Kent Conrad: “The notion that we are going to go from 16 percent of GDP to 18 to 20 percent of GDP, we are on a track now by 2015 we…”

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

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…

I would say personally I would not go to a company advising me on wealth management that did not have it because I think whoever is advising me ought to have as their highest responsibility to be giving me advice that is in my interest.

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.