Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The issue should be framed around the life of a Southside resident born today. How will her life be better tomorrow for what we do today? Where will she work? Where will he play?

Senator Shapleigh's notes and observations will keep you updated on what is happening behind the scenes in Austin and El Paso.

If you're a business owner, your business taxes may have just gone up under Gov. Rick Perry's new tax law. The Texas Comptroller has developed an online "tax calculator" to figure it out.

The tax proposals passed this special session continue the 10-year pattern in both Washington, D.C., and Austin of the ''Great Texas Tax Shift,'' in which the wealthiest Texans' taxes are shifted onto the backs of middle- and low-income families.

Senator Shapleigh's office was recently contacted by a constituent who followed all guidelines and rules issued by HHSC, whose child was found to be eligible for CHIP, but who was still unable to navigate the system successfully.

Many of El Paso's children are losing their health insurance every month when a state insurance program could have provided them health coverage. In El Paso, which is the most uninsured large city in the nation, this is intolerable.

What happens to a town when a company goes bankrupt and leaves behind an environmental mess? Across the West, towns big and small are scrambling to settle a legal matter from the Asarco fallout.

There is still work to be done to improve teacher pay and benefits. Even with the $2,000 salary increase in H.B. 1, average teacher salaries in Texas are $4,000 less than the national average.

El Pasoans want to breath clean air. We want our children to grow up strong and healthy, not afflicted with asthma and chronic respiratory infections. However, in order to protect our children, we have to clean our air.

Last spring, Senator Shapleigh led the Senate fight against a proposed tax plan that would have raised taxes on 9 in 10 Texans.

The latest numbers for CHIP, which insures children in families that make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to pay for private coverage, were the lowest in five years.

Texas spends less on its students than three quarters of the other states, highlighting why the state Legislature will convene a special session this month to fix the state's broken education funding formula.

State officials have put on hold a controversial call-in system for Texans to apply for food stamps and Medicaid, Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins announced Wednesday.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Shapleigh asks that $38.5 million be made available immediately so that the medical school can open on schedule in August 2008.

In an interview with the Texas Monthly's Evan Smith, Rep. Pete Laney discusses his decision to leave and whether today's partisan rancor had anything to do with it. As the interview reveals, Texas politics have changed in the last 30 years.

President Bush's effort to secure lawful employment opportunities for illegal immigrants is evolving into an early battle of the 2008 presidential campaign.

You're sitting at home and you get a call. It's a political survey. Things seem normal at first, but then with no warning, the questions take a negative turn. What's going on here? A push poll.

You wrote to ask what will happen during the special session. You wanted us to fight for your children. As long as I am in office, we will do just that.

CHIP enrollment has plunged by 28,000 children since December, when tougher proof-of-income rules kicked in just as the call-center contract switched to Accenture. The Texas health commission is still trying to sort out rejections caused by mistakes.

What Bush is facing now, beyond just election-year jitters by legislators eyeing his depressed approval ratings, is a rebellion that has been brewing since the days when he looked invincible, say many lawmakers and strategists.