Kent Conrad

The one thing I know for sure is that what is happening now is not working.

Can I just respond quickly, Mr. Chairman, and say when Simpson-Bowles went down, a group of six of us in the Senate, three Democrats, three Republicans, were asked by leadership to see if we couldn't come up with a way forward to adopt the…

It takes guts to do that, and Chairman Arrington, you have certainly led the charge on having a commission.

We admire that, and I can say on both sides of the aisle, people recognize the job he did as Budget Committee Chairman.

I thought he was an outstanding Committee Chairman, and my former intern has succeeded him in his Congressional seat.

All the talk in the world doesn't matter if you don't actually get something done in the real world.

I urge you to vote for the confirmation of Dave Turk. I urge you to do it quickly.

Millions of Americans are financially unprepared for their retirement.

We did a whole series of things in our Social Security reform not to discourage people from working, but to encourage them to continue working if they are able to do so.

I wish I could look you in the eye and say, you know, if we just had the will, we could reverse this, and we could go back to a time when defined benefit plans were on the increase. I do not think that is in the cards.

I do, and I made that argument to the commission, and others on the commission made some of the points that you are making now.

I would say personally I would not go to a company advising me on wealth management that did not have it because I think whoever is advising me ought to have as their highest responsibility to be giving me advice that is in my interest.

If you had to reduce it to a word, I would reduce it to 'globalization.'

Fully 64 percent of the American people said they were worried about not having enough money for retirement.

We owe it to these men and women to strengthen our retirement system.

Things are changing very rapidly, and it presents us with a requirement to change how we envision retirement as well.

We tried to include some of these ideas in our Social Security reform package, to actually provide incentives in the system for people to continue to work.

I would just say in this whole area of lifetime income options, there is a tremendous opportunity here.

I would just say our Retirement Security Plans and our Retirement Security Clearinghouses are responding to the underlying dynamic that Professor Mead has done such a good job in describing.

What is realistic is to deal with these changes in a way that does expand access, that does expand the opportunity for people to participate in a retirement plan at work.

We ought to reestablish this benefit for survivors and those affected by disability.

What is going to happen to all the truck drivers of America when we have self-driving vehicles?

The new improvised system was not adequate.

I think there is just a tremendous opportunity here, and I really applaud the two of you for doing this in a bipartisan way.