people on the planet and i said that -- that is an accurate impression. very accurate impression. >> god bless you, sir. >> very nice guy, uncle louisen. we continue. with david asman, right now. more research and incentives we can break our dependence on biofuels and become the first country with 1 million of electric vehicles on the road by 2015. >> it's almost here and guess what? nearly four years and $8 billion in taxpayer funded loans later, we're nowhere near the president's push for americans to have 1 million electric vehicles. in fact, we're more than 70% away from that goal. and that's why some here say, stop using our tax dollars to try to make us buy things we don't want. hi, everybody. i'm david asman. welcome to "forbes on fox." into focus to find out steve forbes, rich, sabrina, plik

ozanian, rick unger and jon see 70% away from that goal. a terrible record. >> typical of washington trying to reg late our behavior outside of a major war, preposterous and wrong and inhibits technology, government only knows what already exists. it's a waste of money, cripples develop of technology, a waste of taxpayers' money and the government has no business, whether soda pop or cars, let the people decide. it's democracy. isn't it, still? >> right on, i would say. rick, you? >> 275,000, 1 million, you're splitting hairs. no, okay. it didn't work well. did it. >> no. >> you have to be careful about this. i take your point, obviously, incentivizing the purchase of these cars did not work out, but you've got to -- government has to be brave sometimes to help things get off the ground. you can't dlothrow out the baby with the basketball water. different if up said end it. didn't work.

let's not end it for everything. >> so much has famed billions of tax dollars. sinn fuels, didn't work. solar energy, health care. people are paying fines instead of buying health insurance they don't want but solar energy, a lot of companies have just gone bankrupt as a result of a bad policy? >> yeah. i mean, let me ask my good friend rick unger how brave to spend other people's money. that's not brave. come on. you know, i think what's been totally missed here, and was missed by washington and frankly missed by a lot of people in silicon valley is the impact of horizontal drilling and fracking technologies which have brought down the price of oil and thus gas, and thus made electric cars not as competitive as these coastal elites thought they would be back in 2009. >> and the government didn't want that. the government wanted exactly the opposite. the sin fuel, and the fact is government should not and cannot

change consumer habits. right? >> i think it's even worse, david, when the government succeeds in changing consumer habits. look at the housing crisis of 2007. they succeeded there. right? they had really low interest rates with the community reinvestment act, forced banks to lend money to people who couldn't afford mortgages and we had a huge bubble that collapsed and caused tremendous harm we're still getting through. by the way, the government is still telling fannie and freddie to support mortgages with only 3% down. >> i know. well, jon, mike brings up a good point. incentives matter. even when there are, a lot of them for sol or companies, for sin fuels, for health insurance, those incentives have broken down, but we don't want it? >> government shouldn't be creating incentives. this speaks to hubris in major way on the part of the political class that is too common. if you talked to the best investors in the world they freely acknowledge they're incorrect nearly half the time.

knowledge inside the obama white house or any white house about the future buying habits of consumers laughable. government shouldn't invest, period. >> rick, this incentivizes something i know you hate which is crony capitalism, all these insiders getting these special deals from their friends in government. >> well, first, i better acknowledge my friend rich's point to stop all the nasty tweets i'm going to get. right. it doesn't take bravery to spend other people's money, and i don't like crony capitalism. you're right. >> this incentivized crony capitalism, however. >> if you can, i acknowledge that, at the same time we've used tax incentives for very successful things. the oil industry has done very well. and delivered for us. i take your point how it didn't work for the electric car but let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. >> steve forbes, rule number one, taxes should never be used tore social engineering.

>> absolutely right, and rich touched on something that's very important when you allow free markets to operate instead of trying to manipulate them a, free markets stern scarcity into abundance. today's luxuries into tomorrow's commodities. we're seeing it play out in energy. once thought we were running out of it, now a surplus of natural gas and oil, and it's just beginning. >> rich, i'm wondering if that surplus of gas and oil was delayed, because of the government's attempt to push sin fuels down our throats, which was a bad technology. we didn't want it. if it hadn't been for the sin fuels perhaps we would have had a natural gas boom, 10, 15, 20 years earlier? >> it's possible. you'd have to dive into the details of horizontal drilling and fracking, which is on a rapid evolutionary path. one of these technologies that surprised everybody by how better it's getting year by year. and but, you know, that's what happens in the free market world, as steve points ounchts

mike, i'm wondering if we've learned our lesson? have we? there are the mistaken ish the solar energy companies that have gone out of business. even, as i said, even al gore admits the sin fuel program was a disaster. are we still employed in this? get involved or have we learned our lesson? >> i think we have not learned the lesson the omnibus passed. my concern, mainstream republican party and mainstream democratic party, little difference. both invochled in crony capitalism. >> john, emphasize that point. not a democratic issue only. there are a lot of republicans into this stuff as well. >> oh, yeah. face it go back to 2008, republicans and democrats bailed owl carmakers and banks and the tragedy of bailouts once you take that money you're no longer in the business of procfit. ask the question, absent the bailout of carmakers would they

have becamed out electric cars no one wanted? i think not. >> sabrina what do you think? >> back to what my grandmother used to do. throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it's done. that's what government is always doing. talking about energy. americans want reliable, clean and affordable energy. i say, let's let producers repond to that demand and get government out of the way because when picking winners and losers in energy, we are the losers with higher energy prices and a worse off economy. >> sabrina, wondering if it's too late? to mike's point, they're so embroiled in this, there's a street in washington, d.c. kochkoch called k street, lobbyist, rent $4,000, $5,000 a month offices. is k street so attached to the government now they won't let go? >> i think this is exactly the reason. we need to rein in that progressive state. when we talk about big government, it's not just what's going on in the capital, it's what's going on around the capital. the reason washington is growing is exactly that.

everybody has an interest, everybody is hoping they can get something incentivized for themselves. it's a bad way to govern and bad future for america. >> good last point. up next, they still hate us. so why is congress planning to give them more of our tax dollars? billions more. 

black men. leading the march, leaders and families of those killed. countries and people in those countries that hate us about to get more money from us. yep. tucked inside that new trillion dollar spending bill is nearly $50 billion in your money in new foreign aid. wir ow debt topping $18 trillion, some here say it's time to cut it all off. john, that's what you believe, right? >> you know, the basic truth is that well-run countries do not need foreign aid, but corrupt countries frequently do need foreign aid.

so the idea that the american workers should be on the hook for the alleged well-being of corrupt countries is really bad one. we've got to think about all the companies and jobs never created because we're hoisted money on other countries that never works and retards our growth in the bargain. >> and look at the country that hate us, we've given a lot of money to over the past five years? >> i wouldn't go with john in totally eliminating foreign aid but much, much more selective about who gets the aid. what i would do is have a competition among countries. they would be scored for women's rights, democracy and property rights. one winner. the citizens of that winning country would get $100 bills, create an incentive for change in the third world. >> rich, i'm a simple guy and believe that the more complex, the more rules you any other ton to government spending programs the worst they get. the worse they get. >> look, i think we should take that $50 billion or at least

some of it, say half of it and i think we should put it into military technology. we're, you know in a very dangerous world. cyber threats from north korea. you know, we've got china wanting to conquer space. we've got to be able to compete in these areas, and it takes money. >> and, steve, we have businesses that want a tax break. this is our tax dollars going to this. >> that's right, and one thing to have aid for diseases, fighting diseases like ebola or military assistants ce lie fighg isis. this goes for so-called economic development, in most cases feeds corruption and hurts countries rather than help them. the continent that's gotten the most aid, africa, suffered the most in terms of economic growth nap goes hand in hand. >> talk about corruption, sabrina, go to any airport in africa and you're hit off the back with people asking for bribes. these countries are thoroughly corrupt, and a lot of that money that goes to them from us goes

right to swiss bank accounts. >> right, and, look, i think there are good individuals working at places like u.s. aid. my sister is one. people that have done a lot because they believe america is a thriving democracy and have a role to play in helping others, but it's important to take a step back and realize as a country we are very charitable and have lots of ngos out there also helping people. if government takes a step back, organizations like doctors without borders or the foundation helping women and girls around the globe, they will take a step forward. lots of things we can still do to help people in these parts of the world. >> bill, to your point, by the way, i should mention somebodying a libya. we've been giving money to libya, promising to give money 0 libya, if -- a big if -- they wep with the benghazi investigation. there are provisos. even without that, so much of our aid is wasted ed td to cor politicians who send it off to

switzerland. >> you could be more -- >> i don't think. when has that ever been successful? >> measure to my competition. how about corruption? if you're low on corruption, a better chance of -- >> who is not -- who is low in corruption? put it in a positive way, in this world today? you're never going to find a way of keeping the corrupt people from getting their hands off this money. >> the ones low in corruption quite simply don't need foreign aid. >> good point. >> we keep talking about funding countries that are corrupt and it's achieving nothing. i don't see why the american workers should suffer reduced economic growth so a that we can fund corrupt politicians around the world. >> rich, it's like what we were saying before about natural gas in the united states. you know, the market knows how to deal with things. the market -- the good market companies don't need government help, but it's the same with countries. >> yeah. you know, i think aid in africa is better done by ngos, churches, doctors without borders, organizations like that. i'm with steve.

you know, the $30 billion out of that $50 billion that -- that's probably wasted, and should go into, as i said before, really boosting our military technology. >> sabrina, is it ever going to change jie think it's always been thus, that the corrupt people manage to gelt their sticky hands on this money. i don't think it's going to change. do you? >> well, yeah. we're on a dependency here. we have a problem, you're right, hard to reverse it. that said i don't think we need to be completely disregard all aid programs. we are some of the city on the hill, and we want to at least appear as if we care about other people around the world. i think it's noornt we do a little bit but can't be giving to the fatah hamas government and not -- disregarding our own best interests. >> last word from sabrina again. coming up, why we're releasing the cia torture report may do more than embolden our enemies. it may threaten our economy. at the bottom of the hour. first, irs blaming budget

cuts for handing out billions of dollars in bogus tax breaks.

women, just when you think you've heard the worst about the irs, there is this -- the tax agency paying out mour than $6 billion in tax child credits last year alone to people who didn't deserve it and the agency is blaming it on the budget cut. >> talk about the pot calling the kettle black. i can't believe we continue to hear stories every week whether

talk about jonathan gruber, secretary sebelius, now the inspector general putting the blame on the american people for messing up their tax returns when in fact we have a tax system so convoluted and big eastern the most intelligent among us will mess up from time to time. i find this to be sort of ultimate of government hubris. >> rick, look at messup rate, if you will. the bogus credits giving out 25% to 30% of the time. that's a huge failure rate. >> i'm not quite sure the inspector general was blaming people for people spupd or something. people do make mistakes on taxes. doesn't make them dumb or bad. i've made midtakes on taxes. of course, i'm not the brightest bulb in the box. if you want to find people to make mistakes or are purposely trying to fraud the government you need audits to do it. of course the government's going to pay out this money if they don't audit it, believe the taxpayer. >> the point is, steve, the irs is blaming budget cuts and there are fewer people, there is a

little less money, but they've been making these mistakes for ten years. not only that, they somehow find the money to give themselves bonuses during all of this? >> yes. a sick government syndrome. the worse you do, the more money they want. didn't have budget shortages when they went after conservative organizations, from-of-didn't prohibit them from doing that. this is an agency sha should be sharply downsized way flat tax. start over and the irs a nice collection agency cashing the checks people incident because the economy is prosperous and they're paying fewer dollars in the way of taxes. >> mike, you say this is a budget issue, but for a very different reason than rick thinks it's a budget issue. right? >> long as we keep giving the government so much taxpayer money, david, it's going to be verdict hard to reduce the power of the irs, and i mean, look. to sabrina's point, she's absolutely right. when the person who runs the u.s. treasury can't figure how much he owes in taxes it's a little complicated.

>> too complex and i would say, bill, fundamentally corrupt. when you have an agency complaining they don't have enough money so they make huge mistakes on tax credits and yet still give themselves bonuses. bonuses, by the way, that the american people reject by a huge majority. i think it's -- yeah. 70%, the people disapprove's those dobonuses. >> i believe the tax writing committees on congressional hill. the proshgs the complexity of the tax code like steve says, this is supposed to be a credit for middle income and lower income people. relate to section 1266 straddle options by dealers and exclude from american samoa. about such. >> and worse before it gets better because the new immigration action, executive action of the president, is going to entitle a lot of people who used to be illegal here to child tax credits. >> right. and takes us back to earlier in the show talking about the real risk of big government.

it's because everybody wants something and the government beginning to incentivize, disincentivize through the tax code. nine has taken one step into any government agency knows there are plenty of areas where we can cut. this is -- it's not rocket science, i say, just a little common sense. >> rick, there are billions, this tax credit, division, if you will, of the irs. it's not like child tax credits, also the earned income tax credit, poorly functions. huge error rates. doesn't it show that the tax system is too xblex complex? we have to simplify the whole thing. >> you wouldn't find neighbor would disagree with your statement. >> including you. >> including me. i'm an american who does not think you should get bonuses getting paid. your bonus, getting the cushy job in the industry after you leave the irs. you've got to keep in mind that you have to have audits. even under the flat tax, there will be people who will cheat. the only way to catch them is if we audit.

>> we don't mind audits, steve. the problem, the irs is blaming the cuts in their budget when they're spending money on investigating conservatives and giving themselves bonuses. >> sure. and the real world, if you have an $11 billion ors 12ds billion, figure how to do it, and in terms of audits a flat tax, do it easily with $1 billion. >> last word from the boss. one in five americans feel buried in debt until they go to the grave. our informants are here to set you free with our debt-free stocks. @?

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>> i still like tootsie rolls. have a wonderful weekend, everybody. the number one business block continues with eric bolling in "cashin' in." fallout from the release of the cia interrogation report. america divided over our right to transparency and risking another 9/11 attack. is knowing what happened worth the potential cost? we debate, you decide. plus -- >> if we're serious about the christmas season now is a good time to reflect. >> o, come all ye faithful. president obama playing santa claus and a gift to america, making illegals, legal, should he be using the bible to justify the pricey present. and sony under fire for scandalous scandalously leaks of