Our meeting with Senator Gordon Smith's staff in Portland was bittersweet. We were reassured that the Senator is a supporter of personal accounts but he does think all personal account bills will fail in the near future. We learned that the Senator has teamed with Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota to create a bill which neither introduces personal accounts nor addresses the solvency of social security. His staff suggests that this bill is a "middle of the road" policy but it is actually an attempt to do as little as possible and still look busy. Silver lining on our cloudy visit to Portland has to be a book of Elizabeth Dole's favorite quotes. It was ghost written by Senator Smith's chief of Staff and each of us received a copy at the end of our visit. I read a few pages and found a quote by Shirley Chisholm I'd like to leave with Senator Smith.
"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."
You can read the bulleted concepts in the Smith-Conrad plan here:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5475176.html
