did you want susan bernstein dead? yes, but at the end no. >> there was no way in hell i was ever going to go through with this and hurt susan. >> reporter: while out on bail ira and kelly agreed to sit down with "dateline." they shared with us how this whole murder-for-hire plot got started. for ira it was out of desperation. >> things had reached a horrible point. >> reporter: ira had a secret. he'd been stealing from an insurance company, overbilling for medical services. and he says his wife susan knew it. did you feel like susan was trying to blackmail you in any way? >> she was trying to blackmail me in every way. she would look at me and she would say, listen, i have broken into your e-mails. i have printed out and recorded all of your business dealings, and i'm telling you now if you don't give me everything i want, i'm going to the prosecutor and i'm going to expose you for everything and try to put you in jail. >> reporter: remember, ira recorded susan threatening him. >> don't bother coming back! you're goin

find our way back to the kind of debate we heard earlier in the show between cassidy and bernstein. chris: susanu know, you've got a situation right now where there is more visible outrage inside the gop over liz cheney, a member of leadership, voting to impeach the president, rather than some of these wild conspiracy theories being he's spoused by -- espoused by marjorie taylor green. how serious is this for the gop? what can they do about it? take her off committees? what are their options. >> it tells you where the republican party is right now that liz cheney will face a primary fight the next time she's up for election, that there's a possibility that she is going to lose her place in the house leadership because of this vote of conscious she took while republicans in party express concern about marjorie taylor green, not many of them are willing to speak up in public and the toughest punishment that is being seriously considered is taking her off the education committee which is something i think that probably is not even slap on the wrist, doesn't do anything to stop her from espousing vi

bernstein was talking about the checks and when they would phase out. he said people making over $300,000 should not get those checks. we heard susan collins talk about the checks ending with $55,000. when will we know who is phased out? >> there is an active discussion. a final conclusion has not been made, as jared was saying. those discussions are happening with democrats and republicans. the president is firm on the necessity that people receive, who are eligible, $1400 checks. he's not movable on that becoming smaller. but there is a discussion, as jared said, about the phase-out and what that looks like. now, that doesn't mean that somebody making -- that it's a dead cutoff. it means that it will be phased out to slightly less than that amount at whatever the cutoff is. those are ongoing discussions and a final decision has not been made. >> reporter: finally, there's been a lot of discussion, president biden talked about the stimulus lessons that they learned. what are the other things that the president has drawn lessons from? was it the auto bailout? there were so many other things p people were dealing with, and how is he