Kent Conrad: “We did very well by securing 2 dollars, roughly, for every dollar in tax money collected in our State.”

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

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 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.

I would just say our Retirement Security Plans and our Retirement Security Clearinghouses are responding to the underlying dynamic that Professor Mead has done such a good job in describing.