>> neil: i see no problems at all. that will do it here. thanks. cost of freedom continues on the place for business. ♪ ♪ >> david: well, here is a question on the syrian story many are not considering. can we afford to attack syria? >> senator jim imhoff is the top republican on the armed services says no, we can't. "our troops are stretched thin. the defense budget has been slashed to historically low level. no red line should have been drawn without the strategy and funding to support it." so this further proof the debt is a security risk? hi, even. i'm david asman. welcome to "forbes on fox." in focus with steve forbes, himself. elizabeth macdonald. sabrina schaefer. rich karlgad.

john candy. is this putting us in danger? >> it is. it's difficult to follow the powell doctrine, you remember colin powell. he said we ought to have the resources to fight two wars at same time in different parts of the world. we can't do that today. we should invest 6% of the gdp in the defense. as we did in the reagan years. we have can't afford to do that because we're so far behind the curve on the debt issue. >> is it a security risk? >> i'll disagree with rich. we spend more than top ten behind us combined on defense. if there is a national security issue, we defend the richest countries and regions in the world without defending the united states. if youook at the depth more broadly, if anything makes us safer, china is less likely to bomb us if we owe them money than if we don't owe them

money. >> david: we spend a lot of money on defense. with jim imhoff says we don't ve enough, i listen. >> he's right on long-term implication of what we do on the budget. not just the deficit or the level of the national debt, david. this president wants to draw down the military rather that build it up. ve a large budget on paper but it goes for personnel and things you don't see in other budgets. china is spending heavily, though it's not in the open. volatile areas of the world; particularly, in asia. focused on the middle east. japan and china is heating up. i don'tant china to feel nuclear arms because we can't defend them. >> david: contingency ans. if you start an action, even in a small place like syria that doesn't seem to be big. you have to be prepared for what follows. world war i began with an isolated assassination in a country and it turned to world

war. >> i can go along with the idea there are dangers from the national debt. i have a hard time believing security is one. yesterday, we sent another warship to the persian gulf. this is just not a problem. we will always have enough other things to go but we find ourselves challenged in our national security. we have all the money we need. i couldn't disagree with the senator more. it's fear mongering. it's not an issue. >> david: i don't know about fear mongering. he is basing it on real evidence. >> i don't agree. >> china and russia can make our lives miserable dumping the treasury. they can move interest rates higher. central bankers are look at the serious research finding that the dumping of treasuries can move ten-year yield higher because the foreign government own our debt. >> david: let me put that in english. you're saying important stuff but hard to grab hold of.

we have so much debt je to sell the debt. that put us at risk. >> so if nobody wants the debt it spikes yield and interest rate higher. yields on the bonds. 100 basis point went with what we saw, after the foreigners started to dump the debt this past year. that negates the federal reserve money printing that we're doing to buy u.s. debt. it can wreck u.s. debt to spiral our pocketbook out of controls. >> david: sabrina, does the senator know what he is talking about? >> he does. of the he realizes the national debt was $1 trillion. three times larger than it was under george w. bush and 18 times larmer than it was under president clinton. i don't support going to syria in a military invasion but we need to have the financial and political tackle foreign

entanglement, and drowning under the tsunami of debt doesn't allow to us protect ourselves. >> david: one angle of this is iran supports assad. he supports the guy we're going after in this battle. iran hasser i has terrorists tot costly for us with political and financial capital. >> that wouldn't change my view. conservaves have to get real. if they're for a smaller vernment they can't have military force defending some of the richest countries in the world. if we dislike healthcare here we have to not support military care for other countries. >> we have to provide umbrella. if we withdraw from the worlds the countries will defend themselves and that's a

volatile world. i don't want japan to have nuclear arms. europe today war is inconceivable there. >> this is a region that takes years or decades if not centuries to build democracy. they have a version of their religion that negates a pluralistic democracy or tolerance or free speech certainly. so what is realistic. the other issue to consider. if we see the oil price spike -- >> david: it has. >> right. >> we could tip the u.s. to recession. >> david: good point. e question is priority. where we are spendi the money. >> i would rather spend more on the security than the windmills at aren't working. >> i couldn't agree with you more. china is ambitious about the high technology warfare.

they will put unmanned vehicle on the moon quickly. i don't think europe has the guts to stop them. we have issues out there. let's not kid ourselves. we have should spend 5-6% of the gdp on the defense. >> david: this could spin out of control. >> we are changing that to the relative values of doing this. i got to say there must be something in the drinking water in washington, d.c., because john tandy is kind of making sense. >>avid: he make sense all the time! >> go ahead. >> president obama faced with up believably difficult choice here. he can't win either way he goes. i wouldn't want to be in his shoes. some of the points about avoiding the battle are good points i'm not sure it's best for to us do. >> the best national defense is have a strong economy.

>> david: sabrina every time the united states lets the defenses down, whether it was before world war ii or 9/11, that is when our enemy seem to attack. we might be lulled in that again. obama is taking a lot of money out of defense to support the windmills and other things. >> that's right. we want our lawmakers at home to act in the best interest of people in america. when we have bahrain, libya, china that own large amount of the debt. it limits the ability to act in the self-interest of the american people. that is concerning here. >> the focus on the debt is less interest than focus on spending. it's the spending that bothers you more than the debt. >> hilton freeman was right in the day when he said he would rather have $1 trillion budget in deficit than $2 trillion budget in balance. withdrawing resources from the

economy. we are better off with a vibrant economy. it makes for vibrant defense. >> david: even john tandy can agree with the debt part of that issue, right? >> i don't know there. if chinand russia sell our debt they hurt china and russia more than the united states. i am with steve. i'd rather have debt than balanced budget with $4 trillion. i never understood the g.o.p. worship of that. last word for libertarian. thank you, folks. up next, now the nsa is getting naughty! new report saying some agent workers are spying on their lovers. what happened to only watching terrorists? is this proof that they can't be trusted with anyone's private

i'm jamie colby. see you at 1:00 performed eastern. keep it on fox. >> david: remember the nsa saying they are only targeting the bad guys? reports surfacing that some employees are tracking their love interest. emac, you say this is undeniable proof we can't trust the guys with e private information. >> yeah. i don't care if jane and james bond want to hook up. i don't care about that. i get it we want to stop the 9/11. i get it we don't want to sacrifice security by making the nsa more transparent. c'mon, they are violating privacy on americans every year for the last ten years and i'm worrying they are

storing e-mail information and phone call information. i get it, here is the chilling thing. friends of mine in venezuela and germany said little by little we accept little compromises day today and we say that's just the government. it won't bother us. then is government is at their back door. >> it's incrementing encroaching. we turn around and then they're in where we didn't think they would be in. >> 170 years they warned of soft tyranny and you end up with a bad one at the end to day. nsa machinations like fraud and democracy. you don't get rid of election. you figure out how to cure the problem. here there are ways to cure the problem. >> david: is there a cure to this? >> of course. in terms of a backup or a system to check if you do things you're not supposed to. you don't throw away security because you have flaws in it. >> you don't but there is a point you say stop. this is a red line you cross

in to getting personal information that you shouldn't be able to go through. >> steve is always right but emac is more right. these are not angels. >> david: some people would say weasel like, but go ahead. >> once you arrive for government work, that does not make you a angel. we have can't trust these people. under the false pretense of making us secure. they are doing a lot of things we shouldn't do. i don't think we should be so quick about ging up the liberty for the false sense of security they offer. i never works out well. >> david: rick, you agree? >> i'm still trying to figure out who i should be kissing up to now. >> don't worry. >> we have to be care to feel make too sweeping of a statement regarding the nsa. we agree there is a place for them. yeah, when they are starting to check in on their own personal relationships, it does need to be cleaned up.

i agree with steve. even worse, we are finding out today that the information that the president needs fr the nsa he can't even get. you have to question to what end. >> mike, there is a court that is supposed to approve of any wire taping and of all the phones and the other information. but the court in certain areas has been, has been gone around by the nsa. >> absolutely right. the broader problem here i yes, there is always a trad tradeoff between security and how much freedom you give up. the bigger problem president obama likes to lead from behind has been doing just that here. we don't even know exactly what information the nsa has and what he is doing. he hasn't come out and explained it to the american people. and quite frankly given what is happen with the i.r.s. and the a.p. and the other things, i don't know if the miles per hour people would believe

them. that is really sad. >> david: that is a good point. the fact is this is the same government that has been using other institutions like the i.r.s. for political purposes apparently in some way. so do you trust them with our even more personal information? >> i don't. but i'll say before i get in to that for a second, i will say i think the nsa is a necessary evil. i wager in this day and age, of terrorism and cyber warfare it's more important than the nuclear arms program we have. that said, i do not trust the bigger issue here, according to the documents leaked by edward snowden, the nsa internal review in 2012 found on average each year since 2008, 2,000 episode of privacy rules broken by the nsa. that needs to change. we need more checks and balances. >> david: we're relying on the nsa to watch itself.

>> it doesn't work out well if you investigate yourself. >> david: the head of the nsa, jim clapper apologized for the testimony in congre where he essentially lied to us about the information they collected. he apologized saying it was the least untruthful answer possible. isn't that time for a big change? >> he should be pursuing new opportunities, obviously, privatelnthe private sector to n honest living. you don't have to throw nsa out. democracy, you don't throw it out if you find fraud. >> david: last word from steve. as we celebrate the har-working americans that make america great.

the "cashin' in" gang looking in to whethethe hand-outs destroy our wonderful work ethic. that's at the bottom of the hour. right here on forbes,ollege grades are meaningless? find out what more employers are relying on instead when it comes to new hires and why it's firing up a major

>> david: forget about putting your college gpa on a resume, many businesses are passing over college grades and turning to an independent

test they say will better evaluate student for employment according to what the businesses say they need. this is leading to a showdown. who is a better judge to prepare students for real world? businesses or colleges? steve? >> businesses. when you go to a business you start to get a real education. they have done to the grading system what the federal reserve have done to the economy. >> david: they willed a my center the test and they charge $35 for the test. colleges are picking up the extense. >> i wish it were that simple. business didn't go by my college grades or i would still look for a job. colleges have a good sense of how to prepare you for what comes next. if you go that route. businesses on the other hand may interview you. >> david: businesses themselves when they are polled they say they don't have the faith of a college ability to prepare for the real world.

>> the proof of that i why so many kids while they are in college do internships. we use intern at forbes all the time. that's how we ferret out which ones we hire and which aren't cut out for forbes. absolutely businesses. >> david: this is a relatively cheap test. $35. you don't have to attend college to take the test by the way. businesses may go around colleges now. maybe a college degree won't be that important on your resume anymore. >> this is a threat colleges face. highly technical jbs like medical and science, employers look at the academic background. that is the first job for first six months. after that, they get a sense. i would saint the college experience will go ay entir entirely. >> but the colleges don't

measure as well as the test. this test measures what the businesses say they need. >> i welcome the test. at the end of the day to get a job, businesses know what is better. colleges tie stats to the graduates' employment rate and the placement rate. at the end of the dy, businesses know what is better be. you need a college degree. i needed my college degree. >> david: maybe both. >> yeah. >> david: stocks taking a hit worry with the fears of syria. we have stocks to ease your fear. don't miss this. it's up next. t

>> david: we are back with the informer steady stocks for unsteady times. morgan, chrysler? >> pfizer, this is a safe habe. paying a dividend. david: emac, do you like the stock? >> revenue weakness because the key patent are expiring, like lipitor. watch out for that. >> david: they sill have viagra. it not that i know about that. >> i like vanguard dividend growth. they are up 9% in the past five years. great managers, cheaply, who can manage the stock in and out. megacap stock. >> david: morgan, you like it? >> i really like it but if you

want more criminal or flexibility, check out the vanguard eps. vdig. >> david: good advice. thank you. that is it for "forbes on fox." have a great number one business block continues with eric bolling and "cashin' in." ♪ ♪ >> eric: it's the makers versus the takers this labor day weekend. as we kick back and enjoy the first of our waiver, some are feasting on governmenthand hand-out. >> awesome. >> taxpayers. >> so are all the hand-outs killing what made america great? good old fashioned hardwork? plus selling us out. government agencies making money off the private and the personal info. you won't believe what we found. and the opener of america's oldest brewery taking on big labor in a big way. and the reason job seekers on this holiday weekend. "cashin' in,"