the stock market bull is riding into correction territory -- stop it -- after a seesaw week that definitely had investors on high alert. we're urging you to relax. the way the market should work is up and down, with volatility. that's a normal market. meanwhile, the republicans are in disarray, briefly shutting down the government for the second time in three weeks over debt and turning their back on their core principle to not run debt up. the costs will be huge. i'm ali velshi.

>> i'm stephanie ruhle. it's another week facing down another government shutdown. but something pretty extraordinary seems to be coming out of this one. and this is not only do we see a bipartisan effort -- that is a good thing -- trying to keep the government open. it turns out republicans really like to spend money. i mean, really like it. and that's where we start. congress has managed to hammer out a deal that sets federal spending levels not for one year but for two years. now, this comes after months of acrimony. and now six temporary budget extensions plus two embarrassing government shutdowns including one on friday that lasted only a few hours. the latest shutdown was ultimately lifted by a house vote that took place before the sun rose on friday morning. this entire shutdown happened while most people were sleeping. after all that back and forth, the secret sauce for getting both sides on board is even more spending. nearly $400 billion split between priorities for both parties. defense spending for republicans, and for democrats funds for things like the

children's health insurance program. >> thank you. >> and combatting opioid abuse. >> which is without a doubt a crisis. but here is what's interesting. republicans traditionally don't like debts. they don't like deficits. you might not like the way rand paul went about standing up and saying this doesn't make sense. but it's what republicans stand for, have stood for, even president trump, here's what he said last year. >> no more wasted money. we're going to be spending the money in a very, very careful manner. our moral duty to the taxpayer requires us to make our government leaner and more accountable. we must do a lot more with less. >> but we're not! we're not doing more with less. we're doing more with more. >> they are making efforts to make the government leaner, we know there are skeletal staffs, whether in the state department or the treasury department. but the treasury is expecting to

borrow one trillion bucks this fiscal year, almost double what we borrowed last year. don't forget, we are already adding 1 to $2 trillion to debt for the gop tax plan. >> nbc has been reporting that donald trump has been told that there is no money for the massive infrastructure deal that is supposed to be announced on monday. >> this is gary cohn's plan. he's saying, oh, mr. president, we've got this infrastructure plan, we're going to put a little money here, but really it's going to go all to states and private investors because we got no money left. states can't run deficits. >> look, the way you got democrats on board for this budget and the spending bill -- >> they'll spend. >> right, they wanted to spend on stuff, and that is not something that democrats generally complain about, including the c.h.i.p. and community health programs and things like that. but for republicans, there's a little bit of hypocrisy here because the party has held the debt ceiling hostage back in 2011, they've been for massive spending cuts. they're the ones responsible for putting the sequestration in

place which ended up being blown out because of this spending bill. >> remember, president trump and his policies, they claim to be all about growth. but the mandatory spending cuts under obama, many economists have said that is what slowed the economy. my issue is this. what does your party stand for? right? at the end of the day there are a lot of people who walk in to vote, they say, i'm a republican, i don't spend, i don't spend. >> lower debt. so i used to think that. i used to think that fiscal conservatives like the tea party were interested in cutting spending. i'm beginning to wonder whether it's about cutting spending that you don't like and spending more money on things you like. because our government today is not leaner than it was yesterday. it's actually a lot fatter. >> don't forget, jacking up military spending, that's absolutely what president trump wants to do. >> right. well, we are going to keep an eye on how that all goes. but it is a little interesting. >> it is interesting. meanwhile, as the volatility simmers down in washington, it is certainly heating up in the

stock market. a week of ups and downs finally pushed the nine-year bull run into correction territory for the first time in two years. a correction is defined as a 10% drop from the market's one-year high point. while monday and thursday's drops in the dow jones industrials were the biggest one-day drop, they each amounted to 4% dips. the truth is a correction could be a healthy thing. the market is simply going in one direction, buyers only, buyers only, that is not healthy. that is why so many investors were caught the wrong way. they started to assume, i guess there's not going to be any volatility. there should be volatility. >> people are getting panicky and they shouldn't. i want to show you an example of this market, it's been a bull market since march 9th of 2009. look at the number of times this market has dropped 10%. if you were to take the bottom

left and draw it to the you were right, that's money that's gone up. don't worry too much about corrections. when there are other underlying issues including economic problems or like last time, the debt crisis or housing crisis. but that's not what's under the selloff. >> a correction is often a healthy breather. but remember why this even started, because of the strengthening economy. and keep in mind, easy monetary policy. when the -- >> that's low interest rates. >> you saw central bankers around the world lower interest rates to extraordinarily low levels with the goal to spur investment, to spur borrowing. guess what? that worked. it worked so well that -- >> we don't need it anymore. >> -- the economy is doing really well. when the economy is doing really well, that's probably time to raise interest rates. we're complaining we might reach 3.5, 4%. >> 4.25 for a 30-year fixed,

that's abnormally low. i always say, know how to log into your 401(k), but i wouldn't touch it. you can't time the market. numerous studies show this. if you missed the three biggest days of the year, remember, big days often come after big drops. if you missed the three biggest days in a year, you missed most of the gains. the problem is selling out after things like this, you book your losses, because right now they're just paper losses, and you don't know when to get in. you wait until there are big gains, then you get in and you miss the good stuff. >> if you were watching the show, you are not a market timer. we are not market timers. almost no one can pick the bottoms or the highs. logging on to your 401(k) six times a day is not healthy for your investments. it's not healthy for you. >> the best investors in the world, including warren buffett, will say they're not market timers. >> look at at it over months, years, not a day here and there.

if you're only investing because you want to get on the train and a fear of missing out, that's not why you should be. one issue that still splits democrats and republicans and nearly derailed a spending deal is immigration. in the balance are the daca waivers for undocumented immigrants who came to the united states as children, and they start expiring as soon as next month. march 5th. donald trump has offered a path to citizenship for these dreamers. one of his demands would get rid of a central tenet of our immigration system that is meant to keep families together. >> under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. >> that was said in president trump's state of the union address. for fact's sake, what's he talking about? president trump is calling for a complete overhaul of america's immigration system. he wants to gut family reunification, which he calls

chain migration. that's the policy in which individual sponsored family members who immigrate to the united states. white house officials would have us believe that legal immigrants are sponsoring second, third, and fourth cousins twice removed to come into the u.s., taken jobs away from native born americans. that just isn't the case. there are real limits on who legal immigrants can sponsor for immigration. green card holders can only sponsor their spouses and unmarried children to join them in this country. u.s. citizens have a little more latitude. along with their spouses and children, they can also sponsor their parents, siblings, and even grown-up married children. but their cousins and grandparents are still out of luck. the u.s. also caps the number of family-based immigrants each year at 500,000. while that might sound like a lot, it gets broken up into tiers. for all u.s. citizen sponsors, the number of siblings admitted

each year is capped at 65,000. for married children, it's just 23,400 a year. on top of that, there are caps imposed on countries of origin. there are waiting periods of up to 15 years to process an application for family members from india. 19 years for those coming from mexico. 23 years for families from the philippines. in fact the process takes so long that the number of family members still waiting their turn has jumped to a whopping 4 million applicants. at that rate it would take an awfully long time to build that chain the president keeps referring to. no matter how you slice it, we are not allowing in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. fixing our immigration system is hard enough. but lying about the facts on the ground won't get us any closer to a solution. >> woo. you're on fire there. >> it's such an important discussion. there are real facts around it. we can have them. the long line-ups for indians, mexicans, filipinos, and people from other countries are because

we cap the number of people we'll take from any one country at 7% of the total. so those are countries that have a lot of people who want to come here. that's why they end up in a waiting list. again, it's hard to imagine building a chain of people. it is really hard to immigrate to the united states. >> it is not hard to imagine what our workforce needs. there is a pew study that says by 2035, adults born to native parents, americans, americans, americans, are going to be dropping out of the workforce. 8 million people. that is 6%. they're aging out, they will no longer be able to work. >> right. every modern economy, we just don't have a lot of kids, so we're not replacing ourselves at that rate. there is a reason we take immigrants. this white house has talked about reducing the number of legal immigrants. >> i feel like i have so many kids. i do. coming up, remember equifax? i certainly do. the company that messed with more than 140 million american lives.

>> almost every adult in america. >> i'm sure the trump administration is doing everything they can to get to the bottom of what happened. >> no. meanwhile, what makes someone want to disrupt an industry that no one knew needed fixing? a different kind of valentine story for you, next. in the modern world, it pays to switch things up. and when you switch to esurance, you can save time, worry, hassle, and yup, money. in fact, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved hundreds.

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welcome back. happy saturday. to "velshi & ruhle." >> the last saturday before valentine's day, fyi. >> that means flowers. millions of them will be ordered and delivered on that special day this week with a simple click of the mouse. it's so easy and pain free, what could go wrong? a lot, apparently. >> it's not all rosy. >> just ask my husband. >> just like we see in disrupters in different industries, this is a disruption in an industry that no one knew

needed it -- flower delivery. >> reporter: it's everyone's dream to disrupt an industry. disruption is the buzzword. it's taking the old guard by surprise. but few thought the $30 billion flower industry even needed change. ajay cory is the co-founder and ceo of urban stems, an online flower delivery startup. >> i sent a bouquet to surprise my girlfriend at the time who lived in philadelphia. and it didn't come. and i held off on calling because i wanted the bouquet to surprise her. the company i ordered from kept telling me it's coming, it's coming, but the bouquet never arrived. i ended up with a really angry girlfriend. >> reporter: too often, he said, the flowers that made it were wilted or of bad company. he saw hundreds of customers on social media making similar complaints. here's why it happens.

most flowers go down a long supply chain, from farm to wholesaler to local florist. a service that you order from online pays the local florist. unlike walk-ins, local customers don't come back for more business. urban stems does it differently. it says it sources flowers directly from farms overseas and fulfills its orders from distribution centers in cities across the country. the company says it can get flowers out to customers within one day. >> when we came in, the industry essentially told us, no, with what's here, this can't be done. we essentially by necessity had to reinvent the entire supply chain. what that looks like is taking out completely all the middle men. >> reporter: that kind of out of the box thinking is propelling startups in other industries too. >> people for a long time thought there was one way to do something. and all it takes is a new player

to come in with a fresh idea. and people start to say, oh, i didn't even know that that was possible. and then you have a new brand of loyalty. >> reporter: multibillion dollar industries have been rattled by disruption across the board. for example, bed company casper has upended the $15 billion mattress industry. warby parker became the must have brand of the $130 billion eye war industry. and others like venmo, airbnb, and uber have transformed the way people make payments, find lodging, and hail a cab. >> they don't try to play the game of the incumbent. they play a different game. when you do that, you open up a whole new world for yourself. >> reporter: it's a world that's speeding toward disruption at every corner. >> so i just love this concept of entrepreneurial dynamism, i like this idea that this guy sends flowers to his girlfriend, they don't get there, and his concept is i'm going to invent a better mousetrap. because when stuff like that

happens to me, i just complain. >> that's sort of the beautiful part of the age of innovation that we're in, it's a very millenial mindset, whereas we're going, man, carnations again, and they're wilted, this guy got over the barriers to entry and got in. >> blockbuster wasn't doing a great job, nobody else was streaming, back then it was just sending devds to people. netflix figured out, we can do that. >> the opposite is uber, we all knew there were transportation issues, but uber came in, in an outlaw style, going up against the travel limousine commissions, in cities where they were not welcome, and they said, we're busting in, we're breaking through. while they've had their issues, it's clearly an extraordinarily important company. >> but they've had to sue everybody, people have sued them, city councils have banned them, there are still cities in the world where you can't get

ubers. but this is really a neat concept. >> it's also been a great year for all of this. 2017, a record year for venture capital funding. lyft, airbnb, have become some of the most influential companies out there and it all started with people going, the model doesn't work. >> there's a better way to do this. that is the beauty of america, that people can do that and there is money generally available for them to make it work. >> you know what's not beautiful? not a record number of these dollars going to women. work it out, 2018, come on, now. president trump loves to take credit for the soaring stock market under his watch. what did he have to say when the market tumbles? >> take a guess. and equifax is the biggest hack in u.s. history, compromising the financial information of 143 million americans. so trump administration all over it, right? >> we'll see. where i'd be right now... aah! ...i would have said you were crazy.

but so began the year of me. i discovered the true meaning of paperless discounts... and the indescribable rush of saving drivers an average of $620. why does fear feel so good? i fell in love three times -- once with a woman, once with a country, and finally... with myself. -so, do you have anything to declare or not? -isn't that what i'm doing?

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welcome back to "velshi & ruhle." president trump's acting head of the consumer financial protection bureau, mick mulvaney, is said to be stepping back from a full scale investigation of equifax. >> why? >> that came after last year's massive breach of the data collection firm's servers, affecting pretty much every adult american. the cfpb authorized an immediate investigation. >> of course. >> which is what it should be doing, consumer financial protection bureau. protection. financial. >> of course. 143 million. >> but a reuters report says mulvaney has neither issued subpoenas of equifax. he and the president have been critics of the cfpb's supposed overreach. >> i'll accept that, people didn't like how the cfpb was organized, how it operates. fine. if the cfpb isn't doing it, who

is? >> they didn't tell us somebody else is handling this investigation. >> bingo. >> senators and congressman issued a letter asking about the status of the investigation. the question i've got is, what is good about this? the government is silent, they didn't make an announcement about it. who does it serve to not investigate equifax? who is that good for? >> we do know they are still under investigation by individual states. and you've got attorney generals in different states with more than 240 class action lawsuits. so fear not, this ain't going away. >> write to your attorney general. >> we've got to talk stock market. the parking lresident, mnuchin, have been very happy to take credit for the stock market rally since his inauguration. on some level it did spark more people to invest, but as the market slid into correction territory this week -- >> that's a 10% drop from the last high in the last year. >> -- he was pretty much silent.

except for this one inexplicable, in my opinion, tweet. he said, "in the old days when good news was reported, the stock market would go up. today, when good news is reported, the stock market goes down. big mistake, and we have so much great news about the economy." >> what's he talking about? >> he's clearly trying to say that the mainstream media is celebrating the market going down since he touted it going up. first of all, that is absolutely not true. the criticism has never been about the economy. the criticism is why would our administration tie themself to the -- themselves to the market? >> they go up and they go down. >> steve mnuchin, treasury secretary, comes out and says algorithmic trading is partly to blame. he's right, algorithmic trading did impact it. >> high frequency trading, things like that. >> but why is our treasury

secretary muddling around in that? >> just get out of the business. >> rise up. >> that does it for "velshi & ruhle." see ya. have a good weekend. successful people have one thing in common. they read more. how do they find the time? ... with audible. audible has the world's largest selection of audiobooks. for just $14.95 a month... you get a credit good for any audiobook ... and you can roll your credits to the next month if you don't use them. audible members get free no hassle exchanges ... and use the mobile app to listen anytime, anywhere. start a 30-day trial and your first audiobook is free. listening, is the new reading. text audio22 to five hundred five hundred to start listening today.

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the one and only cadillac escalade. come in now for this exceptional offer on the cadillac escalade. get this low-mileage lease on this 2018 cadillac escalade from around $879 per month. visit your local cadillac dealer. good day, everybody. i'm alex witt in new york at msnbc headquarters in new york. on the defense. with two white house staffers leaving in the wake of domestic abuse allegations, the president tweets a defense. >> he says he's innocent. i think you have to remember that. we absolutely wish him well. >> and amid all of this today, more questions about john kelly's fate. also today, the memo holdup. how legislate is the president's decision to block the release of that democratic memo? if it is not released now, then when?