Kent Conrad: “It would be an utterly empty exercise around here not to get the votes to actually pass things.”

We also increase the payroll tax very modestly, from the current combined rate of 12.4 percent to 13.4 percent over 10 years.

It was incredibly important that we not only made Social Security solvent, but we lifted the bottom 20 percent dramatically.

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

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.