Kent Conrad: “That would be exceptionally good news for the economy, if we were having 30-year bonds at 2.5 percent.”

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.

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.

The consequence of failure has to be made clear.

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