Here's one statement that didn't get a lot of note from President Bush's press conference last night, an item where the president seemed especially passionate:

One other point on Social Security that people have got to understand is that it's -- the system of today is not fair for a person whose spouse has died early. In other words, if you're a two-working family like families are here in America, and -- two people working in your family, and the spouse dies early -- before 62, for example -- all of the money that the spouse has put into the system is held there, and then when the other spouse retires, he or she gets to choose the benefits from his or her own work, or the other spouse's benefits, which is ever higher but not both.

See what I'm saying? Somebody has worked all their life, the money they put into the system just goes away. It seems unfair to me. I've talked to too many people whose lives were turned upside down when the spouse died early and all they got was a burial benefit.

"...(T)he money they put into the system just goes away. It seems unfair to me."

And it seems unfair to countless millions of widows and widowers who apt to suffer the loss of a spouse at just the time a child is getting ready to enter college, or when they are just getting ready to pay off a house, or retire. A lifetime of working, planning and playing by the rules goes "poof."

Josh Marshall, one of the left's leading commentators on this, says, "Democrats do have a plan: it's called Social Security."

President Bush, who thinks of those widows and widowers, has a plan too. It's called, "We have to do better."

Michelle Malkin has additional perspective on all the spin being given to the president's plan for increasing benefits to the poor.

There's no quick-fix solution but the status quo would keep letting millions of hard working people slip through the cracks.