Kent Conrad: “I will tell you, I don't know what is happening as a culture, but when we have the national news media obsessing on…”

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…

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.

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

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