To honor our national promise to our veterans we must continue to improve services for our men and women in uniform today and provide long overdue benefits for the veterans and military retirees who have already served.

One state retiree 49 years old paid over the course of his entire career a total of $124 000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500 000 for health care benefits - a total of $3.8m on a $120 000 investment.

They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics to take on public-sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefits system that was headed to bankruptcy. But with bipartisan leadership we saved taxpayers $132 billion dollars over 30 years and saved retirees their pensions. We did it.

As you know Social Security functions under the premise that today's workers will help finance benefits for retirees and that these workers will then be supported by the next generation of workers paying into the same system.