I see. So what is your reaction to that kind of proposal, Dr. Rogerson?

My impression is that if you want to maximize employment in a society, you would try to find a way to keep the payroll tax as low as possible.

It was great having Senator Alexander here for the entire hearing.

Allow the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of the year, as they are scheduled to.

I know that the argument is made now that we've got to go back to the previous level of the payroll tax in order to fund the Social Security Trust Fund, but there are bound to be alternative ways to put funds into the Social Security Trust…

Thank you very much.

I do not see why we want to undermine that.

Well, all I can say is if you have 30 million people who are going to have coverage under the Affordable Care Act that do not have coverage today, presumably a lot of that will be done, I know, some of it will be done through Medicaid, but…

I understand that Intel did a pilot project in New Mexico to share environmental data with the community.

But it actually has been very well received by the community in being transparent and open as possible.

It was a real pleasure planning this with you and doing it on a bipartisan basis, and I think as a result of that we have some very, very good witnesses today.

Senator Udall. Thank you, Senator Alexander.

Well I have heard people refer to the Federal Government as a big insurance policy with an army.

And your proposal is that at age 62 they would no longer be required to pay the worker's portion of the payroll tax?

Now, one of the things we were trying to do in the Affordable Care Act was to have health insurance exchanges established to get us to that kind of a circumstance where there would be more ability by consumers to choose, and more…

And he felt that there ought to be some more transparency, and more ability to rationalize this process.

Thank you very much, Mr. Jackson, and thanks to all of the witnesses.

The Subcommittee will come to order.