>> he's making preserves. he's canning. our thanks to allison for being here also. >> you're welcome. >> white house correspondent dinner, will you be joining us tomorrow? >> yes. i'll be showing you pictures. beefing of security costs big bucks. so with terror fears still gripping us here, is it time to quit shipping billions to people who hate us over there? hi, everyone. i'm liz mcdonald in for brenda buttner and this is "bulls & bears." to gary b. smith, jonah, john, along with stefan, welcome, everybody. gary b, do you think it's time to cut off foreign aid to countries that hate us and use it to keep us safe here at home instead? >> absolutely, liz. you always got to look at kind of the cost-benefit. we spend $40 billion a year on foreign aid. but you look down the list of countries, i mean, my gosh, until recently, we were giving money to russia as long as -- as

soon as six months ago. we used to give money to north korea. but it doesn't stop there. it's countries like libya and chechnya and across the board, liz. you got to wonder where the money is spent. even when we do spend it on good stuff, in 2009 we had almost a half a billion dollars unaccounted for. it's another example where we just keep perpetuating something that seemed good maybe 40, 50 years ago. it's the wrong thing to do now. >> to that point, 130 million bucks of that aid went -- just basically vanished in somalia and is, there are no social security increases. there is minimal, maybe 1 or 2%. we criticize people about getting food stamps, budget cuts going on from the sequester. why not say let's take another look at foreign aid, especially to countries that hate us and really are attacking us. go ahead.

>> i understand the frustration and i mean, we've been just so upset in our household about this whole boston thing. it's tempting to say -- to sort of throw your hands up, decides the world hates you and pull back. i just think it's the wrong target right now. i think to have them shut down the efforts we make overseas, we don't know, by the way, how much more they would hate us if we weren't giving any foreign aid and how much influence we would lose if we cut that program off. to gary b's point, we give more foreign aid to the world than any other country. if you look at it with our gdp, it's lower than what some european countries give. i think it's the wrong answer. >> neil: i hear you. john. even putin of russia said it was a mistake to give financial support to chechnya, especially when that area of the country, we know the boston bombers came from that area of the country. nearly $82 million has been going into that country with no real economic reforms, no real

democratic reforms. i'm always thinking we do want to help women and childn, of course. we want to help. americans generous that way. but there is really no accountability in the $19 billion foreign aid program, right, john? >> yes. exactly. look, with all due respect, saying we're going to give hundreds of millions of dollars to people so maybe they don't hate us as much? that's absolutely insane to me. we did that in north korea and they just declared war on us. try calling 911 in inner city detroit right now. see how quick a response you get. they joke about the fact you get put on hold. same in many cities across the country. the reason new york city had a reduction in homicides is because of boots on the ground. we can use those assets. forget whether they hate us. are we going to take care of our own american first? after katrina, we realized the 9th ward in new orleans was worse than places in haiti. we've got to take care of our americans first. doesn't make no difference if these groups hate us.

>> i'll tell you something, to john's point, there is no real reform, there is no free press. there is all sorts of crazy ideas flying around in the muslim communities again, making themselves a victim when hey, we had people maimed here. we have people killed here from these terrorist bombings going on. is throwing more money at undemocratic countries really effective? >> aren't we bribing them? isn't that -- it's -- we're basically giving money to countries that don't like us so they like us more. i don't see how that wouldn't work. would give them more money make them like us more? i don't think that will work. you have to think of it as part of our defense system. we're talking about this money like we don't also spend money domestically. we radically increased money for homeland security compared to these amounts of money, yet that's where i'm seeing the weakness. what are we getting out of that compared to the foreign aid? they're both as wasteful, in my opinion. doesn't mean they both should be scrapped.

we should deal with the accountability issues. that doesn't mean cut all these budgets 'cause the concept is probably sound. >> i hear what you're saying, where is the accountability. that's really the issue. i'll tell you something, tobin, september 2012, there were anti-american demonstrations in 29 countries. we're like the united states of amnesia with always giving money thinking that's the way it's effective when we still have real serious problems, no free press in these countries. i'm always wondering if you think trade would be a better way to go, just have free trade instead of foreign aid. >> trade is. but i think this history lesson we're confused about is we go back to the marshall plan, the 40s in japan and germany and alt work we did to rebuild those economies. but we didn't put any strings on it. we didn't say you have to be this or that. they built their economies back and countries back. it was effective and believe it or not, people remember that. maybe the french didn't. but if we're going to put strings on this money, then that shows how naive we are.

you can't make somebody walk towards democracy. you can't make -- >> why not? hang on. >> they don't know how to do it! >> but wait a minute. hang on. gary b, we've been at this for decades with foreign aid. 19 billion bucks annually. it is a really corrupt boondoggle. why can't we do strings attached? go ahead, gary b. >> exactly. i want someone to walk through and say, we gave all the millions of billions, in fact, the country is like knee engineer i can't -- nigeria, somalia, across the board. what are we getting by giving money to kenya, for example? i mean, yeah, look, i'm all in favor if they have problems there and stuff like that, support children. but is there a cost-benefit ever done or just we feel we have this big deep pockets, which we don't anymore, and we can just fritter this money away? there is no getting back to the point -- there is no accountability. >> neil: stefan? >> you raised an interesting notion, liz, which is get these

countries to trade with you. getting them trading with you makes it valuable to them. but i think we are doing that. you look at what the imf does. a lot of the programs that they do with some of these countries are really designed to coax them towards free markets, to let them trade with us more. so i'm not so sure we're not doing a lot of what you're already talking about. i think we're already doing it. >> i hear what you say. john wakefield, come in on this. i want your thoughts on this. again and again i have to say, how is throwing more money at the issue effective? we've got these people who really are attacking us and we're not seeing the reforms that we expected in those countries. maybe say hey, wait a second. you got to fix your own problems and quit blaming the united states. that's your own government's problem. go ahead, john. >> yeah. and what gary b said is -- we don't have deep pockets anymore. we have $16 trillion in debt. this isn't like okay, we're going to let kids starve in

africa because the dictator hates us. we've got kids starving here in our country. we have a lot of problems in this country. it really is starting to to be an -- to be an either/or because we don't have the money to spend rebuilding schools and infrastructure in afghanistan when our own schools and infrastructure are deteriorating here at home. >> we're going to leave it there. thanks. coming up, dr. ben carson out with a new warning about the real price tag of obamacare and who is going to pay for it. he only tells neil cavuto. you'll hear that at the bottom of the hour. up here first, fliers breathing a sigh of relief this morning after congress grounds those faa furloughs that were causing those massive delays across the country. but did washington, d.c.'s move this week show things can be cut without all the pain everybody was freaking out about? that's up next

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>> live from america's news headquarters. investigators are combing through a landfill near boston today to try to piece together the last remaining details of the marathon bombing plot. f.b.i. agents spending hours at a dump near dartmouth on friday and that's where 19-year-old suspect dzhokhar tsarnaev attended classes. the agency will not say what investigators are looking for at this point. three people died in the bombings two weeks ago. more than 200 others were hurt. in new york, investigators trying to figure out if a piece of landing gear that was found in lower manhattan came from one of those planes that was destroyed on 9-11. the piece of twisted metal was found wedged in the narrow space between two buildings. you can see it right here. it was not far from ground zero. a police spokesman said it has cables and levers and is about three feet wide. it's also said to have a boeing i.d. number. now back to "bulls & bears".

nightmare delays at airports grounded after congress scrambles to keep flights controllers on the job. that's good news for travelers. john layfield says that's proof spending cuts can really be made without real pain. john, go ahead. >> this was less than 2% of the entire spend, what we spend as a nation. we're talking about the sequester. this was not very much. congress did this as a political move. they said, oh, yeah, that's strand some fliers and see how bad the sequester is. everybody was saying it was so bad. all of a sudden, these fliers get stranded and reach out, congress all of a sudden decides to work together. they can't put a budget together. they are the only developed country in the world without a national energy plan. we have no economic plan, no jobs plan. but let a few flyers protest congressmen, all of a sudden there is bipartisan support. >> what's really striking, a couple weeks ago, the word was from the white house that the department of transportation, no choice. you got to furlough. informs, the 180-degree head snap. what do you make of it?

>> i make is that in any sort of normal business -- let's not call government a normal business. we could always cut 10%. that was always sort of the management thing i used to do. guess what? when you cut 10%, you actually prioritize stuff. you can say we're going to put the money where we get the most effect. that's what government is bad at. this idea that this sequester was somehow going to take money and -- even though they have staff members who never saw an airplane, that was what was insane. we can cut 10%, we wouldn't miss a bit. >> jonas, even the department of transportation, inspector general, you'll love this, the new computer program, nearly # 5 billion overbudget. seven times the sequester cuts they were talking about. go run your own shop as a business before you start stranding travelers. right? >> well, okay. it's run so badly that if you just -- it wasn't even 10%. if you cut 10%, it's just going

to be 10% worse than it was. that doesn't -- that's not new management overhaul. >> that's insane, though. why would you not give more controllers and have less management? >> you're not addressing the problem. the problem is we have the worst air transit in the modern world with no airports in the top ten airports in the world. we have the worst delays. just cutting their budget means you're going to have 10% less service, it's going to be worse than it is. >> but jonas has said the faa is funded by taxpayers anyway, from fees and taxes. so what are they talk being? go ahead, gary b. >> you know, jonas says we have one of the worst air traffic control systems, i don't know if that's true, but it is pretty bad. but one of the problems with that is they're just terrible managers, getting back to toby's point. under that air traffic umbrella, they have 31,000 employees, half of which are air traffic

controllers. if you're any kind of smart manager, you'd say, let's furlough the guys that aren't air traffic controllers. the other thing they did was, they made these furloughs, it didn't matter if you were atlanta hearts field airport or allentown airport, you had the same impact. you think, huh, maybe we should prioritize the hubs. this is just being a smart manager and they're not doing that. >> gary b's point, we've heard from democrats and republicans, both sides, they're saying this really was a political food fight down there and one in washington, d.c., was about politics more than anything, making travelers feel the pain to say, listen, we shouldn't do sequester. we shouldn't have budget cuts. what do you think of that? >> i don't buy it. it sounds like a conspiracy theory. let's make the public miserable to show them how much the sequester hurts. >> but they did! >> the "washington post" looked at this and they decided that actually there was a pretty good

case that the faa didn't have much choice. what else bothers me is everybody is reflexively accepting government should run like a business. i don't think that's necessarily so. government is effectively a money losing operation, asking it to have a nice profit cushion and rainy day fund and all that is probably not really what government is very good at. >> i'll tell you -- >> they robbed 253 million out of essentially airport upkeep fund. that means we'll have shabbier airports. >> go ahead. hang on. >> you're going to see the fees have just started. now they're going to use this as a rationalization to say, well, when you cancel, you have to pay. now they're going to say, if you're 20 minutes late, you're going to have to pay. if you want to have orange juice as opposed to water, that's another eight bucks. the airlines are going to jump on this thing because they got hosed by this whole deal. >> jonas, flying the unfriendly

skies, is that a great strategy by the government to say we're going to make your life miserable? >> first of all, this is not an agency to cut because if they added a one dollar ticket to every flight in america, it would have paid for this whole cut anyway. we'd rather do that than have to wait an hour i can't. it doesn't have to run like apple computer. it's never going to happen. it needs to run as other government run airlines. in china, they're run by the government, as in other parts of the country. we don't even compete well with other governments. it's not even about making us run like ibm. >> run something well. there is a housing crisis, we had guys investigating steroids in baseball. come on! they're doing nothing right! forget business, forget government. they're not work together at all. >> we didn't get into what this did to the airline stocks. not in the upright position, i'm telling you. enough with the corny jokes. thanks, guys. next up, enjoy tax free on-line

shopping while you can. congress is pushing to end that. but will it put an end to any hopes of an economic recovery? that's next. don't go away [ woman ] we had two tiny reasons

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>> liz: the days of tax free internet shopping may be a thing of the past. a new bill for an on-line sales tax just passing a really big hurdle in the senate with overwhelming bipartisan support and it comes as we're finding out that consumers sentiment is falling and the economy is still struggling to take off.

so gary b, is this what consumers and our economy needs right now, another tax? >> just the opposite, liz. it's ironic, the last bastion of our economy, untouched by the government, is the internet. that's the place where we have all this innovation, where growth, consumers are happy, producers, all on the internet are happy. you know what i say? if you want to level the playing field, get rid of the sales tax for everyone. >> liz: what do you make of that stefan? >> i think it will hurt retail sales. look, if i go on-line and i buy a vacuum cleaner, i think it should cost the same as it would if i went to wal-mart. that's just about justice. >> liz: go ahead. >> if you're the retailer and remember, sales tax stays in the city. doesn't go to the county. stays in the city. the business model for these cities was sales tax. when you took a significant chunk, 8 to 10% out of many of these counties, it goes to amazon.com, that makes a big difference. i think it's going to help the economy.

i don't think it's going to hurt. >> liz: jonas, what's unfair is if you're a brick and mortgagor in new hampshire with no tax, you don't have to collect the sales tax. but the web guy does. it's unfair. go ahead. >> first of all, it doesn't go to amazon. they're collecting it for various states and whatever. by the way, this is just enforcing the fact that when you buy something on amazon, you're supposed to put that on your state tax return. >> liz: you're wrong. >> wrong. >> i'm telling you -- it actually will help jobs. taxes are bad, but this will help brick and mortar stores. >> liz: how does it help jobs? >> they have to charge awe sales tax -- >> liz: wait. what jobs are you talking about? tax collectors? >> in bermuda. he doesn't know anything about it. >> liz: go ahead, john. >> we have a consumption tax here, which is something -- what toby talked about was right. this kills local sales base. if you're in new york and you

order something, you don't have to pay tax on that. the deli across the street with the mom and pop, true small business, they can't compete with that. >> why not? >> liz: never mind the ebay guys. >> you can have somebody deliver it to you. >> they have advantages that retailers don't. they should maximize them instead of saying, oh, my gosh! we can't compete with amazon! maximize what you got, for crying out loud. >> liz: we got to leave it there, guys. thanks. we've got next up, cute dogs, straight a's and process the connection. that's next man: how did i get here? dumb luck? or good decisions? ones i've made. ones we've all made. about marriage. children. money.

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>> to be tobin's prediction. >> bullish on bank of america. up 40%.

>> liz: what do you got? >> i'm a bear. >> liz: what do you got? >> i've got spirit airlines. discount airline, these guys are so greedy, they charge you for your overhead space, up 35% in a year. >> liz: gary b? >> i am bearish on stefan. i'm still bullish on internet retailers. i like amazon. i think it's up 40% for the end of the engineer inform john? >> i'm a bear for now on amazon. but go for yield eep, 7% yield. they could be up 25% in a year. >> liz: jonas? >> i'm a bear on that one. >> liz: you are? >> yes, i am. >> liz: oh, that's interesting. what do you have? >> montana state university, finding out if you bring therapy dogs to final exam -- that's how i get through the stress of these years. i have my therapy dog. up 25% in a year. >> liz: i hope you enjoy paying your internet sales taxes. >> i'm a bull on ramon bear. >> liz: thank you for joining us. the "the cost of freedom."

we continue with neil cavuto right now did this group of two already derail this gang of eight? hi, everyone. >> ed to have you. i'm neil cavuto. immigration reform plan that looked ready to roll now just looking like it might get rolled. the senate judiciary committee will start marking up a bill in less than two weeks. lawmakers are already saying that because of boston, maybe we need to stop things, period. this coming as the house gets ready to roll out a series of immigration plans of its own. the first of which won't touch border security pretty much at all. so if dc can't get it together on keeping us safer, is anyone safe? to ben stein, glad to see you. as you can tell, he's glad to be