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other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. hannah: former senator bob kerrey from nebraska serves as co-chair of the concord coalition. for viewers who are not familiar, what is the concord coalition? guest: it was started 30 years ago, warren rudman and paul songus. the opinion is that it will take a fair amount of patriotism to solve the current fiscal problem p. i guess that will be the topic of conversation. host: i want to get to those fiscal problems in this country and not your proposed solutions but do want to ask about the spore of the day. president biden's performance in the debate call him to step down

among members of his own party. guest: having been a candidate myself, including running for president in 1992, it's really up to the candidate and president biden to make that decision. esident 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 like he will have more bad days that good -- i feel relieved that he will have more good days that bad days so i am happy he is running for reelection. host: on the record or off the

record conversations have been leaked at this point to the press. do you think that will increase? guest: i don't know. even when i was 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 not run, it is important that they made that call but it is a relatively small number. i will say it again, the candidate is to decide. host: if he makes that decision, if he decides not to run, who do you 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 participate in becoming the nominee of the party. the republicans already announced they intend to 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. he makes that decision. not me, not you, not anybody but him. if he makes 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 wre 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 at the 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 debt 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 magical way. 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-nothing 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 get 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. debt 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 would like to get to a point where the revenue coming in exceeds the expenses that are going out. if you don't want to pay 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: a bipartisan coalition at the concord coalition.

if you would like to call it, you can do so. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (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. what is your question or comment? caller: i want to make a comment with regard to the immunity ruling they just made with the six corrupt supreme court justices who did this to keep 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 authority. 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 hold federal 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. no, 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 states. i don't think it is a good idea, although trump has promised to do it, trump has promised to prosecute joe biden and everyone. i think it is a terrible promise to make.

i hope just on that basis he is not elected. host: what are your feelings about trust in the supreme court these days versus the time you served in the senate? guest: we have always had partisan supreme court we've aln supreme court justices. by that they look at the constitution, they see different things. unreasonable burden is a good example. it was attached to roe v. wade. but the government couldn't put an unreasonable burden on a woman choosing to have an abortion. i look at that and i see something different than in my day justice scalia and he was far more knowledgeable on case law. i thought something different. and i interpreted that differently. it doesn't mean he's a horrible person or that i'm not a horrible person. we just interpreted it differently. what's happened is you've got an organized effort, leading it out

saying we want to appoint judges who take an originalist view of the constitution. it's hard to think they're using originalist standard but they were very simple and they promised to do the same thing if trump gets elected. in 2025 the plan, what's in there is a proposal that trump replace the two older conservative judges with two younger conservative judges and then expand the court. i hear some democrats still proposing to expand the court being too rash by republicans or then get face a republican president if trump gets in was i want to expand so that i can point that becomes unalterable majority. were far better off in my view with the court that sits 5-4 slightly conservative, or

slightly liberal. as we had mostly during the 1990's decision saying i don't know. but i can live with it. it's not in a radically alter the face of america. i think we are feeling that. the argument over and over again. my state of nebraska has two constitutional amendments on the ballot. having to do with abortion. repealing road not settle the issue. >> we often talk about age and the executive branch what about the judicial branch, there's been some calls for an age limits or term limits for members of the supreme court. you support that? guest: no, i do not think it is a good idea. the court has the capacity to basically please itself. let me put it this way. be it more local, if warren

buffett was president of the united states right now what i want him to be not allowed to run because people say he's 94 years old and that's too old? no. for warren buffett it's not too old. he may be too old for me but it's not too old for him. part of the hardship of democracy is we have to decide and sometimes these decisions are difficult. they are not easy to make but we have to make it right now for a variety of reasons in the presidential contest try consider to be in my lifetime at least as important as 1968 which is an election that sent me to vietnam. >> this is max, an independent good morning. max, you are going in and out, give us a call back we will try to fix that line in the meantime -- guest: i can answer a question that i didn't even hear. host: i'll let you have that one next time.

in california, republican, good morning. caller: good morning, how are you. good. i often say the same thing over and over but i would like to ask senator kerry what do you feel about the let's see first of all -- the native american people who were slaughtered and mistreated and taken their land away. do you feel like any of our money should go to repair that wound or if unfinished, un-taking care of thing that we did? and then also for the black people of this nation who gave hundreds of years of slave labor which built the wealth of our country i believe, do you feel like they should get some money?

people now living on the streets maybe like where i live and the bay area? host: we will take the question on reparations. guest: reparations is a bit more complicated. it's important for both of us to acknowledge the tremendous progress that's been made. at least my 20's and 30's in nebraska, didn't even talk about the damage that it been done to the lakota, omaha, tribes and residencies and reservations in nebraska. it was considered to be anathema. couldn't have a conversation about leonard peltier and likewise with slavery. i wasn't really taught in school about slavery. i wasn't taught about reconstruction or jim crow. there were no black students in my high school in lincoln nebraska in the late 50's and early 60's. i think we've made a lot of progress in understanding the terrible things we did including

the japanese internment where we did finally get restitution. i think we have to acknowledge it. i don't think we should be self-conscious and feel like it's terrible and were facing terrible things we've done. that's really one of the strengths of this country's that were willing to acknowledge all were trying to do is make the union more perfect. that's -- people who supported stalin and adolf hitler, we recognize we are imperfect, and the only way to improve the quality of our country is to acknowledge the problems we created with our own policies. slavery was unconscionable. 700,000 men died paid is worse today than ever before? no. we went to war between the north and the south in 1861 and 700,000 men died because we couldn't decide how to resolve

the issue of slavery without a war. i heard the heritage foundation guy say we will have a second revolution. that is if the democrats allow it, the liberals allow it. it's a terrible thing to do to actually push yourself into a war if you can resolve an issue. i think facing the facts of the damage we did with slavery and with reconstruction. we didn't have freedom in america until the civil rights act and the voting rights act, the housing act of 68. i grew up in nebraska and i remember we had a moment where we did really bad things as a consequence of a racist attitude towards blacks. i think it's important that we recognize the damage that's done. are we could have reparations of

some kind? i'm not confident at all we can do that. i don't see how you unwind all that. i think it leads to making certain we make an effort to help african-americans get to college and get good jobs, etc.. as to reparations i've never seen something i could support. host: viewers, leaving new or viewers may not know along with your service in the united states senate you're a of honor winner, how did you end up in vietnam? guest: as with so many things that happened in my life, it was serendipity. i graduated in college finishing a five year program and i got a notice and all of a sudden i was eligible for the draft. i had undisclosed asthma the timing and did not mention it.

i just read the caine mutiny and set i want to go to the navy. so i went down to the recruiting office and volunteered for the navy. if it went to graduate school i could apply for officer candidate school which i did. underwater demolition guys came through and said you ought to join and come to san diego and train. i thought it was warm out there and i can swim pretty good so i went out there. so i went to vietnam. i wasn't there long enough to demonstrate any real capacity. if you went hunting with me it was probably a waste of taxpayer money to send me to vietnam. host: senator bob carry with us for another 20 minutes taking your phone calls.

dorothy in michigan. caller: good morning. i have a question. yesterday i watched the u.s. report and smithfield hams is cutting 350 jobs and john deere is cutting 650 jobs and i believe that was in i/o a. -- in iowa. when president obama was in it seems to me, and i could be wrong, that he gave loans to the ford company and once they got on their feet then they had to pay the government back. i'm wondering why president biden wouldn't think about doing -- helping some of these companies out with loans to get them on their feet and then they could pay them back?

i will take my answer offline. guest: i think it's required everyone in the congress should use the phrase i may be wrong. biden was vice president when that bailout of the auto industry went into effect. the car companies pay them back and are doing well. it's a good demonstration that there are times you can have government intervention that does something good. but it doesn't produce continuous funding of the problem. it was remarkable accomplishment for him to get infrastructure, bipartisan infrastructure and for him to get the chips act back. both of them are spending lots of money, they want to rebuild

their downtown and they are going to rebuild their downtown. so there's a lot of evidence that it's a biden initiative, so i think he would probably be sympathetic to your question especially with the two things i cited. but having the evidence that they paid the loan back as a consequence and secondly the very positive impact of the infrastructure bill and the chips act. >> a story out within the past hour as we've been talking, joe biden with a letter to democrats in congress telling the end talks of him withdrawing from the race saying he's running in this race. if that is the case, do you think he will be able to make the case about things like the chips act and infrastructure act in a second debate.

will he get better at this? guest: i don't know, i hope he does because it's a problem. but he should also say i was in the senate when we started to pay down and get to the point where we could pay down debt. it wasn't easy. spending and tax increases are never easy. especially the goals to keep the economy growing. i hope he comes to the conclusion as he's campaigning we can continue -- all the plan does is it penalizes people who will face this problem once they become eligible either for medicare or social security. it's a horrible problem and he's demonstrated the capacity to solve problems like this and i hope he puts it on his list when he gets reelected. host: this is anthony out of chicago, independent. caller: always glad to be on with you in the morning.