Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

By now, the Rick Perry, Radical Republican agenda is clear. During the 82nd Session of the Texas Legislature, TEA party Republicans mean to wage war on Hispanics.

In Perry’s party, which just took 22 seats away from Democrats to create a supermajority in the Texas House, the agenda is now crystal clear—cut taxes for the billionaires that funded Perry’s last election, cut budgets for key programs that invest in Hispanic education and health, cut regulations to corporations like the predatory lenders whose PACs pay for House wins and do anything possible to keep Hispanics away from the ballot box.

On the evening of Wednesday, June 23rd, Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was monitoring events on Capitol Hill from his office, which overlooks the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center. Volcker, who is eighty-two years old, works at a polished granite desk covered with correspondence, books, and financial reports. Apart from a slight loss of hearing, he is in robust health, and when he rises to greet guests he towers above them. His height (six feet eight inches) is initially intimidating, but that impression is soon mitigated by his wry manner. For a year and a half, Volcker, who serves as an economic adviser to President Barack Obama, had been waging a campaign to curb greed and speculation on Wall Street. This effort was reaching a climax, as the Senate and the House of Representatives worked to reconcile the lengthy financial-reform bills that each had passed.

Hi Guys:

Here’s a great piece by SAEN. All of these cuts will most massively affect—you guessed it—El Paso.

Massive cuts were predicted by your humble Senator when he called the Craddick//Perry tax scheme a “Giant Texas Tax Shift”. Swapping property taxes that fund schools, for risky business income taxes that have never been collected, resulted in exactly what we predicted—additional property tax burdens to El Paso homeowners mostly at schools struggling so hard to keep class size down---all because state leaders flunked the test of solving school finance in Austin.

For 15 years, from Bush to Perry, the Grover formula has given tax cuts to the wealthy and delivered budget cuts to you.

Thankfully, 2009 ended better than it began. Economists talk about green shoots of recovery taking hold. Consumer confidence has improved. Equity markets have soared. But for all the progress, the American economy remains extremely vulnerable.