Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

It took Representative Dan Maffei of New York two tries, $4 million and the retirement of a Republican incumbent to win his House seat last year. After all that, he wants to avoid becoming a one-term wonder because of an unpopular vote on health care.

House members headed home on Friday, leaving behind the outlines of a nearly $1 trillion health care overhaul that is sure to draw fire from a variety of interests, but also shows the beginnings of a consensus that would provide insurance for more Americans and give them new rights in dealing with insurers.

Officials at the Transportation Department figured Thursday morning that they had applications in hand for about a tenth of the $1 billion that Congress set aside for the “cash for clunkers” program, meant to give rebates to people who turn in old vehicles for new, more fuel-efficient ones.

In a triumph for President Barack Obama, Democrats narrowly pushed sweeping health care legislation through a key congressional committee Friday night and cleared the way for a September showdown in the House.

Like the last governor of the last Southern state, Rick Perry is seceding from reality. During the Civil War, governors took up the shield of “states rights” to protect a society based on slavery. In Perry’s war with President Obama, he does it to shield America from the reality here in Texas.

Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be "disastrous" for Texas.

With the announcement on Friday that the U.S. Department of Education has accepted the proposal by the State of Texas for how it plans to spend $3.2 billion in education stimulus cash, Austin ISD should be receiving an extra $12 million this year.

Rising unemployment in Texas is giving U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison what her strategists believe is a promising target in her emerging bid against Gov. Rick Perry in next year's Republican gubernatorial primary.

The health care reform bills moving through Congress look as though they would do a good job of providing coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. But what would they do for the far greater number of people who already have insurance? As President Obama noted in his news conference last week, many of them are wondering: “What’s in this for me? How does my family stand to benefit from health insurance reform?”

A combination of record-high heat and record-low rainfall has pushed south and central Texas into the region's deepest drought in a half century, with $3.6 billion of crop and livestock losses piling up during the past nine months.

The decision by Senate Democratic leaders last week to devote more time to winning Republican support for a health care overhaul has allowed President Obama to keep alive the possibility of bipartisanship on one of the most contentious issues on his agenda.

After a plunge lasting three years, houses have finally become cheap enough to lure buyers. That, in turn, is stabilizing prices, generating hope that the real estate market is beginning to recover.

Auto dealers say they are seeing more customers in their showrooms and selling more cars in the first week of the government rebate program intended to replace gas-hungry, heavy-polluting cars and trucks with greener vehicles.

The city Parks and Recreation Department will soon be able to take reservations and registrations online.

Forty three members of Congress have sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano voicing concern over the “mounting” environmental and societal impact of the border wall and other security barriers.

The state's top attorney said Friday that it was unclear whether a state law that allows undocumented immigrants to pay lower in-state tuition rates conflicts with federal law.

Texas will get an additional $2 billion in federal stimulus money but legislators cannot force school districts to use it for teacher pay raises, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Not only did the Texas Board of Education embarrass the state by its recent anti-evolution foray, but now it has hired six "experts," at taxpayers’ expense, to determine what will be in our kids’ social studies and history textbooks.

Texans will decide on a constitutional amendment limiting the use of eminent domain and 10 other propositions when they go to the polls in November.