but coca-cola. if mr. buffett likes it, i like it. >> you guys are fantastic. >> diet coke. >> the place to be for business, you know it, fox. let's work together and find common ground. >> we need to work together. >> let's work together. >> yeah, but look what happens when they do work together. the house passing a $956 billion farm bill. a billion for the cotton income protection plan. 51 million for bio energy. and get this, $3 million to promote christmas trees. i'm not making this up. is it time to go back to the bickering and stop the spending? welcome to "forbes on," i'm david asman. elizabeth mcdonald, rick unger

and john tammy. john, why would we want them to do anything with this if this is what we get? >> it's a reminder that bipartisan is the most overrated concept in politics. any time the two parties get together, we've always got to watch our wallets. in this case, it's a normally expensive bill and violates the most basic concept in economics which is comparative advantage. >> rick, cooperation usually means more spending. more spending means more pork and that's not good for the economy. >> well, let's tear that apart a little bit. nobody is going to disagree when we say pork. intellectually, it's a terrible, terrible thing to do and should not drive legislation. what fascinates me, however, well beyond our recent years it's always been pork and it's always been earmarks that are

used to get an agreement. the question you need to ask is y. why do these politicians require this before they vote the way they should and if they are going to do it anyhow, maybe we should bring earmarks back because at least we get things done when we have them. >> rick, i like you but i like my question even better. why do we need cooperation when this is what we get. >> by the way, why do we need a christmas tree tax. there are already nativity scenes to promote christmas trees. i'll tell you something, we already have the energy crisis throwing pork around, things like solyndra which is putting green lipstick on a pig and we have those bills with pork in them. the only way we can get

bipartisanship. >> steve, we were going in the right direction. we had the sequester which all of the politicians said were terrible. we had the partial government shutdown but government spending went down and, guess what, the economy did better in the second half of 2013, exactly what all of these so-called disasters were kicking in. that's when the economy did great. >> that's true, david. the government sucks resources from out of the economy. they take it from we the people. this farm bill is sty and the american people are getting a stench from it. i don't mind using pork to get a flat tax through or cuts in other spending through or reform in social security but they've got nothing from this. this is just pure pork. >> pork is good when it's something that you like. >> again, the fact is that the private sector does better, it seems, at least it did in 2013,

when the public sector spent less. >> that's right. right now, david, private investment excluding households is running 2% of gdp. the post war expense is 4%. government spending, a percentage of gdp is higher than post war and that's sucking money out of the private sector which creates the jobs and tax revenues to fund the government. >> we're always hearing from the liberals that we need government spending to help the economy. well, we don't. apparently government spending doesn't help the economy. >> not only that, it creates multiple effects. we have to pay brazil $147 million a year as a penalty because we violate some free trade thing because we subsidize our own cotton industry.

so we're not only paying for the subsidized rich cotton farmers but we're paying penalties for doing this. >> john, this is just the way it happens. there's no other way that they know how to do business down there, is there? >> no. and it's got to be remembered, government can only grow at the expense of the private sector and after that we buy tvs from japan, bananas from guatemala, shoes from italy. farm products are no different. if it disappears in the u.s. tomorrow, we will still buy in abundance. the only difference is we'll get it from foreign producers and we won't have to subsidize the farmers here. >> rick, i agree with you. i agree with you 100% on that but isn't that the perfect reason why we need to dramatically reduce government spending? because they will always spend it the wrong ways. >> here's the problem. and steve kind of really laid it right out there. he said if it's for a flat tax or something else that he thinks

is good for us, no problem making pork. i can make the same argument for legislation that i like that he mays did like. this becomes an intellectually dishonest argument. you either use it or don't use it. >> now, in terms of getting big things through, sometimes you have to grease the skin, so to speak. this is pure pork. there's nothing attached to it that did any good and the idea of a family farm, they got the least out of this, the small farmers. 33% of the benefits go to the top 4% of the farmers. it's the rich getting richer. it's everything that they have accused accused the republicans of. >> it's doing harm, isn't it, because it's affecting the way we do business. it's negatively affecting the private sector. >> yes, it is. and what would be great is if we had true bipartisanship where you had lbj cell grunt work to get true consensus that would

help the small businesses without these guys playing big shot with our money. >> with these low interest rates, you may not know it because it makes it chieap for the government to pay off its debt but we still have a debt and this is just adding to it. >> right. and it's going to be the middle class, david, that pays for it, not only in terms of taxes but higher prices for food. and don't forget, while overall inflation has been trending very low, food prices have not and other things that go up with like ethanol which comes from corn, like gasoline prices, those prices are high as well. so the middle class gets killed by this. >> median incomes are going down. >> rick, you mentioned many times the fact that government spending very often has a negative effect. government spending will help those people that don't need help from the government and hurt the people who are fine on their own. >> well, sure.

in the 1930s when we started thinking about this, a much larger percentage of people were working on farms and they were truly small farmers and poor and middle class farmers and now 1% of the population works on farms and it's a big, giant business. but it's not only that it hurts the economy, it hurts society. look, we've got an obesity problem leading to a diabetes problem and we subsidize sugar. it's just absolutely insane. it's insane that we subsidize ethanol. >> rich is a farm boy from minnesota. >> north dakota. >> even more so. >> thank you very much. coming up next -- >> i'll cut what it takes. clearing away the red tape. >> a popular promise during the president's state of the union address but is the government actually creating, not cutting more costly red tape? we report.

you decide.

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good morning, everyone. i'm jamie colby. the police are on the hunt at michigan state university. they are looking for a gunman that they say shot two students last night at an apartment complex less than a mile from the msu campus in east lansing. one victim remains in critical condition. the other has been released from the hospital. police are looking for a black man in his 20 ss. this was not a random shooting. in the meantime, we have something to celebrate. it's the annual fireworks at the victoria harbor in hong kong. these festivities will last 15 days. and i'm jamie colby. i'll see you back here at 1:00 p.m. right here on the fox

newschannel. for all your headlines, go to foxnews.com. cutting red tape, clearing away the red tape and we'll cut through red tape. eliminate more regulations. >> promising to make it easier and cheaper to do business. this has been a common theme during the president's state of the union address and so far the government issuing 1800 new or altered regulations. so steve, is this just another empty promise from the president? >> yeah, empty promise is a polite word for it in his first two years in office he cost the economy more than $100 million a year, six times as many as george w. bush. so he's crushing the economy with new regulations and has cost the economy 2 million a year. >> well, rick, talk is cheap but regulations are expensive. it's close to 2 trillion. we have a 1.8 trillion. however you cut it, it costs a

lot of money, all of these regs. >> we broaden out these definitions and people can be pretty badly mislead. if folks go over to regulation.gov and you look at what has happened so far this year, you discover these are not new regulations that were passed. they are notices of potential changes. they are sending them out for comment. >> rick, hold on a second. i'm sorry, i've got to interrupt because it's not quite true what you are saying. there are 141 regulations in the first three days of the administration. 119 of those were so-called rule making. that is completely new rules and regs. >> they were rule-making regulations but they weren't ones that were passed as of yet. they have gone out for notice and comment. it's not like in the first three days of the year we suddenly signed up on all of these regulations and that makes a big difference.

>> the fact is, these are not minor things. these are things that cost businesses money. some of them are huge like obamacare and some of them are incredibly petty. think of incandescent light bulbs being outlawed. they add up. >> to rick's own point, even if they are not yet passed, think about the small business owner. you're trying to figure out whether to hire more people, expand or start a new business, how are you supposed to know what the landscape it like or if you're going to earn a return. you don't even know what the rules and regulations are going to be. >> you spend your life focusing on startups and entrepreneurs. how do they face these regs? >> in addition to the $100 billion of new regulatory coasts in 2013, we have 160 million

hours of more paperwork. now, this means that companies, startups have to hire compliance officers, accountants and lawyers rather than engineers and salespeople. and this is having a tangible effect on the kpeconomy and why we're growing at a substandard growth weight. >> the pile-on, we don't need all of this stuff, do we? >> no. we're absolutely a regulation nation. big corporations are oftentimes the ones that can absorb the cost. it costs $100 million in compliance costs and it's one thing for walmart to absorb that but a smaller competitor cannot. it distorts the markets and creates less competition for consumers and drives up prices overall. >> the work rules really hit

hardest, isn't it? >> i think the government should stop harassing employers, for example, with the regulation that makes it illegal to look at criminal records when you're hiring or for another example, lawsuit against consolidated coal. they put in a hand scanner at the job site check-in and one employee said it's the mark of the beast and symbol of the anti-christ. >> now, i want to throw out a bone to rick here and go to steve with this because there was recently the contamination in west virginia where a refiner company which was doing a terrible job really polluted the waters. a very dangerous situation. so there are some moments where you really need regulations. the problem is, all of those regulations dilute the ones we really need. >> you need rules of the road, clean water, you can do that with a tenth of the regulations that we have today. the epa is waging war on

wood-burning stoves. take that, ben franklin. >> there is certainly a need to keep people safe, keep their drinking water safe, et cetera. aren't you concerned with the regulations that we have in this nation that we're diluting the ones that we really need? >> you've heard me say it before, david, i, too, agree that we have too many regulations because the person that you hire is not going to give up their job when they've done the main thing but we do mislead when we don't point out, look, if people will go and look, small businessmen at those 1100 regulations that have been proposed, you're going to be stunned to see how they don't apply to you in any way, shape, or form. >> more and more people -- actually, you're wrong because my wife does have a little business and we just had a bunch of regulations thrown at us. >> we complain that we're not

manufacturing enough yet we're passing more and more regulations to kill manufacturing. >> congress passes the law. no outs? how is that possible? >> they hit until they get on base. >> seriously? >> seriously. >> let me ask you something. how do you even know who is winning? >> we don't keep score. every game ends in a tie. >> oh, god. well, that is today's reality, like it or not. but now one school is stopping the coddling of kids on the playground and, guess what, they are excelling. is it time to do that right here in the good old usa? we asked people a question, how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon

to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i'm going have to rethink this thing. it's hard to imagin how much we'll need for a retirement that could last 3years or mor so maybe we need to approach things dferently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. ♪ there's nothing like being your own boss! and my customers are really liking your flat rate shipping. fedex one rate. really makes my life easier. maybe a promotion is in order. good news. i got a new title. and a raise? management couldn't make that happen. [ male announcer ] introducing fedex one rate. simple, flat rate shipping with the reliability of fedex.

no rules during recess. will it work here? will it work here? >> nbc universal's coverage of the 2012 london games was the most watched television event ever. so, what's next? the upcoming winter games from sochi. where every second of nbc universal's coverage will be available on every device. on tv, online or streaming on the nbc sports live extra app. beginning february 6th, experience the winter games everywhere.

welcome to what's next. comcast nbcuniversal a school in new zealand is giving up on coddling kids, cutting out the strict rules of games and finding out that there's actually less bullying when adults stop fretting and the kids are concentrating better in the classroom. sabrina, you say, bring it here? >> there is a project to vote about pushing back about this excessive worrying. kids that are not allowed to take risks turn out to be dependent adults. and kids are not getting any exercise. i think definitely bring it over

here. >> my grandma said, you have to eat a pound of dirt before you're 5. that prevents all of the problems later in life. what do you think? >> very wholesome. last year a 12-year-old was shoved too hard in a suburban pennsylvania school yard. he banged his head and went into a coma and died. do we really want recess to be unsupervised? do we really want to turn it into a set of "lord of the flies"? >> but we've experienced with bubble wrapping our kids and that hasn't worked out too well, has it? >> no, it hasn't. there is something called recess. you go out and play and can play seesaws, jungle gyms and it worked. i broke my arm once. big deal. it's part of growing up. >> i think in that movie "a christmas story" where the kid sticks his tongue to the pole, i

think i teased you about that last week. sometimes bad stuff happens in these situations but that's part of life. it's part of growing up. >> yeah. we used to throw buckets of water down gopher holes and then the gopher would come up and we'd chase him around the playground. we did it would you seesaws. >> is this a good idea or not, letting the kids run wild? >> i think i was bullying someone once in the second grade and i got pushed and broke my nose. the kids go through those stages, the bullying. no amount of supervision is going to change it but ultimately kids grow up and they will grow out of this. leave kids alone and they will have fun. >> you were bullied, weren't you? >> yes. listen, i grew up where the playground was a parking lot at our elementary school and up the street they played lawn darts at night while the parents were drinking vodka tonics.

the benefits of risk taking does develop the children so the playground and rule book and the government also have to stop with what is going on with the u.s. economy. coming up, from super bowl bowl boulevard in times square, what is coming up? >> we'll talk personally about president obama. and then we're going to talk to senator rand paul about the gender pay gap. cashin' in a couple of minutes. suffering from the flu is a really big deal. with aches, fever and chills- there's no such thing as a little flu. so why treat it like it's a little cold? there's something that works differently than over-the-counter remedies. prescription tamiflu attacks the flu virus at its source.

so call your doctor right away. tamiflu treats the flu in people 2 weeks and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. before taking tamiflu tell your doctor if you're pregnant, nursing, have serious health conditions, or take other medicines. if you develop an allergic reaction, a severe rash, or signs of unusual behavior, stop taking tamiflu and call your doctor immediately. children and adolescents in particular may be at an increased risk of seizures, confusion or abnormal behavior. the most common side effects are mild to moderate nausea and vomiting. so don't wait. attack the flu virus at its source. ask your doctor about tamiflu, prescription for flu.

and we are back. stocks under $10. >> chips that analyze genes at the molecular level. >> you've got a chip stock?

>> i think it's going to make money this year, atml. >> one word that you need to know about this, dramamine. >> have a great super bowl weekend. it's the super show ahead of the super bowl. we're in the heart of capitalism. super bowl boulevard in new york's times square where everything is a free market but the president suggesting we raise taxes on america ds o's o industry. one of our biggest job creators. plus, as the pros gear up, big labor looking to unionize football players. fair game or just another money grab? and check this out, the white house has fumbled big time. the president said this. >> it is time to do away with workplace