Kent Conrad: “USDA has gotten the message, reducing travel, canceling bad loans, renegotiating the basic agreement on crop insurance.”

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

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

The consequence of failure has to be made clear.

The bottom 20 percent of earners get a 35-percent increase over what is scheduled, a more than 60-percent increase over what is payable.