Kent Conrad: “If you become aware of some action, some policy decision, some piece of intelligence that this Committee ought to know…”

The surviving spouse provisions are especially important with regard to offsetting some of the unfairness that exists elsewhere.

The new improvised system was not adequate.

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 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.