We are building the Texas of tomorrow

Ever since the first pioneers settled our extraordinary land, Texas has been the frontier of a brighter tomorrow, a state stuffed with alternative as huge as our horizon. As lawmakers collect in the Texas Capitol for the begin of the 88th Legislature, we are blessed with the alternative to work towards building a good brighter future.

More Texans are incomes a paycheck than ever earlier than. With a mighty $2 trillion financial system, Texas constantly ranks primary in the nation for financial improvement and job progress. We additionally lead in vital industries like oil and gasoline manufacturing that secures America’s power independence, and cutting-edge fields like semiconductor manufacturing. Texas’ dominance in main industries places tens of millions of Texans on the path to prosperity by means of increased wages and unparalleled alternatives.

We not solely lead the nation in inhabitants progress, however extra Fortune 500 firms name Texas house than every other state. Our business-friendly insurance policies and cheap regulatory setting invite report numbers of enterprise relocations and job creation. Texas can be a high state for small-business jobs progress. In reality, greater than 95% of Texas companies are small and make use of practically half of all working Texans. This session, we are going to guarantee entrepreneurs and innovators have the instruments and help wanted to propel our state to new heights.

The Texas financial system has shattered one other report. We now have the largest price range surplus in the historical past of our state. But that cash belongs to the taxpayers. We will use that price range surplus this session to supply the largest property tax minimize in Texas historical past.

Building tomorrow’s workforce begins with our college students. Per-student funding is now at an all-time excessive as a result of of Texas’ latest instructional reforms. We lead the nation in the quantity of National Blue Ribbon Schools, in addition to Tier 1 Research Universities.

To safeguard the highest potential of our college students, this session we should guarantee faculty classes concentrate on the fundamentals of studying. Parents will likely be additional empowered to problem curriculum when it falls quick, and to determine what’s finest for his or her youngster’s training. As Texas builds off historic public faculty investments, mother and father deserve a selection in instructional alternatives for his or her youngsters that aligns with their expectations and core values.

Protecting our college students is of the utmost significance. We is not going to finish this session with out enacting significant laws to maintain our college students and workers protected, together with guaranteeing psychological well being companies are obtainable to college students who want it. Parents should know their youngsters are protected after they drop them off each morning.

The security of our communities additionally depends on legislation and order made potential by the courageous women and men who put on the badge. Last session, I signed a legislation that defunds any metropolis that defunds police. This session, we should finish straightforward bail insurance policies that permit harmful criminals again onto the streets. We should additionally impose obligatory sentences on criminals caught with weapons, and anybody caught smuggling immigrants who are in the nation illegally.

While President Joe Biden refuses to implement federal immigration legal guidelines to safe our southern border, Texas is utilizing each software to maintain Texans — and Americans — protected from a report flood of unlawful immigration and cross-border legal exercise. Texas is building a border wall, deploying Texas National Guard troopers and Department of Public Safety troopers to cease the chaos created by the Biden administration, and focusing on Mexican drug cartels that smuggle lethal medication like fentanyl into our state.

Texas legislation enforcement has seized sufficient deadly fentanyl to kill each man, lady and youngster in America. But too many households have misplaced a liked one to this clandestine killer. Our job this session will likely be to ship options and forestall extra tragic loss of life to fentanyl.

Texas now stands at the threshold of a extra resilient future. The 14 bipartisan legal guidelines I signed final session mounted the flaws in our energy grid, stopping any disruptions regardless of 11 all-time energy technology data this previous summer season, and final month’s deep freeze. With a booming inhabitants of 30 million Texans, we are going to construct a grid prepared to satisfy demand all through the coming many years.

Texas’ vital infrastructure will obtain the assets wanted to serve a rising Texas, from transformational roadway enhancements to funding water provide initiatives to delivering broadband entry to communities statewide.

We now collect for a brand new legislative session that may carry our nice state into the subsequent century. Together, we are going to construct the Texas of tomorrow.

Greg Abbott is the governor of Texas. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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