Kent Conrad: “I ask the Chair of the committee if it would be appropriate now to go to the Cantwell amendment?”

Fully 64 percent of the American people said they were worried about not having enough money for retirement.

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

It was incredibly important that we not only made Social Security solvent, but we lifted the bottom 20 percent dramatically.

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…