oil prices. >> brenda: what do you like, toby. >> microsoft, i used 8, and killed it. >> brenda: jonas. >> the mobile models on their be tablets. >> brenda: is it going up 30%? >> i guess not. >> brenda: neil is up next. >> . >> neil: on a week when a top democrat is saying food stamps and unemployment insurance are stimulus and the president argues the really successful businesses do it on their own, what is happening to us. welcome, everybody, i'm neil cavuto and call me worried, worried for a country whose elected leaders call the symptoms of a slowdown as the cures for slowdown. with food stamps and welfare are our goal and not improving the economy that should make them unnecessary.

then i start to wonder whether what made this country great is gone and whether we keep this kind of stuff up, maybe it's time to sell this new brand of capitalism short. to ben stein and dagen mcdowell, adam lashinsky and charlie gasperino, what do you think, dagen? >> i think it goes back to the argument a we've been talking about for several years now, what role does government play in our lives? who makes the country great? is it the government or the private citizen snz and i think we are right now at a pivotal moment in our country's history where we're in danger of becoming, as a nation, so dependent on not only government money, but the government making decisions for us as individuals that either we stop it in its tracks or we are going the way of europe and i'm talking about not just food stamps and government assistance and i'm talking about medicare and all of the above. >> you know, ben stein, i've suspected that government is

the reason why you're the success you are, now we know why. >> well, when my parents got out of graduate school, they both worked for the government. my father went through world war ii in the navy and in a way they are. but government is incredibly important, let's not sell that short and let's not sell short the fact that taxpayers pay for things, firefighters, military police sacrifice a great deal. let's not sell the government short, but individual initiative is what america is about and let's agree that food stamps, you're entirely right, a section of the problem, but necessarily we don't want americans going mung gri. it's a complicated mess, but let's not sell initiatives short. >> neil: to say at that we've gone into hyper drive exaggerating things. when we talk about the government need for food stamps and desperate, absolutely. welfare, absolutely. when it gets to the numbers

and the the glorification worries me, when it gets to the sweeping comments about all who are successful that worries me. >> right, and you see, i think the president did us all a big favor, he did the country a great service here by making that comment about you owe this to, you know, you owe everything to the government, he didn't quite say it to that, but something along those lines. what he think he did and i think adam will agree, he drew the lines pretty spark stark. you, america, have a choice and hats off to president obama by giving that choice. if you take my way and with all deference to ben, he wasn't saying you have to appreciate some points of government. president obama was saying that the country, that the way out of this is government and if you really believe this, you'll vote for this president and if you don't, we hope mitt romney makes the opposite argument, but don't -- i think the president did a great thing here, he drew the ideological lines very starkly and now, the american people have a choice. >> neil: whether you want more

government. >> absolutely. >> neil: adam. >> i agree with you up to a point. i agree that he did draw a stark political point, charlie. where i disagree, the message is not that you need to rely on government, government will do it for you, we need more government. the message was, don't kid yourself that you were able to accomplish this without the-- >> don't kid yourself. >> the f.a.a., keeping your planes safe. without the many things that the government does to make a just society. >> and adam, not even the tea party is outraged by police and firemen. they're outraged about the massive encroachment of government in our lives and the fact that the solutions to our economic problems, particularly from this administration, and often republicans, involved taxpayer money and government and not the private sector. >> and where we disagree with you-- >> the president did us all a great favor. if you want that vote for me. if you don't want that-- >> where i disagree, you know, neil raised the issue of the sweeping language that's going on. part of the sweeping language

that's going on is exactly the denigrating of the government. it's attitude get out of my way, it's a libertarian concept and-- >> and don't you acknowledge that the president is using the same sweeping language. he's coming out, the president of the united states, built not on socialism, but capitalism with a safety net for people who are poor. he's saying you, the small business-- by the way what a slap in the the face of small businesses. most of the small businesses actually go under without government help and saying, you, small business, you exist because of me, and big government. >> all of the very-- >> stark political choice. >> on that note, it was a very revealing comment. you didn't build that. my mother, who never e-mails me about anything political sent me an e-mail saying, wait a minute just a second, this is completely foreign to my family, that both of my grandfathers built businesses just through sheer will with

little formal education because they worked hard and they believed in this country and my parents are sitting back listening to this thinking about all that my grandfathers contributed to the community and the people who they hired and then they have to listen to this? my mother in this e-mail when she wrote to me she said this is a totally foreign concept, i don't know what country that we live in right now. >> by the way it's completely inaccurate. who pays the taxpayer money that funds infrastructure projects? it's not the people on welfare. >> neil: i understand when the president is saying this, i know we can take this to the extremes and when he started doing the roads and bridges things, in other words, without that i guess we would say bill gates and steve jobs, i think they did it in the garage and never had to go outside. and leaving at that aside, here is what i worry about, the underlying message and the trend is that stimulus is food stamps, stimulus is unemployment insurance, we glorify welfare, we glorify,

you know the kind of support you get via norman rockwell type, and i'm not denying those who need and benefit from that, but next we take it one step further to glorify it. >> i agree, it's extremely worrisome, there's a song like i want my evt or i don't have that title right, but a video that goes with it, extremely upsetting. and obviously, we don't want people to be dependent on government handouts, that's the way rome fell, and bread and we depending on initiative, a strong are country. >> the danger we've seen with this fight over food stamps and also unemployment benefits is when the government steps in in the time of crisis and made and ramps up, say, 70% increase in food stamps since 2007, as an example. unemployment benefits almost two years, when they try and start taking it away and

people act like that you are doing great harm to the entire nation. that is the danger, because it only gets bigger and never gets smaller. >> the other danger, if you keep attacking small businesses, you forget the fact that they are paying for the infrastructure that he's saying that they should be happy that government provided. who pays the-- >> wait a minute, they have the same infrastructure for everybody, right? steve jobs did something with that that others didn't. bill gates, two democrats i mentioned there. so, i guess i'm saying we all had the same thing. >> of course. >> some of us leapt on that and some didn't. >> and the people that paid for it were those small business owners and employ people. well, it is what it is, and it's weird. and although, we'll take a break here and chalk another one up for the new york senator telling money managers to get to work. and does chuck know that congress is running out of time to fix the country? ♪

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>> and a be fox news alert for you. i'm jamie colby in new york. there are new details coming in from aurora, colorado where bomb squads and fbi agents have swarmed the apartment of the man suspected in the movie theater massacre. take a live look at james holmes' colorado apartment. police say he rigged his home with trip wires and other possible explosives, and they've also just told us in a press briefing that they may need to detonate some of those wires within the next hour. that could cause an explosion and a fire. 12 victims were killed in the shooting. 58 others were hurt and mike tobin standing by in aurora with the latest. mike? >> reporter: hi, jamie, we look at the live pictures of james homes' apartment the process that will take place, federal, involve the removal of at least one trip wire. as that happens, there may be as you mentioned, a controlled detonation that could produce

an audible boom that people will see or hear outside of the apartment. could also start a fire. the public will be warned before that happened. and without guaranteeing a time frame, but we just heard from police saying this could happen, sooner than we expected. >> there's no time line, as i can't give you an end time, we're hope-- hoping to get in there within the next hour, that's about the only time that-- 'cause we have no idea how long any of this is going to take, i can't put an end time on it because of course, emphasize again, the importance of public safety. >> reporter: now, the police put cameras inside the apartment yesterday. so what the police chief described as a vexing problem and that was the series of bombs, something he described as a mortar round, incendiary devices attached to these trip wires. so, police are going to procedure very carefully, jamie. >> mike, thank you very much. we'll check back with you, keep this here on the fox news channel with the latest, i'll send you back to cavuto on

business, have a good day, we'll be keeping you posted. >> we certainly agree that unemployment has been too high and is sticky and despite false, two false starts, we're having a much rougher time than we ever imagined getting unemployment down. >> yes, that's true. >> so get to work, mr. chairman. >> neil: that would be like me coming into the gym and saying, hey, speed it up. are you kidding me? chuck schumer telling ben bernanke to get to work. ben stein. >> i don't know with a chuck schumer is expecting ben bernanke to do? ben bernanke has his pedal to the metal and there's monetary creation and stimulus and i wish chuck schumer would tell the fellow democrats who tell the senate not to let us go off the fiscal cliff.

tax-geddon. the ball is in their quart. i don't know there's a lot that bernanke can do. there's a lot that schumer and friends can do. >> congress has 21 days of work before the november election, by the way, give me that gig. 21 days and this guy is looking at bernanke and saying, speed it up. you've got to be kidding me. >> i think, neil, in their little world, as you can see from bernanke's smile, reaction, that was a little pat on the back and saying, i wish we were all doing better here. forget-- >> and come on, adam, i love you dearly. you know the smile on ben bernanke's face, i can't believe what an ass you are. (laughter) >> that's what the smile was. >> exactly right. exactly right. >> you know, it was like, here is the mirror, mirror meet senator schumer, senator schumer, meet the hypocrite staring back at you, this is insane. >> neil: 21 days. >> 21 days. and by the way, you know what he's really saying to ben

bernanke, hurry up and get on the stick and get president obama reelected because they're going to blame the senate for this. >> he wants qe-10. >> this was demagoguery and patently false and ignored everything the fed has done since the financial crisis and bernanke has done and completely false and ignored the reason that ben bernanke had to print money twice and maybe three times because fiscal policy which is controlled by the white house and the congress utterly failed. >> neil: but the reality is, that nothing is going to be done in the 21 days, what can we look forward to or not? >> i think what we can look forward to is an extremely difficult patch with the economy. i'm extremely worried about it. congress doesn't know what they're doing, mr. bernanke's tools are extremely limited. mr. obama doesn't really care a lot about it and i'm extremely worried. >> neil: he sums it up brilliantly, dagen. >> he is brilliant,'s an absolute genius. >> and to say that mr. obama doesn't care-- >> now what?

be careful what you wish for, because this congress is working a lot more 'cause you know what they're going to be doing? they will be spending money and still not addressing the fiscal cliff that is approaching. because-- go ahead. >> i would say that it sounds like they're trying to jaw boning, qe3 before the election, that would be an amazing development. >> neil: another round of easing. >> and how much more ease can they have? >> that's what i'm wondering, adam. if ben bernanke has done all he can do, whether you agree or disagree with what he's been doing, at least's been doing something. i don't know what more he can do. take him out of the equation and talk about the senate and the house for that matter, what they're not doing. i do see an end of the year not so fun event. >> i don't disagree, we have a lot of pros and cons to our representative system of democracy, this is one of the cons, neil. nothing is going to get done until after we figure out who

the next president is. >> and by the way, the my conspiracy theory, the lower the rates go, and the more federal reserve does to push those down, the bigger the congress-- >> and pushed down by the average investor. >> neil: you're right about that, but this, this whole chuck schumer development has cause immediate to go it a health club near you and come on. >> as congress keeps fiddling, voters are just doing. a new fox poll 70% of americans think that raising taxes right now is a bad idea and the forbes gang is wondering if washington is even listening, that's at the top of the hour. up next, talk about a summer bummer. according to the former white house's top money guy, if we don't make summer vacation shorter and school year longer, our kids will get dumber and fatter. oh, man, what did i hang my hat on?

>> coming up, forget about back to school. how about never leaving school? a former white house official says the summer vacation is making our kids fatter and dumber.

>> oh, for pete's sake, the president's former top guy, peter orszaga thinks summer is a drag for the kids, they're getting fatter and dumber and he says they should be in school leaner and smarter. considering we pay more than 12 grand on each public school student each year, does this numbers guy have any idea about the numbers behind a longer school year? what do you think, ben? >> i don't know what he's smoking. he's a smart guy, remind me of people i went to law school with use today put glue in a big bag and put it over their

head and inhale. because people get fat because people-- people get fat because they eat too much. people get dumb because they don't read and they don't think and don't discipline their mind, it's nothing to do with what month it is or whether they're in summer school or not and the whole thing makes no connection at all. >> neil: dagen? >> do you see the kind of food that kids eat during the summer? come on, man. now what? let's have a 12 month school year and who in the world gets three months of vacation, it's not going to cost more money, it makes the teachers work a few more weeks every year. >> and what do you want to do? >> now what? i use today get doggone stupid during the summer and look where i am. >> neil: i didn't have to wait until the summer. charlie? >> one of the problems, the kids aren't working and that's why-- there's no jobs, what do they do, sit around, drink beer and smoke pot and eat. >> we're talking about third graders. (laughter) >> that was a different kind

of-- adam, here is what i worry about. i know we're falling fast in this country in terms of education, we're turning out fewer ben steins and that sort of thing and the 20th, and the south koreaens are going to school all summer and second grade and i understand that. but is the issue more school or better teachers or just better discipline? i mean, is more time in school going to produce future einsteins? that's what i have trouble understanding. >> we're ignoring a very contentious class or economic issue here. if you you read pete orszag's piece carefully, what he's talking about are poorer kids. poorer kids are not doing enough to stimulate themselves in the-- >> he implies, we should all do-- some of the kids, i'd like to

see all year round you've know you've gone too far. >> when he says the kids on the lower socioeconomic scale are coming back literally more fat and-- >> air not answering my question, air worse than orszag, would they do better if they were in school longer, yes or no? >> yes. >> they'd be longer in the same crumby schools, going to be in the same crummy schools and-- >> and do you think extra time in the new york city school system is going to make people better? i mean, come on. >> in the girl scouts and exercising all the time-- >> no way. >> dagen. >> exercise we need better physical education in the schools and starting to make that disappear. >> neil: and it's a little move this segment is over. thanks to charlie and dagen and the best people i know until i see them leave. (laughter)

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>> a stock lesson to help you pay for the back to school bills. adam. what do you have? >> vanguard energy index fund, neil, education and long-term investment. energy is a long-term investment. not having a good year, but shouldn't bother long-term investors. ben, what do you make that have pick? >> i love the energy sector, especially the fossil energy sector very, very much. >> what are you doing these days, ben. spdr's, long-term, i don't think i could pick stocks like charles payne maybe can, i can't. and i love, love, love theindex there. >> are you confident it will