Kent Conrad: “I think it is a critically important one in the circumstances we confront.”

You know, we did have discussions. One of the things on this commission, because of its makeup and the diversity of views on this commission, and the extraordinary difficulty of coming together on Social Security, which we thought was the…

That I like to call the 'Conrad provision.'

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…