses if they have distinctive markets and texts indicated they are not accepted for federal identification or for official purposes. States call these ava right of names. Driving privilege cards or driver authorization calls. We will call them drivers license for the presentations today. This map highlights the places where unauthorized immigrants may obtain these today. Shaded light green, tealish, we have eight states and the District Of Columbia that issue these alternative drivers license to authorized immigrants. While the yellow states, washington and new mexico issue the same to everyone regardless of immigration status. Delaware and hawaii, the two states here in dark blue, both passed laws just this year in 2015 and will soon be offering alternative licenses in the coming months. To we brought people from three states. You will have their complete bios. Allow me to introduce them as they are sitting here now. First scott vien from delaware. He in a decade. Just this year assumed director of that agency. As one of the two states that passed legislation in june, overseaing implementation of this new program is going to be one of his key tasks as he assumes the helm of his agency. Terry albertson joins us from nevada. He has extensive Public Service career expanding california and nevada and comes as the administration of the Management Services and Programs Division of the department of Motor Vehicles. Shes worked in that capacity to implement the driver authorization card, which nevada has been issuing since january of 2014. In addition, governor sandoval recently appointed terry to be the interim director of the dmv effective later this month. Third, we have erica contreras, who joins us from california, the golden state of california, where she is chief of staff to senator reicardo laura, a key sponsor of the state low 8060 that created an alternative drivers license that went into effect just earlier this year. And finally, we have my leg who led our Research Team and produced our recent report on the issue. I would like to start by turning of to michelle, the opportunity to share findings of our report and to frame our discussion. Please join. Good afternoon. Thank you, adam. So we conducted research on all the states issuing drivers license to authorized immigrants. We app likewise laws and legislative reports. We spoke to dmv an