Kent Conrad: “We have got to--our first obligation is to defend this Nation, and we have got to provide the resources to do that.”

If we are going to make this whole system solvent, it is going to take everybody to give a little bit.

I thought he was an outstanding Committee Chairman, and my former intern has succeeded him in his Congressional seat.

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

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.