Kent Conrad: “It has come down to this: We both agree roughly on the amount of money necessary to fund a meaningful prescription drug…”

“It has come down to this: We both agree roughly on the amount of money necessary to fund a meaningful prescription drug benefit. Our friends on the other side of the aisle are $300 billion; we are at $311 billion. There is not much difference there. There is a profound difference on how to fund that amount of money. We say do not use the trust funds of Social Security or Medicare. Our friends on the other side of the aisle say raid the Medicare trust fund, which we believe is a profound mistake. We ought to fund this proposal, but we ought to do it the right way. We ought to do it the fiscally responsible way. We ought to do it without raiding a dime of trust fund money. That is our proposal. That, I believe, deserves the support of our colleagues. I reserve the remainder of my time.”