January's budget surplus anything to cheer about?

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January's budget surplus anything to cheer about?

Government touting $55 billion surplus as national debt, annual deficits soar

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Trump: Secretary Kerry Should Be Ashamed of Himself for Making Nuke Deal With Iran

Gerri Willis: Listen, let me tell you. We have to do something that's for sure. This is a case where I don't think Donald Trump is wrong at all. We need to re-impose those sanctions. Why? Not just because of the embarrassing picture, that's one reason, right? But we paid $1.7 billion to get four hostages back. This is out of control. This is a country that wants to be a state sponsor of terrorism for the planet. These are bad guys. We should impose our will, would be my view.

Charlie Gasparino: I don't know how much we get out of this. Listen, I have always been open minded about, sort of having some dealings with Iran. Why is that? They have a very secular population aside from the mullahs and the loony tunes that run the show. The problem is that the Obama administration has cut its deals and does its deals with the devils over there, and they are the devils. These are bad guys, these are sponsors of terrorism. These are people that hate America and we and our openness, our detente with them as opposed to the detente with the Russians. Which didn't open up Russia to a certain extent, it is different. There is no openness here. They take our money and they give us nothing in return.

Ben Stein: This is probably an example of the worst foreign policy behavior in the history of the United States. It's almost unbelievable that Obama bowed down and worshipped the mullahs of Iran. They hate us. They want to kill us. They begin every day session of their parliament by saying death to America, death to Israel. To think that we are trusting them with building weapons of nuclear power is almost unbelievable. To think that Obama is doing this is unbelievable. I don't believe we should start a war over capturing the sailors, over mocking the sailors. I don't even think we should do sanctions over that but we should have never ever in a million years have done that nuclear deal. Now they've already violated some annexes of it by testing missiles. Let's call the whole show off.

Adam Lashinsky: Well, I'm glad we have a segment where I can say, I completely disagree with what every one of you has said up to now. First of all, Ben, he didn't bow down to the mullahs. That's an unkind and an unfair way of putting it. We did an important deal. Now we can question that deal, what we got from it was a stand down in nuclear arms. That's important and I just want to make one last comment here which is that Donald Trump linking these videos, which are, these videos are not important from a foreign policy prospective. Him making this linkage shows that he's behaving petulantly. That's fine for a campaign or even for a television show, but not when you are the president of the United States.

Gary Kaltbaum: Look, you know we've done deals with people in the past who hated us. But the issue, as you go backwards, there is nothing in this for us. You end up with tens of billions of dollars. John Kerry said that they're going to put some of that money towards terror. So I don't know what we're getting out of this, we're the end gamers and I have two words when all is said and done. That's North Korea. Look what came out of that. These are the same types of people. These are not nice people. They hated us before. They hated us now. They are going to hate us after. And nothing good is going to come out in the end.

Government giving free smartphones to immigrant families caught at the border

Gary Kaltbaum: Well, look, we should give them a Barcalounger, some Netflix and big screen TVs also. Look, it's just out of hand. They call it government funded. It's not government funded. It's taxpayer funded. Government only lives because of us.  It's just a never ending cycle. They will let anybody in, any time, any day, off of our backs and we cannot afford it at this point and time. When I hear they want to give them lawyers too, I never get speechless, but I think I can.

Ben Stein: Well, what's happening is that this country is becoming sort of a big family. Where we all are members of a family, sometimes quarrelsome but a family, into a tower of babel of immigrants pouring in here speaking all different languages and many of them are hard working fine wonderful people. But there is no such thing as a country that doesn't have control of its borders. We have to have control of that. Look mail them a billion cell phones to Mexico, that's fine with me. But having them come here and just overwhelm the country that is a terrifying prospect.  This country has to be a family and we don't want to be like a thanksgiving dinner where suddenly we bring in 100 homeless people. God bless them. Give them each a turkey, but I don't want them all sitting at my table.

Gerri Willis: And a phone and what about a free car? I mean, come on. Look, here's what I see going on. Isis actually becoming the extended hand of the smugglers, the coyotes, they're finishing the job for them.  You know, we're going to bring you in here, and then we're going to give you a little phone. You're not going to have to wear an ankle bracelet. You are here illegally, but it doesn't matter. We're going to give you some free advice. It's unbelievable to me what we are giving these people.

Charlie Gasparino: It wasn't like a right wing nut that said you can't have open borders and a welfare state. I mean that was Milton Friedman, a libertarian economist, a monetarist. I mean he's a smart guy, clearly not from the right wing. I will say this, governor Huckabee made an interesting point when he was running for president. He said we have to figure out whether these folks are coming here because they are escaping tyranny or maybe what's going on with Christians with Middle East, death and torture or they're coming here for free cable. I'm telling you, that is a big issue here. We don't have the resources, given the fact that this country has underemployment, given the fact that blue collar wages are going down. We don't have the resources to integrate gazillions of people and poor people.

Adam Lashinsky: We don't have an open border policy. We don't have a migrant problem the way the Europeans do. What we have.

Government touting $55 billion budget surplus in January as national debt, annual deficits soar

Gary Kaltbaum: There are not enough rubber rooms for people that think that one month of accounting gimmickry is a good thing. Look, the CBO, who usually is nice, came out and stated that we're headed to $27 trillion in debt which means we're going thirty and yearly deficits of a trillion. It is a never ending cycle and god forbid, we go into recession and revenues start to head south, it only gets worse. Anybody who thinks the debt and deficit situation is good news, can't help them with that.

Ben Stein: I'm not as worried about it as I am for example about my wife or my dog or my son or about myself. But I'm worried we are going to head for default and to add to it, my good friend Gary K just said it, if we go into recession, there's going to be a push for expanded deficit spending. That's going to make the deficit even further or farther. There's no possible way of getting out of this hole. We are in a very deep hole and I want to say this so Adam will love me. The Republicans dug this hole and the republicans are to blame for a very large part of this hole.

Gerri Willis: Look, you have to live within your means. President is still putting forward budgets, $4.1 Trillion and we're still spending money like we actually are making it. I mean it's ridiculous. We've got to get our arms around this debt, pay it and move on and do something else.

Charlie Gasparino: I think it's funny like the way they cherry pick this. It reminds me of hedge fund managers that will look at their performance over three months instead of the full year; I'm doing great over three months but for the last ten years I've lost all of this money. The other thing is I think there's something positive here, in this sense, there is something positive to be said that economic growth is picking up modestly. Not great at all.

Adam Lashinsky: Well, it might have worked. And tarp might not have worked. We never, we never will know. I'm kind of with Charlie here. I choose to say, hey, let's be optimistic about the fact we had a good month or whatever it is and I don't disagree about the future. We have severe problems we need to address but what's wrong with celebrating a little bit. You're a bunch of gloomy gusses.

Winning Stocks

Gary Kaltbaum: SPDR (GLD)

Adam Lashinsky: SPDR (XLP)

Ben Stein: SPDR (SPY)