Kent Conrad: “I heard colleagues say this SCHIP program is a first step toward socialized medicine. Is this Children's Health…”

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

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

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.

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…