Legislators have the opportunity to give Texans the option of affordable, convenient health care by eliminating onerous state regulations. The question is, will they seize the opportunity.

As we move forward, Texas’ continued commitment to limited government, fiscal conservatism, and low taxation, both in times of excess and shortage, will only strengthen what is, arguably, the nation’s strongest economy.

In less than a year, many unanticipated developments have complicated the political dynamics of “ending the era of fossil fuels” through the enactment of carbon reduction mandates. Consider six such developments that may give pause to policymakers otherwise inclined to support these measures.

Texas’ renewable energy mandates – combined with the federal government’s generous tax credit for wind-energy production – have propelled the Lone Star State to the forefront of the wind-energy movement. Billions of dollars in capital investment have muted most criticism of wind energy’s rapid expansion, but only because Texas consumers have yet to realize the long-term price we will pay for everyone else’s short-term gain.

If a graffiti “artist” spray-paints your house or business, you could be the one who draws the attention of law enforcement.

We didn’t know the half of it, perhaps, when Arthur Laffer cut loose a few weeks back concerning Texas’ superiority over California as a place to do business.

Higher test scores, higher state accountability ratings, improved teacher morale, and lower teacher turnover prove that students are benefiting from teacher incentive pay in Texas.

Throughout our nation’s history, the size and scope of government has grown by leaps and bounds during times of crisis, financial or otherwise. The political class’ natural instinct is for government to rush to the rescue, particularly when an election is near.

U.S. energy policy has been supplanted by counterproductive environmental policy. Built on mandates, subsidies, trade restrictions, and bans on production, federal energy policy operates like slipshod energy central planning. Let ethanol compete in the market without government preference.

There is simply no one-size-fits-all solution for insurance prices, and attempts to impose one wreak more havoc on consumers than the supposed problem.

James Russell Wiggins, the late editor of the Washington Post, once said that “the more that government becomes secret, the less it remains free.” Thankfully, Texas is leading the way toward opening the workings of its governments, particularly when it comes to how they spend your tax dollars.

Clearly, the objective should be to provide access to health care for the uninsured in the most efficient way possible. The answer will not be easy. But Texas should look for new ideas and innovations and also promote what is already working here.

If public charter schools are really so bad, then why are tens of thousands of Texas students standing in line for admission?

The emotional linkage of alchemy and the more-money-for-public-schools movement is an unhappy one – a reminder that baseless and unwarranted faiths can be as stubborn as, well, education lobbyists, making their umpteenth pitch for another financial transfusion.

The truth is that creating the right incentives for faculty and students can help UT-Austin and other Texas higher education institutions to truly become more productive, not just more expensive.

Among other salutary things, Milton Friedman was a gentleman, not a scoffer. He trafficked in ideas, not the vituperation we see everywhere nowadays, from the internet to the campaign trail.

To this point, we have been successful in avoiding the pitfalls of nationalized health care. But putting more of our private health care consumers into government programs and granting the government more financial control over the health care market gets us closer to the Canadian model that even its architect says is in “crisis.”

When misguided environmental theory dictates energy policy, the result is high prices, unreliability, and inadequate supply. It is time to reverse course.

While Texas taxpayers are busy earning a living, taking care of their families, and paying their taxes, they deserve to know that their tax dollars are being used judiciously by the state and local governments that are spending them.

Giving consumers more choices would improve access to health care by providing individuals with more choices that would be affordable, regardless of insurance status.

A state (or a city or a county or a country) that wants to be loved, economically speaking, must make itself lovable, by implementation of business policies that business loves.

For most of the last 20 years, Texas regulators have battled homeowners’ insurers, attempting to block “excessive” rates. The losers in these battles have been consumers, who have been harmed by the instability injected into the market by over-regulation.

Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This sounds oddly familiar in the world of education policy. Throw more money at it and expect different results.

Lieberman/Warner’s unrealistic, exorbitant approach is an ineffective way to address risk of adverse climate change. Modest carbon taxes have fewer economic pitfalls. Accelerated development of carbon capture technology and of new energy sources with intensity comparable to fossil fuels is the most practical long-term approach.

In their appointed capacity as leaders of these university systems, Regents can establish a new vision for Texas higher education that reorients these already strong institutions to be more competitive, more efficient, and more responsive to the students they serve.

A new British blueprint on prison reform could send ripples across the pond, leading Texas and other states to rethink the way they fund corrections. Following the lead of the U.K's Conservative Party, Texas could truly make less crime pay, given the freedom to innovate using the most successful programs.

The push to end Houston's status as the largest U.S. city without zoning is once again underway. If Texans were paying attention to how good the Houston economy has fared over the years without zoning, we'd instead be seeing a lot of other cities trying to emulate Houston's decentralized approach to economic development.

American dependence on unreliable foreign sources for more than 60 percent of domestic oil demand, indeed, drives the price at the pump. With new policy, the United States certainly could increase domestic production of oil.

Cutting the telephone and cable franchise fees in half would reduce most consumers’ bills by another 3 percent or so, lowering Texas telecom taxes by more than $500 million a year.

A return to competition and personal responsibility will cure America’s health care crisis...if we let it.

Texas is the appropriate state to call for a change in federal ethanol mandates. The indirect costs of ethanol hurt Texans in the grocery store as well as key agricultural sectors of the state economy.

It goes with the robins and the roses – the bad news of what property ownership costs in a society that leans heavily, for the satisfaction of public wants, upon the owners of homes and businesses.

Who knew a “free” source of energy could be so expensive?

All too often, it takes cutbacks to force government to re-prioritize its core functions and correct its indulgences.

Characterized by the EPA as perhaps its most expensive rule ever, this 75-ppb standard begs for solid scientific justification.

Performance and results are commonly rewarded in the private sector via bonuses and raises tied to positive performance reviews. The same should hold true for education.

The only things that have skyrocketed since full deregulation took effect in January 2007 are consumer choice and competition.

As policymakers review the Texas homeowners’ insurance market, they should keep in mind that Texas insurers and Texas consumers are the proper parties to determine homeowners’ and windstorm insurance rates. Markets, not governments, will ultimately find the proper balance.

The "right" price, every time, is that on which a willing buyer and willing seller agree in an encounter perfected by the tender of a credit card or a handful of pennies. A buyer who doesn't want your Edsel won't be induced at any price to acquire it. A buyer, by contrast, who truly, deeply wants a certain doll will calculate need, resources, and the present or future availability of this wonderful contrivance. He'll buy if he wants; he won't if he doesn't.

Ultimately, Texas farmers and food vendors don’t profit from making their customers sick. In such very rare instances, they can face incredibly costly lawsuits. Instead of producing another crop of rules that stifle entrepreneurship and criminalize ordinary business activities, government should leave the field and let the market for food and flowers bloom.

Of course, a single mandate does not have a crushing impact on the cost of health insurance. However, researchers have found that the combined effect of the mandates drive up the cost of a basic health plan by nearly 50%.

Last month, dozens of Austin parents camped out on the cold concrete of the Austin Independent School District headquarters parking lot with one goal in mind: securing a better learning environment for their children.

Rather than being handcuffed to the past – to the detriment of the taxpayers – legislators charted a new course that emphasizes alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders while continuing to lock up violent and sexual offenders.

As the presidential candidates discuss their plans for the American health care system, they point their fingers of blame in several directions – toward insurers, toward employers, and even toward over-eaters and non-exercisers. But none of the leading candidates are pointing toward the main culprit – the government.

Combine inflated ridership projections and enormous cost overruns that have plagued rail projects like this across the country with the reality that people have not given up their cars en masse despite the construction of fancy rail lines, and the only promise taxpayers can count on is that this will require their continued and growing financial obligation for decades to come.

The purpose of a state accountability system is to evaluate school performance and provide that information to parents and the public so they can determine the quality of a particular school or district. The current accountability system fails in this regard and needs to be redesigned.

Energy production from fossil fuels, e.g., coal, oil and natural gas, is often blamed for many of the world’s environmental ills. But no one today was around to experience firsthand how dirty the world was before the invention of the internal combustion engine, when horses—and horse manure—were prevalent on city streets.

The label of a “Do Nothing” Congress might well serve as a badge of honor, given the misguided national energy bills now being debated.

The “Football Follies” series of films contains classic highlights of players bumbling, stumbling, and fumbling their way across the gridiron. While highly entertaining – such as ex-Minnesota Viking Jim Marshall’s fumble recovery and ensuing 65 yard run to the wrong end zone – they also provide excellent examples of how not to play football. Recent government forays into consumer regulation provide similar examples of how not to intervene in markets.

Among the report’s dozens of observations and recommendations, perhaps the most astonishing finding is that none of the best practices require any changes in law by the legislature or Texas Education Agency. These innovative public schools are working within existing budgetary and legal guidelines to implement strategies that provide greater support to teachers and result in greater achievement for students.

Though there is much room for improvement, Texas is showing the rest of the country what happens when doctors are freer to practice their trade and less encumbered by frivolous lawsuits and runaway juries.

Remember the big school property tax cut you were supposed to get? Your local school district might be about to take it away.

Today, there are too few people willing to follow the facts when it comes to the Texas electric market. Though the facts clearly point to the success of deregulation, many still refuse to believe that consumer choice is a good idea.

The true promise of competition in corrections lies not in saving money while providing the same product as state-run prisons, but in harnessing the innovation of the private sector to develop programming that will reduce recidivism, since 99 percent of inmates are ultimately released.

Last year, 35 percent of all freshmen at Texas public higher education institutions had to enroll in at least one remedial education course because they were unprepared for college-level work in math, reading, or writing. This equates to more than 162,000 incoming freshmen expending time and energy on remedial coursework that does not count toward their degree.

If the popular press is your source for climate science, you are probably terrified the end is near—moving as far inland as possible and staying inside to avoid heat stroke. You might be altering your lifestyle to combat the effects of carbon dioxide emissions. But if you look at the facts about “global warming,” the picture is not as bleak as it may seem.

Our criminal justice system is bursting at the seams. There are simply not enough law enforcement and correctional resources to keep up with the glut of lawbreakers. Federal and local authorities are recognizing that it is more efficient to use carrots in addition to sticks.

While the public school lobby has traditionally opposed any introduction of competition into the education system, the state’s largest school district seems to have embraced it.

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer,” said the late economist Milton Friedman. “A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

Give George W. Bush credit. He's drawn a lot of criticism for not doing more to control federal spending over the past six years. But he is now deep into a spending fight against a sacred liberal program. And he isn't backing away.

If student learning is the main objective, then it defies common sense to bar a genius like Albert Einstein or business guru Jack Welch from the classroom because he doesn’t have a teaching certificate.

What’s in a name? Apparently, to a government school monopoly, it’s everything.

Even the wealthiest man in Texas may be no match for the gargantuan growth in criminal law.

The recent decisions by Farmers Insurance and Allstate Insurance to withdraw their proposed homeowners’ insurance rate increases in the face of opposition from the Texas Department of Insurance are an unfortunate turn of events for Texas consumers and taxpayers. The regulation of homeowners’ insurance in Texas has for years produced poor results for consumers.

Twenty years of incremental expansions took the percentage of children on government health care from 17 percent to 47 percent. Today’s proposals would push that past 70 percent.

"The words of a prophet are written on the subway wall,” Simon and Garfunkel once sang. Perhaps "I love Alex" could be a hit record, but in Katy these words written on a gymnasium wall instantly made a 12-year-old a potential felon.

“Whenever the people are well-informed,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789, “they can be trusted with their own government.” No doubt the Founding Fathers’ faith in self-government would be challenged today with the reality of how little Americans know about their heritage.

People suffering from depression must often hit rock bottom before they get better. The same can be said for criminal justice in Texas. Few could have imagined the abuses that surfaced earlier this year at the Texas Youth Commission, but they led to landmark reform legislation. Indeed, reforms made this session indicate that lawmakers are finally rethinking all aspects of the criminal justice system.

Despite previous lessons learned and the overwhelming evidence that price controls simply do not work, Congress is again looking to shelve the requisite leadership needed to implement sound energy policies based on supply and demand. Rather than helping to increase domestic refining capacity and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, they instead have chosen a purely political strategy void of economic fundamentals.

To be employable in today’s economy, students need a solid foundation of reading, writing and arithmetic; strong technical skills; and problem-solving and creative thinking skills. To meet these new demands, vocational education must continue to change.

What is more important for our children than a rigorous education? Strong math, reading, and writing skills enable all students from a range of backgrounds to achieve their dreams.

Across Texas, hundreds of charter schools educate thousands of the state’s neediest students. But a bill scheduled for vote today by the Texas House would shut down many of these schools.

While many Texas families rightfully fear violent criminals and child predators, no police alert has yet gone out for an interior decorator on the loose. Yet, as the Legislature continues to produce solutions in search of problems, a pending bill would criminalize thousands of interior decorators.

A common saying around the Texas Legislature is that bad facts make bad law, meaning that lawmakers too often respond to an isolated bad situation or actor with an overreaching law that applies to everyone in every situation. Imagine, then, how bad the law can be when lawmakers respond not to facts, but to myths and misrepresentations.

The issue boils down to basic honesty and fairness. The TIF was created for a specific purpose and for a specific period of time. The original goal has been met and the policy rationale has disappeared. Given the disproportionate taxes they already pay on telecommunications, Texas consumers deserve relief. And yet the tax lives on.

A recent e-mail from the Children’s Defense Fund, a leading lobby in the push to expand government-subsidized health care, asks its state coordinators to send “stories of children who have died because they did not have access to adequate health coverage” and adds that “a picture of the child to include with the story” would be especially valuable.

Public education is one of the few industries that deny management the ability to evaluate employees annually so that the top performers are rewarded and the ineffective ones dismissed.

Despite $14 billion in new revenue coming into the state’s coffers, any notion that the legislature will be measured by how it treats hardworking Texas taxpayers has been forgotten. Some lawmakers who wrapped themselves in the flag of limited government, limited spending, and low taxes during their election campaigns have removed it from display now that they are in Austin.

To the extent we put more money into our institutions of higher education, it should be targeted to producing the type of graduates Texas needs to preserve its competitive advantage.

Unfortunately, the Texas House stripped the promising incentive pay program last month, converting it to a meager across-the-board “pay raise” of $850 for every teacher, counselor, nurse, and librarian. Make no mistake: this is not a pay raise. No new money has been added, and average teacher pay will remain the same. The legislature merely reshuffled the existing money from the highest-performing teachers to give the most ineffective ones another $850. The best teachers could lose up to $10,000 each.

No Texan should be fooled into thinking that we need more prisons to keep up with population growth or lock up sex offenders. The real question is whether we need more prisons to lock up more nonviolent drug offenders.

From tort, tax, and budget reforms to deregulation of the telecom and electric markets, Texans have decided that markets are often a better solution to our problems than government intervention. The results have proven this to be the right approach.

Taxpayers have a right to know how and where their money is being spent. What better way to hold schools accountable than by letting the sun shine on their checkbooks and allowing taxpayers to examine their spending?

If the nation isn’t prepared for the aging baby boomers, it isn’t because the boomers sneaked up on us. For some time, we have seen the warnings and been conscious of the coming “age wave.” The problem is that few have taken heed and been moved to act thus far.

Texans have been horrified to learn that some of the 5,000 juveniles allegedly being rehabilitated at Texas Youth Commission facilities have instead been molested and mistreated.

Now that TXU will no longer exist as we knew it, what is left? Just the facts, which show a very different picture than what most people are trying to paint.

Texans need to understand that as long as current state spending increases at the low rate already proposed, a vote to exceed the constitutional spending cap is a vote for promised tax relief…and nothing more.

Private sector experts are too often kept out of the classroom because of antiquated state certification requirements. If our primary concern really is our children, the Texas Legislature will act this session to start removing those barriers.

When your cable TV bill gets too high, you can switch to satellite providers. Home telephone too expensive? Go with voice-over-Internet protocol. Don’t like your cellular service? The kiosk at the mall will give you a free camera phone if you’ll switch. We routinely comparison shop for cars, for groceries, for clothes, for insurance... Why not shop for electricity?

We must not view crime as simply an offense against the state, and instead ensure that crime victims have a place in the courtroom and a seat at the table. The marginalization of victims is not only unjust, but deprives us of the public safety benefits that are only realized when an offender’s conscience is awakened upon realizing the harm caused to another human being.

When U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm introduced the “Dickey Flatt test” to his colleagues and to the country, he brought a new conscience to budget writing and created an iconic image for fiscal discipline.

Opponents of school choice fight parent choice and competition among schools by arguing that school choice takes money from schools. Unfortunately, they turn a blind eye to what is both a serious problem in education and the largest drain on school funding: dropouts.

The chief argument for new spending is always the desire to “meet people’s needs.” As good as this might sound, it is a strategy often doomed to failure.

El Paso is set to be the new poster child in the battle over private property rights in Texas.

End-of-course exams can move Texas students in the right direction.

Texas will need more electric power in the coming years - lots more - and coal will be critical to meeting those power needs.

Competition and retail choice are working in the Texas electric market.

The wartime economy of the last century should no longer be allowed to dictate the health care choices available to this century’s health care consumers.

Milwaukee's school choice program benefits children, strengthens communities, and unites unlikely allies.

We are entering a period of great peril for Texans’ pocketbooks.

Less costly alternatives should be used for effective punishment.

Increased electric regulation will threaten innovation, investment and the reliability of supplies, harming our ability to bring new employers to Texas and maintain the strong job creation rate.

Research has shown preschool can actually hinder social development, especially for children from the poorest families.

Poorly defining poverty is the first step in making us all much poorer.

Many of the state's parks should be privatized.

Too many nonviolent offenders are entering state lockups while unreformed violent offenders go out the back door.

Consumers would adore a setting in which power companies beg for their business, encouraging them to turn thermostats to the coldest point.

Illegal immigration is certainly a public policy priority in its own right, but it cannot be confused as the silver bullet solution to rescue government budgets from insolvency.

With the start of a new school year, many Texas kids are missing the bus on math and science.

If Texans are serious about addressing the bite government takes out of our wallets, then we must be serious about restraining the size of the mouth doing the biting.

Without a meaningful limit, government tends to grow out of control.

The traditional and legitimate use of criminal law is being trivialized.

It shouldn't surprise people to know we are facing the Catch-22 of choosing between clean air and consumers’ pocketbooks because of a history of poorly thought out environmental regulations.

Rather than relying on in-person interviews in a field office with limited hours of operation, the new system allows applicants extended hours by phone, and 24-hour access online.

While the concept of paying for every child's preschool appears laudable, in reality it is an expensive notion that results in a bureaucracy and a massive financial hit to taxpayers.