Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

As the capitol community recovers from what appears to be an unprecedented loss by the House Appropriations Chairman, there is much speculation about what happened.

The U.S. Congress recently passed a bill that allows taxpayers to deduct their state sales tax payments in calculating federal taxable income. Most Texas families gain absolutely nothing from this change.

Naval Air Station Corpus Christi (NAS Corpus Christi) will be receiving more than $5.2 million in low-interest loans from the Texas Revolving Loan Fund.

The Department of Defense (DOD), in an effort to ensure that military value is the primary consideration in making closure and realignment recommendations, has developed a quantitative analytical foundation to determine military value.

Today, Senator Eliot Shapleigh launched a new website which is easier to navigate and will be updated daily with local, state and national news articles that are pertinent to El Paso and this region.

We want to know what you are thinking. So, please take time to take the poll. You can find the question of the week on the home page to the right. Upon voting, you will get instant results.

Small Businesses, Faced With Rising Insurance Premiums, Struggle to Cover Employees.

After 18 years in private practice, Dr. Victor Silvestre was exhausted from his lonely battle, day after day, with a health care system that seemed to be working against him.

Interns pore over documents to find 'hot' e-mails; paydirt on bid-rigging.

Ten years ago, the multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca launched what was known inside the company as the Shark Fin Project.

The United Steelworkers of America announced today that they have uncovered an EPA document which concludes that the El Paso soil cleanup level EPA proposed will not protect children from lead poisoning.

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a lower court to reconsider a Texas congressional map that could give Republicans six more seats in Congress in upcoming elections and help the GOP protect its majority.

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.''

Bill will let Texans, residents of 6 other states take writeoff

Texans who itemize their federal tax returns are only a president's signature away from being able to deduct the state's sales tax.

The corporate tax bill that Congress has sent to the White House rewards just about every special interest that retains a lobbyist in Washington.

Will El Paso finally confront a century-old toxic legacy?

President Bush is expected to sign HR 4520, a corporate tax bill that would permit Texas taxpayers who itemize their federal income tax deductions to receive a deduction for state sales taxes.

A state income tax, like Virginia and California have, is an idea that a few - a very few - Texans are talking about as a possible solution to the school finance conundrum.