but also eic helps us to, you know, intervene sometimes, to help us to talk to also the producers and the writers about how to positively portray particularly those shows. i know that we've worked with grey's anatomy and brothers & sisters and many others. but there are those shows, however, in cable, there are some shows that i've seen, you know, that really take the addiction to its extreme, almost portraying it and glamorizing it. right and, you know, one of the key things is, you know, we love the media. they're such a powerful tool in our ability to get out accurate messages and, at the same time, the media is there to entertain and there is a creative process that goes into creating storylines and when a storyline gets off or could potentially be doing more harm than good, one of the great things about the recovery community and the treatment community is they're willing to pick up the phone and say, let's sit down and talk about, you know, what the implications of this show are and how it might be impacting people in recovery and how they feel about themselves and how they inte

you, in fact, stayed completely true, let's just say, in terms ofhe eics of journalists, not become involved whatsoever. and that has to have been really difficult. to see children hungry, wanting a phone to call their mom, and you making the decision that, "i'm not even going to tell this kid that i've got a cell phone in my pocket and i could call his mom right now." >> well... and i think of all the things i went through, that was the most difficult, because every day, 20 or 30 people would come up to me-- migrants, including children-- and ask for my help. and as a journalist, i think it's important to explain to the public why we don't help unless someone is in imminent danger, and then you help them, but you then can't use anything after that for your story. but as a journalist, you're trying to report reality, and if you help someone and then report about it, you've changed reality. so that's dishonest-- it's thought to be a dishonest way to go about our profession. >> hinojosa: did that partly also influence the fact that you needed to do a little bit of therapy? the fact that you...

there's no reason why you can't have wage subsidies built into an eic -- eitc. right now we incporate the eic right into the payroll checks of most companies. i think it's called prepaid -- pre -- there's a way. we have it in the tax system where you can get. you don't have to wait for april 15th to get your earned income tax credit. you can get it in every paycheck you file. no reason why you can't do that in the vat system either. the other aspect of the help for people on the lower end of the income distribution, it's been inted out that right now 've got among the most complicated set of rules because we have different rules for food stamps, for health care, for what have you. so that isomething that you can reform separately. you can run it through the tax system. you can runt through a direct payment system which is what a lot of what we do now is when you think about, quote, welfare in the old day, vs, it had nothing to do with the tax system. it was a direct payment to people based on their income and the number of children they have. i don't see where t

there's no reason why you can't have wage subsidies built into an eic -- eitc. right now we incorporate the eic right into the payroll checks of most companies. i think it's called prepaid -- pre -- there's a way. we have it in the tax system where you can get. you don't have to wait for april 15th to get your earned income tax credit. you can get it in every paycheck you file. no reason why you can't do that in the vat system either. the other aspect of the help for people on the lower end of the income distribution, it's been pointed out that right now we've got among the most complicated set of rules because we have different rules for food stamps, for health care, for what have you. so that is something that you can reform separately. you can run it through the tax system. you can run it through a direct payment system which is what a lot of what we do now is when you think about, quote, welfare in the old day, vs, it had nothing to do with the tax system. it was a direct payment to people based on their income and the number of children they have. i don't s

there's no reason why you can't have wage subsidies built into an eic --n the tax system where you can get. you don't have to wait for april 15th to get your earned income tax credit. you can get it in every paycheck you file. no reason why you can't do that in the vat system either. the other aspect of the help for people on the lower end of the income distribution, it's been pointed out that right now we've got among the most complicated set of rules because we have different rules for food stamps, for health care, for what have you. so that is something that you can reform separately. you can run it through the tax system. you can run it through a direct payment system which is what a lot of what we do now is when you think about, quote, welfare in the old day, vs, it had nothing to do with the tax system. it was a direct payment to people based on their income and the number of children they have. i don't see where there's an obstacle toward providing progressivity by moving the a value added tax. >> senator sessions? >> i would yield my time to senator portman. i would note that w