Funny thing happened back in 2008: the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. President George W. Bush signed the law after it received bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate, as a measure to combat human trafficking worldwide. The law lays out one procedure for child immigrants from contiguous countries, like Mexico and Canada. These children are processed for immediate return to their home country. In all other cases, the children are placed under the responsibility of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. These children are placed with family or in other residences while they await their immigration court date. Long story short, they get to stay in the United States. Yet the 2012 losing vice presidential candidate said we need to change that law and send those kids back faster than you can say policy wonk.
The big problem, according to Ryan, is the Senate. He asserted, "look no further than the United States Senate, we've passed over 300 bills in the house. Bills aimed at job creation, fixing problems that are just sitting in the senate going no where because the Senate has chosen to not legislate and give the president a free hand."
Then Gregory responds with his Americans are upset with both sides schtick. Then we move to the poverty issue where Ryan explains the problem is not solvable with the current federal anti-poverty programs being divided into separate divisions like food stamps, child care aid, public housing, low income energy assistance and cash welfare (to name a few). He wants to consolidate all these programs into a centralized but yet more personalized system that alleviates poverty. Naturally, his solution is the same as the solution posed by the antebellum south: states' rights. Let the states decide what constitutes poverty and let the states decide who gets what. But still, no actual real life solutions were presented.
Gregory did play a previous appearance by Ryan from 2013 where he showed his utter lack of compassion and almost disdain for poor people. Gregory called out Ryan's fellow Republican Governors of some of the poorest states in the nation who refused the Medicaid expansion, which was almost a challenge to his usual deference to his Republican guests. But never fear, in blaming both sides for the problems, he played a clip by the always entertaining and ultra-hypocritical Ted Cruz who is also a Teaparty Republican. Ted blamed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for obstruction. Thankfully Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post was able to silence his commentary with a simple mention of 1. Ted Cruz's ridiculous all-night filibuster and government shutdown and 2. The immigration bill sitting on the House floor, passed by the Senate which Boehner and company refuse to put up for a vote.
The beginning of the show featured an interview with Bibi Netanyahu who claimed, most likely erroneously, that the UN school the Israelis bombed mercilessly was also the site from which Hamas rockets were being fired. Gregory had no challenges to the Israeli warmonger. Thankfully, the show ended with a correction: the very real possibility that video shown during the Netanyahu interview was unverified (and likely totally fabricated) which nullified Netanyahu's claim they never aim to kill civilians. I know Tim Russert would never entertain such shenanigans on his show.
My thinking: either replace Gregory or shut the whole show down.
