Kent Conrad: “This budget extends the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for everybody earning below $250,000 a year.”

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.

Social Security's financial challenge affects nearly our entire society, and the solutions will require a broad-based approach.

I wish I could look you in the eye and say, you know, if we just had the will, we could reverse this, and we could go back to a time when defined benefit plans were on the increase. I do not think that is in the cards.

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…