, heightened resilience has costs. if, however, high resilience is built into new system designs and technologies as they are developed, it may be possible to mitigate these costs while strengthening our infrastructure. conclusion over the next two days, you doubtless will be having many very useful discussions. this conference provides an opportunity to address a range of significant topical issues, including the implementation of the check 21 act, the direction of the financial industry as it adjusts to lower volumes of checks, and the adoption of new technologies and business practices for electronic check collection. in the area of electronic payments, there will be a variety of views on the development of services, designs, and infrastructure for the next generation of systems. the challenge is both to have vision for the future and to be grounded in the realities of the marketplace. your insights on these topics will help inform the ideas and actions of both the industry and public authorities during this historic period of the payments system in transition.

even more meaningful if it were coupled with the adoption of a set of provisions for dealing with unanticipated budgetary outcomes over time. as you are well aware, budget outcomes in the past have deviated from projections - in some cases, significantly - and they will continue to do so. accordingly, a well - designed set of mechanisms that facilitate midcourse corrections would ease the task of bringing the budget back into line when it goes off track. in particular, you might want to require that existing programs be assessed regularly to verify that they continue to meet their stated purposes and cost projections. measures that automatically take effect when costs for a particular spending program or tax provision exceed a specified threshold may prove useful as well. the original design of the budget enforcement act could also be enhanced by addressing how the strictures might evolve if and when reasonable fiscal balance came into view. i do not mean to suggest that the nation's budget problems will be solved simply by adopting a new set of rules. the fundamental fiscal issue is the need to make difficult choices among budget priorities, and this need is becoming ever more pressing in light of the unprecedented number of individuals approaching retirement age. for example, future congresses and presidents will, over time, have to weigh the benefits of continued access, on current terms, to advances in medical technology against other spending priorities as well as against tax initiatives that foster increases in economic growth and the revenue base. because the baby boomers have not yet started to retire in force, we have been in a demographic lull. but this state of relative stability will soon end. in 2008 - just three years from now - the leading edge of the baby - boom generation will reach 62, the earliest age at which social security retirement benefits can be drawn and the age at which about half of those eligible to claim benefits have been doing so in recent years. just three years after that, in 2011, the oldest baby boomers will reach 65 and will thus be eligible for medicare. currently, 3 - 1 / 4 workers contribute to the social security system for each beneficiary. under the intermediate assumptions of the program's trustees, the number of beneficiaries will have roughly doubled by 2030, and the ratio of covered workers to beneficiaries will be down to about 2. the pressures on the budget from this dramatic demographic change will be exacerbated by those stemming from the anticipated steep upward trend in spending per medicare beneficiary. the combination