For too long now the state has placed the burden of school funding onto the backs of local property and homeowners like you. The ratio of state-to-local school funding is 62 percent to 38 percent--the lowest state contribution to public education since World War II. Recently, repeated attempts to address this problem in the Legislature have resulted in misguided tax proposals and empty reforms over multiple special sessions.

When the Legislature voted to de-regulate state college and university tuition, it relinquished its role in managing tuition rates and has effectively passed a massive tax increase on middle-class families. The dream of a college education has now become unaffordable for many. The Texas Tomorrow Fund, has been closed to new enrollees because tuition rates have shot up so dramatically. As your state representative I will fight for the state to resume the responsibility for setting tuition rates and for appropriately funding higher education in a productive partnership with our universities.

The Legislature cut hundreds of thousands of eligible low-income children from the Children's Health Insurance program (CHIP). The impact of this denial of adequate healthcare for Texas children is far-reaching. Not only has the health of children been negatively impacted, but hundreds of millions of dollars in federal matching funds have been lost. Taxpayers are seeing increased healthcare costs because these people now have to rely on more expensive emergency room care.

Medicaid is and will continue to be one of the most intimidating challenges facing Texas. Healthcare costs are rising at an alarming rate, and fewer Texans have or can afford health insurance--including more than one million children.

The Medicaid program, the costs of which are shared between the state and federal governments, consumes more than 20 percent of the state’s budget. I will support creating a solution that will involve a public/private partnership between the state and businesses both large and small to pool their resources and assets for increased health care coverage.

Today’s politicians care more about using undocumented immigrants as election season political pawns, than solving the illegal immigration issue at hand. As a border state with the largest boundary to Mexico, we must take a proactive step to provide a reasonable and respectable approach to combat immigration.

Our immigration system contains no legal provision for lower-skilled foreign-born workers to enter the country legally to fill the jobs that an insufficient number of Americans want. Visa categories such as the H1-B program exist for highly skilled foreign-born workers such as computer scientists, physics professors, and even think tank policy analysts. Other categories exist for close relatives of immigrants already in the country legally. But a peaceful, hardworking 24-year-old in Mexico or Central America who knows of a job in the United States for which no Americans are available simply has no legal means of entering the United States. The result of this missing channel in our immigration system, unfortunately, is wide-scale illegal immigration.

The most rational, cost-effective way to reduce illegal immigration is comprehensive immigration reform, including a sufficiently accommodating temporary worker program. Enforcing a fundamentally flawed system is a recipe for frustration and wasted tax dollars. The law must be changed to reflect the fundamental realities of our labor market and economy.

The key to successful reform will be the temporary worker program. Any real hope of reducing illegal immigration will depend on allowing a sufficient number of foreign-born workers to enter the United States legally to fill the growing gap at the lower rungs of the labor ladder. Without a workable temporary visa program, workers will continue to enter the United States illegally, with all the consequences that flow from an illegal workforce.

Finally, any comprehensive immigration reform worth its name must offer a path to legal status for the millions of workers already here without authorization. It would be an economic and humanitarian disaster, as well as an administrative nightmare, to round up the 12 million people already here illegally and somehow deport them to their home countries. Undocumented workers would be expected to pay fines and back taxes. They would undergo security checks and could even be required to leave the country briefly before being allowed to enter legally. They would not be granted the automatic permanent legal status, but only temporary status to remain and work in the United States for a specified period of time.

Any realistic immigration reform must recognize that many undocumented workers have become valuable members of their workplaces and communities. Most have been in the country for five years or more, and 40 percent have been here for more than a decade. Their contributions to the U.S. economy should be recognized and weighed against their violation of U.S. immigration laws.

We must do more to focus on renewable energy sources like wind, sunshine, and water. With skyrocketing prices for gasoline, natural gas and electricity, we must expand our energy options - not to mention lessening our dependence on foreign oil.

We also need to focus even more on protecting our precious natural resources. The nation looks to Texas for its expertise and experience within the energy industry. Texas needs to look to the future and make a definitive decision to take control and lead this nation's renewable energy efforts.