with an increase to more than $830 million. watch live coverage of the u.s. houswh members return here on c-span. >> hse speaker mike johnson discussed u.s. foreign policy and threats posed by china, russia and iran. hosted by the hudson institute in washington, d.c., watch the discussion tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span now, our free mobileideo app, or online at c-span.org. >> c-span's campaign 2024 takes you live toilwauk for our corage of the repuican national convention. tune in live, july 15, as delegates from across the untry tter tselectheir republan nominee for president. watch ashey laout their priorities for the next fr years and their pear's vision for theuture. the republican tional coention. live, nday, july 15, on

c-span, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. c-span, your unfiltered view of the conveions. now, democrat from nebraska.he now serves as cochair of the concord coalition. for our viewers who are not familiar, what is the concord coalition? guest: concorde coalition was started, oh god, i think it was 30 years ago. concord, new hampshire, of course is where the coalition began, and they were of the opinion and so am i that it will take a fair amount of patriotism to solve the current fiscal problem. that is the topic of conversation. host: i want to get to those fiscal problems of this country and your solutions but i want to ask about the story of the day.

president biden's performance in the debate, because for him to step down, increasing calls among members of congress from members of his own party. guest: having been a candidate myself, including running for president in 1992it is up to the candidate. it is up to president biden. i am a year younger than him so i recognize the symptoms of pushing 80 but here i am showing our age. i am sympathetic. he definitely missed an opportunity to show people that he can handle difficult questions. i feel likee will have more bad days that good -- i feel relieved that he will haveore good days that bad days so i am

happy he is running for reelection. host on the record or off the record conveations have been leaked at this point to the press. doou think that will incase? guest: i don't know. even when i s living in washington, i did not predict what might have happened. it has gotten even harder. your statement is true. there is an increasing number. there are 435 members of the house of representatives, about 200 of them democrats. until you get to a point where you have triple digits people saying he should notun, it is important that they made that call but it is a relatively small number. i will say it again, the ndidate is to decide. host: if he makes that decision, if he decides not to run, who do u think would be in the best position to take on donald trump in november? guest: i don't haveguest: a favorite. we have governors and members of

congress and a vice president capable of doing the job, but i don't know what the process is. i hope they don't have something that looks like it is rigged with a limited number of people who can partipate in becoming the nominee of the party. the republicans already announced they intend sue to get anybody on the ballot that they consider to be competitive and the ballot changed. the court once again has to play a very important role if candidate biden decides he will pull his name down. again, i will say it for the third time and i promise this is the last time. heakes that decision. not me, no you, not anyby but him. if he mas that decision, it will be a process at the convention in august in chicago. i hope it is open and fair and not rigged. host: we have focused on in past 11 days. you wrote an op-ed in the

washington post saying make them answer this question from a question about debt and deficit in this country. how far are we away today from a serious conversation between candidates in the news media right now on debt and deficit? guest: i think we are a ways away unfortunately in part of it is the coming incumbents are not telling people what the consequences are of doing nothing so essentially we have 537 cosponsors in congress, the president, and the vice president who are cosponsors of the do-nothing plan. they don't have to answer the question. what do you say to a 60-year-old american who is looking athe do-nothing plan? oh, my god, you will cut my benefit. that is the law. that is the plan. unless you start to focus on the consequences of doing nothing

and the overall accumulation of bt over the next 40 years, if you are 20 years old, that is the future. if you live as long as joe biden and i am donald trump, in 40 years that is your future. how can we say we care about our grandchildren? how can we give speeches talking about we will preserve our democracy forever? you are not. i know. why. the only two solutions, republicans and democrats working together in the 1980's. we got to the end of that decade. we paid off debt. that happened not long ago. to get that done, we had to put caps on spending, have relatively small increases in taxes, although we decreased the capital gains task, and we watched the number. is it going down? it did and we eliminated.

there are people who read their office. they ran again and the voters voted them out because they did not like what they did. they were looking for some magical way to solve the problem and there is no magicalay. it is not like finding a cure for cancer. you have to have some constraint on spending and some sources of record, particularly social security, which is relatively easy to solve. but again, 537 people right now are supporting the do-thing plan. my own solution, being old enough to watch movies in 1976, you have to go back to network news and watch what the guy who ended up resigning said to his audience, which is we have to be mad as hell about this. it is another issue, we talk about that. you have to t mad as hell about this. if not, it does not get solved. host: the number is going up today at $34 trillion and counting according to u.s. dt

clock. we continue to hear warnings about we will hit -- guest: the largest increase is going to interest. we don't spend -- we spend as much on interest as medicare and national defense, and all of those interest payments go to people who own treasuries inside the united states or out. paying interest on the bonds that we sold them. i am worried about china. they have $800 billion of that debt. what do you do about them? you will pay it off, pay off the interest. it is a terrible problem. again, part of the reason it is an problem is people do not understand the consequences of continuing this. how can you say you want to make america great again when all evidence of this debt decreases our capacity to describe ourselves as great? our financial tradition is an

enormous part of our strength and our ability to do well for ourselves and the world and we are ignoring it. widely assuming maybe it will somehow fix itself. it will. host: how much debt is too much debt? guest: i don't know. it is too much now because it is continuing to go up. if they can stabilize it, that would be fine. i wou like to get to point where the revenue coming in exceeds the expenses that are going out. if you don't want to y down debt, it and keep it -- just stabilize it and keep it at that one particular level. we don't have to be radical and stupid about it but we are paying down debt. host: concord coalition.org is where you can find them online. bob kerrey, former senator from the basket. guest: and jacobo republican from missouri, is my partner in crime. host biparsan coalition at

e concord coalion. if you would like to call it, you can doo. democrats, (202) 748-8000. publicans, (202) 748-8001. indendents, (202) 748-8002. senator kerrey with us until the top of the hour. david is in new york, up first on the line for democrats. go ahead. caller: hello, good morning. host: doing well. at is your queion or comment? caer: i wt to make a comment with regard to the immunity ruling they just made with the six corrupt supreme urt justices who did this toeep donald trump from being in jail. what they failed to understand is joe biden is the sitting president and he now has that same authority to call -- they called official presidential auority. i beseech joe biden to use this

authority to stop donald trump right now by having him removed from the ballot because he is a convicted felon. felons cannot holdederal positions. therefore how can donald trump be on the ballot for the presidency? host: senator kerrey what would you say? guest: there is an interesting idea. if you asked me to vote on it, i would vote no. i understand why that is being proposed, but i don't think it is ever a good idea to say i know how to solve the problem, i will behave like my opponent's behavior i do not like. , i do not support the decision the supreme court made, but they made the decision. i think it is going to encourage people to violate the law when they are president of the united stat. i don't think it is a good idea, although trump has promised to do it, trump hasrder. proceedings will