Kent Conrad: “I believe we were perilously close to that.”

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…

If you had to reduce it to a word, I would reduce it to 'globalization.'

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.

I urge you to vote for the confirmation of Dave Turk. I urge you to do it quickly.