For 60 years, Social Security has meant more than an ID number on a tax form; more than a monthly check in the mail. It reflects our deepest values - our respect for our parents and our belief that all Americans deserve to retire with dignity.
If you look back at the 1960's in the United States, and if you think that more good was done than harm, you are probably a Democrat. If you think that more harm was done than good, then you're probably a Republican.
When I first came to Washington in the 1960s, even at the height of the Vietnam War, until the end there in '68 there was a certain climate of cooperation. And then in the late sixties and in through the seventies, politics began getting more mean. And then from the eighties on it seemed to be institutionalized, this personal attack business. And I just hate it.
No one who has lived through the second half of the 20th century could possibly be blind to the enormous impact of exchange programs on the future of countries.