Posted on 02/21/2008 9:48:57 AM PST by SwinneySwitch
Even with all the pressing issues the Texas Legislature must deal with - in or out of session - the candidates for Senate District 4 believe two issues are most crucial: illegal immigration and state spending.
But incumbent Tommy Williams and his opponent, Michael Galloway, differ vastly on just how well the state has addressed those issues so far.
Texas has not done nearly enough to prevent illegal immigration, according to Galloway.
"We need to change our focus to enforcing the law," Galloway said. "We would see a dramatic decline if we enforced it, but while well over half of the border with Mexico is in Texas, we've done the least out of any other state.
"We're the gatekeeper and we've failed."
But as a state senator, Williams said, he made huge steps toward reducing violence, drug smuggling and human smuggling on the border during the last legislative session, and will work toward outlining statewide policies to enforce immigration laws in the next session.
"I have zero tolerance for illegal immigration," he said. "It's a federal responsibility, and the state is not waiting for the federal government to act. We're addressing it because public safety is our number one concern."
If elected, Galloway said he will pass bills to ensure immigration laws are enforced and funds are provided to detain illegal immigrants.
"The U.S. Constitution says that the states have the right to protect themselves from invasion," he said, "and if more than 1.7 million illegal immigrants per year isn't an invasion, I don't know what is."
During next year's legislative session, Williams will propose citizenship checks on all traffic violations and automobile sales and leases, resulting in deportation of any illegal aliens found, he said. Taxes for Texas residents have gone up even with a surplus in the state's budget, because spending has increased at a higher rate than inflation or population growth, according to Galloway.
"The price of oil has driven revenue up in the state and they had a record budget and surplus of $14 billion," he said.
"In spite of that they increased taxes by nearly $6 billion - the largest tax increase in history." He added that the state did not cap property appraisals, which he said will cause the overall tax burden to increase even though the tax rate has decreased.
"If elected, I'd simply control state spending at the rate of inflation and population," he said.
But when Williams was elected to the Legislature in 2003, he was appointed to the Senate Finance Committee to reduce general spending, he said, and members were able to cut it by 3 percent.
"Half of the state budget goes for public education, and our state is growing so fast right now that 160,000 new students enroll in public education every two-year budget cycle," he said. "You can't really cut spending unless you're going to cut education spending, but my goal has been to try to keep spending at or below the rate of growth that we have in our state plus inflation."
He'll continue to fight to keep the state budget under control if he's re-elected, he said.
T.L. Hamilton can be reached at thamilton@hcnonline.com.
GOP ping!
as it should.
Here's a clue bubba, if you haven't done anything to date to secure Texas border or to deport any of the millions already here illegally then there's little to no chance you'll do anything meaningful now just because you have a challenger. Maybe you need to step aside and let someone else have a shot at it.
ping
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