Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

In a fierce contest to control the student loan market, the nation's banks and lenders have for years waged a successful campaign to limit a federal program that was intended to make borrowing less costly by having the government provide loans directly to students.

In a democracy, there is something unsettling about great extremes of wealth and poverty. One question today is whether rich Americans are claiming too much of the economic pie. Economists have found that the richest 10 percent of the population received 44 percent of the pretax income in 2005. This was the highest since the 1920s and 1930s, and much higher than from 1945 to 1980.

In 2003, Santa Fe passed a city ordinance raising the minimum wage in the city to $8.50 an hour. By now, 31 states and several cities have minimum wages above the federal level. But this can't be done in El Paso because in 2003, the Texas Legislature passed a law prohibiting municipalities from adopting local minimum-wage ordinances.

El Paso's continued struggle with poverty can be traced to several factors, including city leaders' inability to work together, observers and experts say. Whether elected officials are filing opposing legislation in Austin, or business leaders are fighting with community leaders in Downtown El Paso, or county commissioners are bad-mouthing City Council, the result is that nothing major has been built in this city in the last 25 years.

About 80 local companies, including Gerry Licon's, have already secured work in the competition for a share of the $2.6 billion expected to flow into the city over the next five years to expand Fort Bliss as nearly 23,000 additional soldiers arrive at the post.

Today -- because of the influx of soldiers expected from the Base Realignment and Closure process, the expanding medical school and Downtown revitalization efforts -- officials argue that the city is in the best position it has ever been to draw businesses and secure lasting economic development.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, said access to medical services needs to be a priority for the city, and this month he introduced a proposed a bill to create universal health care in the state.

Defining her struggle with poverty is not easy for Valerie Estrada. The mother of four children knows her life is different. She no longer has to move her children each time a lease runs out or money runs short, because she now owns a new home that she bought with help from Habitat for Humanity.

If you wonder about the rush to celebrate guns, honor God and dump on people who can't dump back, look at a calendar. We're almost halfway through 2007, so we're burning daylight before the 2008 elections.

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini is still trying to get a hearing for a bill that would require the state to do more to monitor public school bilingual education programs. But if legislators balk, a federal judge could soon order them to do so.

In the face of the coming local election in which we expect about 6 percent of voters to participate, we need to make the voting process easier; we can't afford to add another layer of red tape to the process.

Lifelong Republican, Marine veteran and former congressman Pete McCloskey has left the GOP and registered with the Democratic Party. McCloskey says he is disgusted with the "succession of ethical scandals, congressmen taking bribes and abuse of power by both the Republican House leadership and the highest appointees of the White House."

Evolution has long generated bitter fights between the left and the right about whether God or science better explains the origins of life. But now a dispute has cropped up within conservative circles, not over science, but over political ideology: Does Darwinian theory undermine conservative notions of religion and morality or does it actually support conservative philosophy?

The basic idea behind congestion pricing is simple: make motorists pay to use the busiest streets. Under the Mayor’s proposal, an invisible line would be drawn around Manhattan from Eighty-sixth Street south to the Battery.

A moment after the gavel came down for a recent lunch recess, the main doors of the Texas House opened and lobbyists poured into the chamber like salmon swimming upstream. Members who wanted to avoid them ducked out the chamber's back doors. Others were quickly collared by lobbyists urging the passage or defeat of legislation.

Early balloting around the state for the May 12 election has resulted in long delays and frayed tempers in many locales. The difficulties had nothing to do with the unproven election fraud cited by state legislators as a justification for new laws mandating more extensive ID from voters.

The House's second most powerful member inserted a provision in the budget last month that would all but guarantee a state contract for a company run by a former state official.

Almost a decade ago, Vicente Ortega's parents placed him in the first Connecting World/Mundos Unidos program at Mesita Elementary School. Now, at 18, Ortega is part of the first class -- which followed the Gifted and Talented/Dual Language Program from Mesita Elementary School, through Wiggs Middle School and through El Paso High School -- to graduate.

SB 2027, authored by Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, authorizes the Department of Public Safety to work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to develop an enhanced driver's license pilot project on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The time has come for Texas to provide universal health care. For too many Texans, affordable health care is out of reach. Today, more than 5.5 million Texans—including 1.4 million children—lack health insurance.