WKXL - New Hampshire Talk Radio

Facing The Future | Washington's Do Nothing Plan

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Co-Chairs Bob Kerrey and Jack Danforth preview the presidential debate and explain why the ballooning federal debt should be on the agenda. They'll also explain why, 30 years after they chaired a bipartisan fiscal commission, Washington's failure to ensure a more responsible path makes them angry.

Duration:: 44m
Broadcast on:: 27 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

"Well, the first thing I think he would do would be to stand up and tell the truth. I mean, he had a great expression that was "just tell the truth and watch him scatter." "Well, the further way the problem is, the easier it is to postpone the action on it, and that's essentially what we're doing." "Be real, because people in New Hampshire are really cool." "I'd say get in the game. This is a problem facing your generation. You have to have a voice in the decision." "Welcome to Facing the Future, brought to you by the Concord Coalition on WKXL, New Hampshire's Talk Radio Station. I'm your host, Bob Bixby. Each week we take a non-partisan dive into topics related to the federal budget, the economy, and how it all affects our nation's future. This week we welcome back to the show, Concord Coalition co-chairs, former U.S. senators, Bob Kerry, Democrat of Nebraska, and Jack Danforth, Republican of Missouri. Thirty years ago they co-chaired a bipartisan commission on entitlement and tax reform that warned current trends are not sustainable, and we'll discuss what they think of the budget outlook now, what it means for future generations, and what today's policy makers should do about it. These two former U.S. senators will also discuss Bob Kerry's recent op-ed in the Washington Post, titled "Don't Waste the Trump-Biden Debate Make Them Answer This Question." And that question, by the way, is what would they do about the debt? Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman joins the conversation. Well, let me just briefly introduce our guest, Bob Kerry, is a Medal of Honor recipient, former governor of Nebraska, and two-term U.S. senator from Nebraska. He's currently managing director at Allen & Company, an investment banking firm in New York. Jack Danforth is an ordained Episcopalian priest. He served as Missouri's Attorney General for eight years before being elected to the United States Senate, where he served for three terms until 1995. He has also been the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and is currently a partner at Dowd Bennett Law Firm in St. Louis, senators Kerry and Danforth, and Tori, welcome back to Facing the Future. Okay, so turning just the clock back for a second here, back when the Kerry Danforth Commission met in 1994, it was already apparent that the federal budget was on an unsustainable path. And I think we can all agree that 30 years later, that's still the case. And despite some good news along the way, we had the peace dividend of the 1990s. We had surprisingly lower interest costs and health care costs didn't go up by quite as much as we were anticipating, but we now have a, despite all that, the debt to GDP ratio has doubled since the Kerry Danforth Commission. And more alarming, I guess it's where it's headed over the next 30 years. It's going to go much higher than it is now. So let's begin with the Washington Post op-ed and Bob, I know it, it has your name on it. It's really from both you and Senator Danforth. You conclude the editorial, the op-ed by saying that you're mad as hell. Why are you mad? Why are you mad as hell? And in that show? Well, because I continue to hear elected officials talk about caring about their grandchildren. Maybe we ought to make it illegal for them to say that, because their behavior betrays that they don't really care about it, because there's this burden. And by the way, we did balance the budget in the 1990s. We were paying down debt in 2001. So there was a lot of, and it began with George Herbert Walker Bush, it was very bipartisan from beginning to end. But the problem is the mandatory spending programs just keep getting larger and larger and you referenced it, but interest rates up, interest rates, I think, is it next year, the year after it's going to be larger than the payment for Social Security. So these mandatory programs are consuming more and more of national resources with less available, whatever investments you want to make, whether it's defense or non-defense spending, it just got less and less available. So those investments typically benefit the future. So I grew up in the 1960s and benefited enormously from the decision to build the interstate highway in the 1950s. We're making no comparable. Even with the infrastructure bill that passed, we're making nothing comparable without kind of an investment. I'm not going to pay a price for it, but my 22-year-old and my grandchildren are certainly going to pay a price for it. So you look into the future from the lens of the budget, from the forecast that CBO's making, and it's just horrifying. And Matt as hell is a calm moment. It's a terrible thing that we're doing to our kids and grandchildren. Well, you mentioned interest costs. That was the eye-popping number for me because it's scheduled to exceed both defense and Medicare this year, it'll be a while before it catches up to Social Security. But that's just an incredible comment on our priorities or lack thereof. Senator Danforth, you were invoked as being mad as hell as well. So what's your take on being mad as hell? No, actually, initially the word was angry and Jack offered a friendly amendment to change it to mad as hell. It comes from a movie, obviously, and maybe it's been overworked, but I don't think so. First of all, our commission, the charity effort commission, was 30 years ago. Nothing has come of it. We produced wonderful four-color charts showing the problem we were in, and particularly the problems in Social Security and Medicare were in. Now, Social Security is going to become insolvented 11 years, and Medicare in 12 years, the trust funds, meaning that Social Security benefits will be cut, but if nothing is done, by 17% 11 years from that. So if somebody's 60 years old is planning for retirement, the current plan is to cut your benefits when you're 70 or so. That's the current plan. That's where we're heading, if that's what you want, but what makes us mad is that nothing gets done about this. There's one commission after another. The Harry Danforth was one, Simpson-Bolds was one, there have been Medicare commissions, Social Security commissions, numerous commissions since ours, and they all say essentially the same thing. They all say essentially, "We've got to do something, we're headed toward real trouble," and absolutely nothing gets done, and nothing gets done because it's politically unpopular to do anything. We're going to fix Social Security, there are only two ways to do it, either reduce benefits or you increase taxes. Politicians are not interested in what happens to retirees 11 years from now, they're interested in the next election, so they don't want to vote on increasing taxes, they don't want to vote on reducing benefits, just let it ride, just let it happen. And that is irresponsible, and that's what makes us mad. And then there's the question of what is this doing to our wonderful country? I mean, how, like the Republican slogan right now is, "Make America great again," how does it make America great by getting deeper and deeper in death? How does it make America great when our interest payments on the national debt exceed what we're spending on defense, a major responsibility of government? How does it make America great for us to become increasingly dependent on foreign countries to lend us money? Republicans are concerned about China, they heart on the danger of China. Why does it make America great for us to be nearly a trillion dollars in debt to China? How does that make us great? How does that make us strong? It doesn't. So the irresponsibility, the disservice to people who are now close to retirement and the weakening of America are enough, I think, but certainly they make Bob and me mad as hell, but they should make everybody mad as hell. We have a presidential debate coming up tonight, and we're going to have to take a break before we get into that, but on the other side of the break, I'd sort of ask, you know, what you would like to hear or what you think the candidates should be addressing or what you would ask them if you were Dana Bash and Jake Tapper on CNN. So we'll take our first break, you're listening to Face in the Future, I'm your host Bob Bixby, Tori Gorman and I, and I will let Tori in after this next segment of Tori Gorman and I will be talking to Bob Kerry and Jack Danforth about tonight's presidential debate and the long-term fiscal outlook will be right back after these short messages. Welcome back to Face in the Future, I'm your host Bob Bixby, Tori Gorman and I are talking with the Conquered Coalition co-chairs Bob Kerry and Jack Danforth, and we're talking about the presidential debate and what should be said and on the subject of the debt, and we're talking about also the 30th anniversary of the Kerry Danforth Entitlement and Tax Reform Commission which found that current fiscal trends were unsustainable and they still are. So coming up on the debate tonight, I guess neither one of you have been bashful over the years about taking issue with leaders of your own parties where you feel the need is there and so we have two former president, a current president and a former president will be talking, debating on Thursday night, what should they be talking about relative to the debt, Bob? Well, I would use the language that Senator Danforth just, his quite good statement made which the first one is President Biden, former President Trump, both of you are in support of the Do Nothing Plan, your co-sponsants that do nothing plan. What do you say to 70-year-olds who are listening tonight, knowing that that Do Nothing Plan produces a 17 cent cut in their benefits, what do you say to them? I'd start with that, and then I'd say, what do you say to a 20-year-old, to a 30-year-old, you keep talking about their future, you care about their future, their future is even worse than that 70-year-old because they're going to have to pay for it, for the shrinking amount of workers per beneficiary. Tell the American people why do you support a Do Nothing Plan, with the negative consequences that are clearly a part of that plan. That's how they're doing it for us, yeah. Well, I would hope that the candidate from my party is asked about his slogan, "Make America great again." I would say, "Mr. Trump, how does it make America great again to increase the national debt 40 percent during the four-year period of your presidency? 40 percent during four years of the Trump presidency. How does it make America great to have more spent each year on servicing the debt that on national defense? How does it make America great to be in Haq to China? Is that your idea for making America great? I'd just put him on the spot and ask him, "Okay, what do you plan to do about it?" Nothing. What do you plan to say about it in your campaign? You plan to say, "Nothing." Do you plan to say, "In effect, my objective is to get through the election and get myself elected because I want to be president?" That's what I would just put from, as a Republican, I put Trump on the spot and I put Biden, if I were crushing Biden in the spot too, our hope, I hope anyhow, was that when Biden was elected president back in 2020, he was going to be a consensus builder. He was going to try to figure out how to work things out across party lines. He's not done it. What does he plan to do that could have possible appeal to Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problem of the debt? So I think just put them on the spot and I think it's important for us to do that, not just for presidential candidates, but for all people who are in Congress, who are running to be in Congress, what do you plan to do about this? And the candidates are thankful that you're not the questioners tonight in the debate. Well, I think that's exactly what both these moderators ought to do, but I do think what Jackson earlier is, they're supporting a plan. They're behind a plan, but that plan has for Social Security, for people that are listening who were 70 years old or 60 years old, 70% cut in benefits. They don't want to face up to it. They'll try to change the subject. But if you support doing nothing, which both of them do, that's a consequence of your action. Corey. I think it's important, I'm sorry, I think it's important also to put it to the media, put it to the moderators and put it to the media. I mean, if you turn on the evening news, for example, it's almost as though, what, conceivably, does the national debt have to do with paying off a porn star? I mean, the priorities of the media are what do people want? I see a connection. I see a connection. But I mean, it's the inability of the media to focus on important subjects is appalling. It is appalling. Budget policy is kind of boring, isn't it? Yeah. It's not an eyeball generator. I mean, Santa Cruz is boring. You have a good memory, sir. So Bob, can I jump in here for a sec? Indeed. You have. All right. All right. I always refer to you as Senator, Senator, I would never dare. So I want to ask a question about signals. And if I beg your indulgence, if I can editorialize a little bit here, you know, for a long time we've talked about fiscal crisis, pending fiscal crisis, we're not there yet, you know, but it's coming. It's coming. I want to talk about signals of a crisis and that, you know, in April, the IMF's warned that rising us debt would not only harm the US economy, but it's going to drive up borrowing costs around the world and undermine global financial stability. So if we think we have a global mess right now, it's going to get worse. The IMF's chief economist also said that the risk premium on us debt has increased in recent times and may remain high while debt levels are high, which means that even if the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, the federal government may not benefit from those lower interest rates because investors, domestic or foreign, don't want to purchase our debt because they think it's too risky that we won't pay it back, that we've amassed too much of it. And then we've got professional money managers, right? These are people that are responsible for making money for other people, people like JP Morgan, CEO Jamie Diamond, BlackRock, CEO Larry Fink, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, even the former speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, they call the US debt burden the most predictable crisis that our economy faces. So it seems like we're getting a boatload of signals from abroad and from here and from people that are professionals in the financial market saying, you need to fix this problem. I'm wondering if this is not a unique problem, we faced deficit issues. You obviously chaired a commission to deal with deficit issues. These signals that we're getting now, do they mirror anything that you two gentlemen, we're dealing with when you were chairing your commissioner, when you were sitting senators, or is this something completely new and wholly more terrifying? I think it's new, but it's much larger and much more compelling and much more disturbing to, again, to Senator Danforth's comment. I mean, it's the so-called mainstream media hardly ever talked about it. And if you wait, what we talked about in 1994 is you wait, the problem gets harder. So what I hear when I listen to members of Congress after I ask them the question, why do you support doing nothing? They say, we're going to need a crisis. I don't believe we're going to be able to solve this problem or a crisis, it's going to be a lot more expensive, a lot more disruptive, a lot more difficult to manage and the opposite of being a great country. We just celebrated the 80th anniversary of the landing of D-Day. Not a single one of those men when they got off those landing craft, we're guaranteed anything. We regard them as heroes as a consequence of their willingness to pay a price. So some of this has to be Americans and we know that problem exists. We don't want to wait until there's a crisis. We don't want to wait until our country is so overrun with death, there's no way for us to get out of it. Now is the time to address it. And the longer this thing waits, we wait for this thing, I think the more unsolvable it becomes. I'm very glad that the experts are weighing in and I think that that's new. And I hope that they will sustain their focus on this. Here's what I predict is going to happen in the debate. If the question is asked, and again, maybe the media will decide no, the national debt is not something that deserves attention, I don't know. But let's say that the question is asked of the two candidates. My guess is that they will try then to, the candidates will try to finesse the issue. You know, one thing that we learned when we were in politics, first this didn't apply to Kerry, but it didn't believe. You can talk around any subject for three minutes. You can just, you can create a cloud for three minutes and if there's no follow through, that's it. And I think if they were asked the question, they would create clowns. They would say, oh, well, we can grow our way out of it. Or look, if we have more tax cuts, the economy will grow and that'll take whatever. They'll come up with something that's either a non-answer or a silly answer. And so I think it's really important for these financial gurus and experts to call out whatever is offered by the candidates, if anything is offered by the candidates and to redirect public attention to the real problems and the real possible answers to the problems. You're listening to "Facing the Future." I'm your host Bob Bixby, Tori Gorman and I are talking about the presidential debate in the long-term fiscal outlook with former senators, Bob Terry and Jack Danforth, who are co-chairman of the Concord Coalition. We'll be right back after these short messages. Welcome back to "Facing the Future." I'm your host, Bob Bixby, Tori Gorman and I are talking to Concord Coalition co-chairs, former senators, Bob Terry of Nebraska, and Jack Danforth of Missouri. And Tori, let me go to you. Yeah, I want to ask a follow-up question on -- we talked a lot about the Do Nothing policy. Both presidential candidates have endorsed sort of a Do Nothing approach to Social Security and Medicare. And we know that that's just not sustainable. It took a lot of presidential leadership to establish those two programs in the first place. And it's going to obviously take a lot of extraordinary presidential leadership to save them. In the 1990s, you worked with a president who wanted to lead on -- or tried to lead, if you will, on Social Security. And I'm curious what your thoughts are about what's different now about the Office of the Presidency and what has to change. We've already talked about the media's role in contributing to an inability to put a needle on policy. But back then, in the '90s, Social Security was the third rail of politics. Sorry. Bill Clinton says it. Sorry. That's the question that you know. I mean, this didn't exist in 1994. I was not saying he's holding up his cell phone. Yeah. The iPhone didn't exist, Google didn't exist, Facebook didn't exist, Twitter didn't exist, Instagram didn't exist. All these things that produce benefit at the margin enable basically relatively small groups to terrify political leaders. And one of the things they do is, under law, the Social Security Program is they describe the benefit that occurs at '67 as a retirement benefit. It's not a retirement benefit. We change the law, so you don't have to retire in order to get -- it's just a normal retirement age. That's all it is. Yeah. There's no requirement that any -- but man, that one always gets demagogued by relatively small numbers of people that I think terrify the political leadership. Again, that's why I think thinking about D-Day is important because that was real sacrifice. That was real heroism. That was a real willingness to say, "You know, we've got to do this for the sake of our country and for the sake of the world." And unless there's that kind of motivation, but Senator Danford was saying earlier, not only will they try to sort of finesse the answer and get away with it, if the moderators let them, they'll be able to do it. They'll be able -- both he and I are good at it, I think I'm better than he at -- ask answering a different question than the one that's asked. You bet. That's still blue. But both candidates, if elected, are going to be second-term presidents. So don't you think that gives them the opportunity, the unique opportunity to do something? I see no evidence that there's an accumulation of courage during the second term of a presidential office. You just don't see it, because what happens is the Republicans in the Congress, the Democrats in the Congress will go to the president and say, "Hey, it may be your second term. You may be done, but I've got to face the voters. And if I'm running with you at the top of the ticket, you propose to solve this problem. I'm the one that's going to have to explain why I support it or don't support it." So that happened to Obama in his second term. The Democrats basically said, "I know you like Simpson and Boles, you appointed him and so forth and you're leaning into it, but don't do it because it's going to make it very difficult for us in our mid-term and elections." So Senator Danforth, does that suggest then that voters have a role to play here in creating a safe space for lawmakers to discuss and be open and transparent about these fiscal problems and make some changes and sort of everybody sacrifice a little bit? Are voters on the hook here, too? I have a wonderful idea and I kind of have to see it to believe it, but yeah, do I think it would be useful if voters would be more outspoken about the debt? Do I think that it would be useful if voters would be more outspoken about what's going to happen to Social Security in 11 years? Yeah, I do. Would I like to see voters show up at town hall meetings that Congress members are holding and just raise the question? I would really like that. I would like to just, I mean, return to the previous question on the leadership of Clinton and so on in creating a commission. What he did was he created a commission. And that's the current proposal. The people who are talking about this, they say, "Oh, well, we need to create a commission." Well, I mean, we have carried the answer. We had some symbols. We had all these commissions. And that's the way to punt. That's the way to say, "I'm not going to do anything. We're going to create a commission that will take care of it goodbye." But we already have a commission, and it was elected by the people, it's called Congress. That's the commission. That's where this should be addressed. I don't think that it's asking too much to ask people who are legislators to actually legislate. I mean, there should be something more to the job of being a legislator than getting yourself on Fox News in the evening. There should be something, "Well, what do they do we?" And why doesn't Congress meet? I mean, would it be unreasonable to ask Congress to cut short by just a couple of weeks? One of its many vacation times and just say, "Look, we know that you want to kick back after you're exhausting three-day weeks in Washington, but could you just for just a couple of weeks have convened a meeting of the Ways and Means Committee and the House and the Finance Committee and the Senate and address for a starter of Social Security? What are you going to do? Just have a meeting. And somebody... Still, we also tried that. Could somebody introduce? Nobody said, "Could somebody introduce a bill?" I mean, now what you do, you introduce bills, you put out press releases, I introduce to the bill to fix this problem or not, and they're basically just political documents. How about a real bill? How about somebody introducing a bill and having it referred to the Ways and Means Committee and the House and to the Finance Committee and the Senate and have the bill say, "Here is what we're going to do to save so scary." Is that too much to ask, just spend a couple of vacation weeks doing something? It sounds like we need to throw a mull in a hanger at Andrews Air Force Base with nothing but water and sea rats, slam the door and no smoking and say you can't come out until you fix the problem. Great. Well, you know, we're going to have some opportunities next year. I mean, if we're going to rely on regular order, sometimes regular order is helped along by action-forcing events like the expiration of a bunch of tax cuts or the having the debt ceiling pop back alive again, there are going to be some opportunities that present themselves in 2025 that they're going to have to deal with one way or the other, and maybe that's a way to get people to get them. You don't believe in action-forcing events? No, the question about what's the voters' role? I think it gets back to Jack's pushing ahead and saying, "We should describe us as being mad as hell, not angry. I get angry and I stubbed my toe." 1976 is when network was made and Peter Finch made a name for himself because he was mad as hell. Anybody that looks at these numbers, any American citizen who looks at this number, the correct response is, don't give up, don't surrender, don't say nothing can be done, get mad as hell and say, "You're not going to take it anymore." That's the correct response. And while they're responding to the impending insolvency of Social Security or the tax cuts expiring or something like that, they can use that anger to perhaps come up with some viable solutions. Bob, you know, there aren't a six viable solutions. This is not like a cure for cancer. The question is, can you muster the courage to do it? If you're facing Americans who are like Jack and me, say, "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore," that might move the needle. But if it's just, you know, let's talk about, you know, look at searching for solutions. There are solutions. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the point of we don't need a commission. They're the solutions all over the place. They've got to any number of the solutions. So when I have enough trouble being me without, you know, giving me another human being to be. Hey, Bob. Just one thing that, I mean, you said, "Okay, the expiration of the tax cuts will be a forcing event. I'll tell you what it's going to force. It's going to force extending the tax cuts." That was going to be one of my next questions. And the assertion is going to be made if we extend the tax cuts, that will promote economic growth. And that will solve the problem. It'll pay for taxes. Well, that's correct. That's correct. Bob, I've got a question. All right, but we can't, we've got to take a break first. So hold that thought and we'll take a break. You're listening to "Facing the Future." I'm your host Bob Bixby, Tori Gorman, and I are talking with former senators Bob Kerri and Jack Danforth about the presidential debate and about what we're going to do about this unsustainable death. We'll be right back after these short messages. Welcome back to "Facing the Future." I'm your host Bob Bixby. Tori Gorman and I are talking with former senators Bob Kerri and Jack Danforth, co-chairs of the Concord Coalition. We're talking about the unsustainable fiscal outlook and the presidential debate coming up. So we were talking about the expiring tax cuts in 2025 and whether that might be an opportunity to do something about the problem and Senator Danforth was making the observation that it would probably be an opportunity to just extend the tax cuts and declare that they would pay for themselves and merely go along. Tori, I think you had a follow-up. Well, yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I'm sure this question is going to come up at the debate and both candidates are going to promise to make the tax cuts permanent. One candidate is going to pay for it by raising taxes on the wealthy and increasing the corporate income tax rate. Another candidate is going to pay for it by imposing a 10 percent tariff on every product imported into the United States. What do we think about those? Are they realistic at all? No. I don't think they aren't. My name is the only thing that's realistic is what Jack is suggesting. Extend the tax cuts. Without paying for them. Well, because you've heard it over and over and over, cut taxes and it stimulates growth. And sometimes it does and we cut the corporate, we cut the capital gains rate in the final balanced budget effort in the 1990s and I think that did have a positive impact on growth. It's usually doesn't. Usually all it does is reduce revenue and make the deficit larger and increase the amount of borrowing that's starting to cover the cost. But this is inside of that. It's not just bigger than spending. It's harder than spending because if you're over 65 or 70 years old and you depend, if you're one of those 40 percent of Americans who have only Social Security is the source of income, you're terrified. And in anything that occurs that increases that nervous, that anxiety is going to set you off. And there's no need for them to be set off. I don't think even the most aggressive person in trying to solve the problem of Social Security is not likely to make their life worse. It's more likely that a little increase amount of revenue that they get because everybody acknowledges that that's a problem. It's just a lot easier to say, "Let's just extend the tax cut. We'll take credit for it. We'll issue our press releases and go home and say it's going to stimulate growth." Because it's very rare for a citizen to look back and say, "Well, look what Senator Bullhard said here two years ago. It's rare that happened." So I think for my money, the most important thing for anybody that has happened to be listening to me right now, which I have a great deal of sympathy for if you are, is that you just get mad as hell about the failure to do anything with these mandatory programs. It's terrible what we're doing to our children and our grandchildren. So I'm the question that Tori raised about, I mean, there are two approaches, first the sheets of things that Biden will talk about, tax the rich and tax corporations, and then Trump will talk about tariffs. So I'm the state of the Union speech where Democrats seem to be absolutely thrilled that Biden could maintain an extraordinarily high decibel level for about an hour and a quarter. He spent an hour of his time unveiling one federal spending program after another. It was just wonderful. If you vote for me, his message it was an election year, but his message was, "If you vote for me, here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to give you money." And here's where the money is going to come, I'm going to tax somebody other than you. So it's free. All of this is going to be free. It is going to be absolutely great, a bonanza for you because we're going to tax the rich or we're going to tax corporations. And it's just about old, but Russell Long, former Senator Russell Long used to say about tax reform, but most people didn't say about tax reform is, "Don't tax me, tax the fellow behind that tree." So I mean, please. And then on the tariff front, imagine Republicans supporting the 10% across the board care imagine that. Republicans who historically have said government should have a light hand in the economy suddenly saying very heavy hand, very heavy, 10% across the board tariffs will pay for this and that major disruption for our economy and especially major disruption for those portions of the economy depending on trade and that on exports and that includes particularly in rural parts of our country, which are having enough problems as it is. So no, I mean, tax to try to fail this by tax increases when you plan to give away the money that you're raising taxes for or to plan to deal with the problem by major tariff program, none of those are really serious. It's all campaign stuff. I completely agree with Senator Danforth and what he just said, because there's nothing difficult in extending benefits to people who may need it. I mean, it's not like there's a lot of need out there in the country, but if you have to pay for it, which acts revenue, it provokes a different question, which is how we don't do it before you propose something new and not very good. We're increasing the amount of money that we're borrowing to pay for everything, particularly the mandatory program. So I don't think it's hard to pull it back once you put it out there, but I think Senator Danforth is 100% right. Democrats make a mistake and say we need more domestic spending and Republicans, they want more for defense. And then, as I said, it's startling to hear and dangerous actually, you kind of count on the Republicans to pull Democrats back from the brink of doing something stupid like imposing tariffs. So anyway, I remain hopeful. I've cried during the September, June 6, celebrating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. It's hard not to be inspired by watching that ceremony and considering what happened on that day. They saved the world and I'm still optimistic that America can do the same. Well, if they're going to save the world, we're going to have to tackle this unsustainable debt problem. And it seems to me that if you've both been saying, I mean, we really need to be able to make political compromises and rise above the partisanship that we've dealt with here, this seems to be getting much, much worse. I thought it was bad enough in the '90s when you had the Kerry Danforth Commission. It seems to me now that there's not even any ideological thing behind it. It's just like people go to their opposite corners and throw darts at one another and you can't do this with one side of the other. You can't do it all on the spending side or all on the revenue side. The numbers are just too far apart now to be able to do that. Yeah, I mean, the do-nothing plan is pretty catastrophic, not just for Social Security, but really, frankly, for the economy. Was this size debt that we're racking up? I want to say one thing very positive about the Kerry Danforth Commission in wrapping up here. Well, the Commission did not find solutions. There were lots of solutions, people split all over the place in proposing solutions. But there was a really clear explanation of the problem in your interim report that had seven findings, almost all of the Commission members, I think it was 30 of the 32, agreed to it on a bipartisan basis. You delineated seven key problems that had to be dealt with. I won't list them here, but they had to do with Social Security and Medicare demographics, which you haven't talked about much today, but you have to deal with the demographics, healthcare costs, the extent to which investments are being squeezed out by the growth of the entitlement programs, all those dynamics you described and got very overwhelming bipartisan support in that Commission's report. That's another reason to be mad as hell is that having diagnosed that problem so many years ago, all of those findings, unfortunately, are still true and still yet to be dealt with. All you need to do is just use AI and change the 32 faces. You have to report them still holds water. I know we're going to do that. We're updating bullets to put in, no, we're not using, not using AI, AI, but I do want, I do want to put out an updated report just with those exact same findings and just updating the numbers and, you know, they're worse. There are new problems that we didn't have in that before, but anyway, so I do think that there was some good that came out of the Kerry Danforth Commission just in terms of being able to bring that bipartisan consensus along for identifying and acknowledging the problem and there hasn't been anything like that since. All right, I think we're going to have to end it there. You've been listening to Face in the Future. I'm your host Bob Bixby, Tori Gorman and I have been talking to former Senators Bob Kerry and Jack Danforth, who, aside from sharing the Kerry Danforth entitlement and tax reform commission back in 1994, they also currently co-chair the Concord Coalition and they recently put out an op-ed with the Washington Post on having to deal with this upcoming presidential debate and urging the candidates to address the question about the debt. I'm your host Bob Bixby. I'll be back next week with another edition of Face in the Future. (upbeat music)