State Employee Pension is a Ticking Time Bomb (II)

In this editorial, the author claims that "Texas lawmakers must address a state pension problem before it becomes an insurmountable crisis.”                  
The author compares the state’s second-largest employee retirement fund, the Employees Retirement System of Texas, with a credit card debt. He states that lawmakers have not "properly funded" the pension plan and that the fund is set to run out of money in 2063. He says that if the government does not take care of this issue, the debt will increase by $500 million every year and would cause Texas’ credit rating to go down. The author emphasizes that the legislature must do something. He proposes cutting pension benefits or asking employees to contribute more, but suggests that the best solution would be for the state to make the financial contributions “it hasn’t made for years”.

Finally, the author mentions Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, who said “he won’t support tax cuts until lawmakers shore up the state pension fund.” Agreeing with the senator, the author, in name of Texas’ citizens, “urges” Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Legislature to take care of the issue.        
From my perspective, the author’s intended audience is Texas’ citizens that will be retiring in 2063 and later because those will be the generations affected by this issue. I strongly agree with the author of this article. I think this issue should be fixed if we don’t want Texas to enter a dead end road.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20150215-editorial-state-employee-pension-is-a-ticking-time-bomb.ece

Lege Targets the Undocumented (I)

Conservative legislators have proposed several bills designed to obstruct the way of life immigrants have in the State, from going to school to having a job. 
These bills suggest: the use of E-Verify, a federal electronic employment verification system that would separate the illegal immigrants from the workforce; the disallowance of in-state tuition for undocumented Texas residents; and the requirement of law enforcement agencies to determine the immigration status of anyone arrested, and placing immigration holds on the undocumented.
Bill Beardall, executive director of the Equal Justice Center and a UT Law professor, said: "Every session of the Legislature, for the past two decades at least, has started with a slew of anti-immigration measures – many of them harsh and strident," he went on. "Many of those efforts have been turned back, but mostly through the extraordinary efforts by a coalition of immigrant rights advocates working with allies in the faith community, business community, and the labor movement." This means that there is an economic drawback to all of the proposed bills that are trying to put obstacles on the immigrant workforce. There are sectors in the economy of the State that rely heavily on the foreign labor force such as construction and retail, consequently putting holds on the immigrant workforce would do more harm than good to the State's economy.
I think this article is worth reading because several people in Texas think that immigrants just cause harm to the State and it would be right for them to be informed about how the immigrant workforce actually makes helps for the prosperity of Texas.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2015-02-06/lege-targets-the-undocumented/