Kent Conrad: “The budget as is, in my judgment, just as it has been written, probably can't pass here.”

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

Can I just respond quickly, Mr. Chairman, and say when Simpson-Bowles went down, a group of six of us in the Senate, three Democrats, three Republicans, were asked by leadership to see if we couldn't come up with a way forward to adopt the…

That I like to call the 'Conrad provision.'

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