Kent Conrad: “The budget that I wrote that my colleagues have agreed to is designed to meet that need at that higher level”

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

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.

Forty-six percent of the American people would have a hard time coming up with $400 for an emergency car repair.