Act now, but do not act for immediate austerity.

I am a great believer in investing in infrastructure. I believe that that does give you a very significant return.

Do you separate out Social Security from the others? I think you should.

I don't think you can get there without doing what Dr. Rivlin referred to, which is you shift from a utilization system to a qualities and outcome system.

I think in order to get Republican buy-in on further revenues you are going to have to do policy changes in entitlement accounts that bend the curves in the outyear in a very substantial way, and make it clear that those accounts are…

If our goal is to reach a deal, we should not get engaged in this fight.

The budget process is probably not going to be that process, because the budget process is inherently partisan.

You know, the United States is one debt deal away from leading the entire world out of economic doldrums.

I think Dr. Rivlin is absolutely correct on both points, and Simpson-Bowles did the same thing that Domenici-Rivlin did, which was to actually increase benefits to single women over 85, and low-income individuals.

We cannot continue to let health care costs rise faster than our National income.

We have to figure out how to do the deal that straightens this out.