Welcome to the Roundtable: Why Reform Now?

[Bob Carlitz <bob@giotto.info-ren.org>]

Thank you for joining us for the first Roundtable of
the National Dialogue on Social Security.  This 
Roundtable will include four distinguished members 
of the House Ways and Means Committee - Representatives
Archer, Becerra, Hulshof, and Thurman.  The Roundtable
will be moderated by Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Executive
Director of Americans Discuss Social Security.  The Ways and
Means Committee is where Social Security reform legislation 
will originate in the House of Representatives, so this 
is a key group in the debate on Social Security reform.

Roundtables for the National Dialogue will work as follows.
Panelists provide brief position papers in advance of 
the discussion.  You can find these papers by following
the link for the National Dialogue from the Home Page
of the National Dialogue Website.  After making their
opening remarks, the panelists will accept questions
from each other and, via the moderator, from participants
in the larger public discussion.  The panelists will
be available to answer questions arising from the public
discussion for a two-week period.

In this Roundtable you should focus attention on the
question of whether there is an immediate need for
reform of the Social Security system.  You may also
want to participate in the parallel discussion on
values underlying Social Security, which will continue
on the National Dialogue Website.  When you are reading
messages from either the Roundtable or the Discussion
on Values, you may go back and forth between the
discussions by using a navigation bar provided at
the bottom of each index page.

Thanks again for your participation in the National
Dialogue.  And thanks to our panelists for helping
to make this event a significant one in the ongoing
national discussion of this important issue.

Bob Carlitz, moderator
Information Renaissance