Kent Conrad: “The right answer is not zero with respect to the housing crisis and the financial sector.”

That I like to call the 'Conrad provision.'

It lifts the bottom. It asks those of us at the top to take a little less of an increase than we might have expected.

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

I am eager to hear from our panelists to get a better sense of all the options they considered and how they reached consensus on the final report.