Over time, my position on this issue has changed. As I have become more educated on the subject, I have reached a position that I feel considers both sides of the argument on school choice and school vouchers. I believe parents should have a choice of where their kids are educated, and that schools should not be able to force our children to accept things that go against their beliefs. I also believe that the monopoly of the public school system creates its own harm. School choice brings with it less waste. However, we cannot ignore the fact that in a lot of rural areas there are no nearby private schools for kids, especially here in Texas, where we have some very rural counties with extremely small populations. For some people, public school is the best choice. So we need to ensure that our voucher program does not negatively impact public schools’ ability to function, or their ability to provide a quality education for students. We also need to make sure that our voucher program does not become a get-rich-quick scheme for the owners of the private schools receiving government funds. We need sufficient oversight of these private schools to ensure that the vast majority of public funds are actually spent to provide a high quality education with effective campus safety and security.

I definitely agree that K through 12 should be adequately funded. I do feel that the federal government wastes a significant amount of money that could go to public schools, or to vouchers if a state has them. However, I feel that our current situation regarding education and funding is less about the need for funds and more about the proper use of funds. For too long we have let the sports industry lobby turn our education systems into entertainment systems. How can schools justify spending millions of dollars on stadiums or sports programs when we can't even provide the fundamental basics of education? Yes, sports are a nice thing to have, but the reality is that billions of federal dollars meant for education go to sports. How do we justify that when we don't even have proper student-to-teacher ratios? Or when schools don't even have enough funds for books and materials or computers? It is time to return to a more common‑sense time when we put our children’s future before our entertainment. So as senator, I will propose a change to education funding that requires schools to spend federal money first on proper teacher-to-student ratios, adequate funding for books, materials, computers, other equipment, facilities and facility maintenance, before spending any money on sports. Sports should be a nice-to-have, not a must-have. Because our biggest must-have is making sure our children are educated and prepared for the workplace and for living in our society as functional adults. And simply continuing with a sports‑first, education-second mentality in our school system is not going to get us there.

The first and best way to make our schools safer is to always prevent harm. There are fundamental things that the public school system could be doing to prevent school shootings in the first place. Data gathered by Statista, a business marketing company, shows there have been 1,050 school shootings between 1970 and 2020. Of that total, 71% were perpetrated by school-age children 12 to 18 years old.This tells me that the school environment is failing our children - and even creating an environment of bullying and emotional and psychological torture. First, we should be teaching mandatory classes in emotional maturity and psychology from 1st through 12th grades. The early childhood classes should focus on teaching children how to understand their feelings, while simultaneously teaching them how to control their emotions in a mentally healthy way. Mentally stable children do not go around shooting up schools. Clearly, we are failing our students nationwide by not teaching them to understand and regulate their emotions. Second, our teachers do not put enough emphasis in ensuring that bullying does not happen in school. Yes, schools have made some progress in this area, but teachers themselves engage in bullying across this country every single day. They do so by repeatedly using group punishment, which chastises children for something they did not do. Group punishment is prohibited under the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is considered a war crime by the Geneva Conventions. Yet this behavior is used every day by teachers across this country – sending a loud and clear message to our children that nothing will keep them from being punished, even if they do everything right. And receiving months and years of constant punishment for things they did not do amounts to emotional torture, which creates psychological harm in our children. I believe that group punishment helps create the environment for continuous mass shootings at schools by other school-age children. If we want to make our schools safer, we have to address these problems – and the best way to do it is for Washington to make humane punishment mandatory instead of allowing teachers to discipline schoolchildren with unjust methods. Also, there is a precise protocol that is used to secure government buildings when it comes to security. That standard is based on the number of entrances and occupants (including visitors and staff) in a given building. But building security protocol is not considered when it comes to public schools, for whatever reason. Public schools are government facilities, and should receive the same amount of effort it takes to secure our state Capitol. Yet most schools in this country put little or no real effort in creating and maintaining safety and security in school buildings - thereby creating a virtually unsecured environment where someone can go to inflict maximum collateral damage. By what right do our lawmakers secure the buildings they work in, but don’t put the same effort into securing and making sure our schools are safe?

I believe we must maintain federal funding for low-income college students. However, I also propose that we change federal law to give us more oversight over colleges and universities, and what they spend that tuition money on. Having direct oversight over colleges and universities will allow us to lower the cost of a college education. Because with this oversight, we can figure out where extreme amounts of waste are going in the college industry. Also, I will advocate for a requirement that if colleges or universities spend government funds on research, any resulting patents or copyrights (or their sales) must go into a trust fund to help lower the cost of tuition for disadvantaged students – ultimately moving colleges and universities to being tuition-free. The way I see it, those patents and copyrights were paid for by tax dollars and technically belong to the people, as do the revenues they generate. This is how we can move to lower the cost of college, and in doing so we can have far more college educated adults with the same money spent. For too long, colleges and universities have gone with far too little regulation and oversight when they accept government funds – to the point that most people today feel like a college education is a Ponzi scheme they are forced to accept if they want a better future.

As the climate continues to change with global warming, we are continuously seeing either droughts or extreme flooding. Both make it continuously more difficult to provide adequate clean water for drinking, cooking and bathing. Other countries around the world have built or are building water purifying systems that make drinking water out of seawater. But America is not really putting significant effort into this area. Texas is fortunate enough to have a coastline, which means with proper investment and vision for the future, we could have an unlimited supply of drinking water for our state’s needs. However, the kind of infrastructure it would take to put several of these facilities along our coastline would take investment by the federal government. That means we need a senator willing to fight for funding to build these facilities. The age of just relying on rainwater and groundwater to provide for the clean water needs of our people is nearly over. It’s time to look forward, instead of maintaining the status quo where clean drinking water is concerned. As your Senator, I will fight for funding to build eight desalinization plants along our Texas coastline, each strategically placed to minimize their risk of damage from hurricanes. An excellent example of successful seawater desalinization for mass consumption can be found in Israel. The Israelis have gone from being water-deficient to having so much water that they export it to their neighbors. They do this with massive desalinization plants along their shores on the Mediterranean and Red seas. Just three of these plants, near the cities of Ashkelon, Hadera and Sorek, together produce 110 billion gallons of fresh water daily - enough to meet the needs of 100 million people! Currently, Texas doesn’t have any publicly owned seawater desalinization plants, although we do operate 53 municipal facilities that can convert 157 million gallons of mildly salty water to fresh water daily. That’s a fraction of what we could have with eight state-of-the-art desalinization facilities. With that capacity, Texas could provide plentiful drinking water not only for our 29.5 million people, but for millions of Americans in nearby states. We also could sell our surplus water to bottling companies that currently extract their product from wells, steadily depleting the aquifers beneath us. This would benefit Texas financially, while also putting us back on the front lines of progress. For too long Texas has not been in the vanguard of any kind of real progress, and it's time to change that.

At this point, the progress of developing clean energy is less about creating new technologies and more about eliminating barriers to the use of technologies that already exist. As Senator, I would fight for a new federal law making it a homeowner’s right to install wind and solar. Across Texas and across the United States, many homeowners associations and local municipalities have created barriers preventing homeowners from installing clean energy solutions. We need to take away the authority of local municipalities and homeowners associations to prevent someone from putting up solar. What good are clean energy solutions if homeowners are fined for using them? We need to do away with restrictions that prevent homeowners from drawing more than a certain percentage of their current electrical capacity from solar or wind. Such policies are counterproductive to meeting the energy needs of our state and our country. And we can counter those actions by requiring states to eliminate barriers to clean energy sources if they wish to receive federal funds for energy technology development. We also need to eliminate barriers that prevent hardware stores from carrying solar panels and solar equipment. It makes absolutely no sense that you can buy nearly everything you need to build a house from Lowe's or Home Depot, but you cannot buy solar panels there. If we want to make real strides toward clean energy, then we have to not only remove barriers for hardware stores to carry solar panels and solar equipment, but instead incentivize them to carry those products. Until these technologies and products are in the local stores of communities where any homeowner can go in and buy them, we will not make huge leaps forward to becoming a green energy country.

We live in the only continental U.S. state with its own power grid, the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. The grid buckled in many places this past winter, and failed massively in 2021, when four million people lost power for days and as many as 1,000 Texans died as a result. As The Drudge Report posted its page one headline “Texas Freezes Over,” Sen. Ted Cruz tucked tail and ran to Cancun with his family to wait out the disaster. And Rick Perry, former Texas governor and U.S. energy secretary under President Trump, declared that “Texans would [rather] be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” These attitudes and the continuing unreliability of ERCOT have made it brutally obvious that many key Texas leaders don’t really care about the general population when it comes to the power grid. They will always put profits and fear of regulation before our lives. But the federal government does have the power to make them winterize our grid, and put the safety and well-being of Texans before profits. It takes only one bill to be passed in Congress and signed by the President to end this ridiculous grid charade. Such a bill could be justified as critical to national security, since Texas is home to 14 military bases and owns or leases space in more than 800 buildings across the state. More than two years have passed since the 2021 winter disaster, and the power grid still is insecure. In fact, an October 2022 assessment by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) indicates that the Texas power grid remains almost as vulnerable to extreme winter weather as it was when it nearly collapsed in February 2021. Clearly, ERCOT does not have what it takes to do its job effectively. And so I believe it is now time for federal action in order to protect the lives of Texans when the next big freeze arrives. Texas has the right to have its own independent electrical grid, but it does not have the right to put Texans’ lives at risk and negatively impact national security by failing to ensure that its grid is engineered to withstand severe storms.

For hundreds of years, this country has acted as if we can take all the resources we want and pollute anything we desire, with the delusion that there will be no consequences. As someone whose job is to pay attention to the environment and to how things grow and what affects those things, I believe we have to start thinking differently. The federal government sets the tone when it comes to environmental preservation. The debate over global warming is pretty much over for scientists. However, it’s not over in the same way for every person. The reality is this: some global warming is being caused by normal cycles of the planet (which climate activists need to acknowledge), and a large amount of the environmental changes we are seeing are being caused by man-made global warming. However, I also recognize the economics of the situation. We cannot just say, “Stop global warming at all costs” without taking into consideration the economic effects. Yes, it’s not hard to see that global warming may have catastrophic effects on the global economy, but what politicians are failing to look at is the economics of the individual household. You cannot shut down the oil, gas, chemical, building materials, construction and related industries, and not pay attention to the jobs lost and the lives upended by such action. We have to realize that to the individual, the immediate harm is more important than the long-term harm. If we're going to care about the environment, then we have to find solutions that also care for the families that currently depend on industries that will have to change or be shut down. Failing to do that is denying the human suffering that will come from the loss of those jobs and the ability of people to provide for their families in their accustomed industries. If we can figure out how to transition affected people into new industries, then we can lessen their opposition to change. So yes, we need good, strong action in Washington to protect the environment and combat global warming, but we can’t do it without minimizing the suffering of people who depend on industries that must change.

Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are the primary sources of health insurance for lower-income people in Texas, covering more than 5 million residents. These programs accounted for $45.9 billion in spending during fiscal year 2021, of which 68% was paid by the federal government and 32% by the State. (https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/federalstate-share-of-spending/?dataView=1&currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D.) Texas has repeatedly refused to participate in Medicaid Expansion, which would provide coverage to another 1.7 million Texans at an additional cost of about $17 billion. However, 90% of this cost increase ($15.3 billion) would be picked up by Washington, with Texas footing the remaining $1.7 billion. (https://www.healthinsurance.org/medicaid/texas/) And much of Texas’ portion of the expansion cost would be offset by Medicaid-related savings in other state programs, plus extra federal money associated with the 90% match on expansion spending. (https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/new-incentive-for-states-to-adopt-the-aca-medicaid-expansion-implications-for-state-spending/) Looking at these facts, it’s a little difficult for a reasonable person to understand why some Republican leaders in Texas have resisted taking full advantage of Medicaid funding for more than a decade. Based on my personal research, the resistance is based on two things: an irrational, gut-level hostility to Obamacare and the people who created it, and a traditional rejection of anything that might seem like “socialized medicine,” or something that emerged from the New Deal nearly 90 years ago. On top of that is the reluctance of Texas leadership to expand a program that would allow the federal government more say over state government. These are moss-covered emotional relics, not the rational responses that Republicans need to make as we continue to lead Texas and America into a more sensible future. But if key state leaders continue to block Medicaid Expansion, there’s another way to improve healthcare delivery in Texas. If elected to the Senate, I will introduce new legislation that will allow the federal government to work directly with U.S. citizens to provide their Medicaid benefits. Applicants would apply for health coverage through the Obamacare exchange platform, while Medicaid staff would access IRS tax records to determine applicant eligibility and pay health care providers directly. Other advantages include: ·Texas and other states could shed the burdens of reviewing Medicaid applicants and paying benefits, while protecting their state sovereignty; ·Texans would get more of the services they need, including treatment for conditions that prevent them from working; ·Some citizens suffering from treatable physical or mental conditions would be able to go back to work, contributing to the state and local tax bases; ·With their health restored and jobs in hand, some would no longer need taxpayer-funded social programs such as food assistance, WIC, and subsidized transportation; ·Texas counties and cities would come under less pressure to build low-income housing; ·The combination of increased employment, less homelessness and smaller assistance programs would boost our state’s economy; ·Medicaid would cease being a tool for those in power at the state level. With this approach, the State of Texas would no longer need to meet its share of Medicaid, saving nearly $15 billion in the state budget. That money could be redirected to other needs, while opening the gates to the humanitarian health care so badly needed by so many Texans. But who would pick up Texas’ share of Medicaid costs? Under my proposed bill, Washington would assume that responsibility and could justifiably divert that amount from the defense budget. Why the defense budget? There are two reasons: 1. At least 71 percent of the 34 million Americans of prime military age (17 to 24) are ineligible for military service because of obesity, physical and mental health issues, lack of education and serious criminal records. Military recruiters are calling this deficiency a crisis that threatens America’s ability to defend itself (https://www.wpr.org/study-most-young-americans-arent-fit-military-service). 2. By providing health care for our most needy citizens, we ensure that our disadvantaged people feel their country cares about them and hasn’t abandoned them. But if we continue to marginalize and neglect large groups of our own people, we run the risk of creating ever-growing populations that have ever-decreasing loyalty to their country. If we want America to remain strong and prosperous throughout the 21st century, we must make a serious commitment to adequate health care for all Americans. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s directly tied to our national defense needs.

Josiah has written extensively about a guaranteed protectable right to healthcare. If you would like to read the full paper you can find that Here https://www.josiahingalls.com/post/a-right-to-healthcare-edition-of-a-bandaid-creates-its-own-wound

Congress has already passed a law requiring health care providers to list their prices for every procedure they offer, so patients can make more informed decisions when it comes to their health care. However this law can be improved by eliminating a loophole that allows medical providers to simply put “NA” if they don't usually provide that service. However it doesn't prevent them from providing that service anyway and charging an astronomical unforeseen fee for the procedure, effectively undermining the law’s protections. We also could go one step further by creating a national database of healthcare providers along with the procedures they offer, the price of each, and insurance policies they accept, all available on the Internet. This way, a patient could easily cross-reference a given procedure to every nearby provider – finding the least cost and promoting true open market competition in healthcare. This capability would shield many families from financial devastation by unnecessary medical costs.

I do not support repealing Obamacare. Unlike my opponent, I recognize that the time for that action is over. Too many Americans rely on Obamacare for their health insurance, and repealing it would create more harm than good. Yes, Obamacare is not perfect but we would be better off as a nation and as a Republican party to work at making it better instead of just trying to scrap it. In my opinion, the continuous effort to get rid of Obamacare in its entirety has nothing to do with helping the American people, and it's only a political ploy and pretty much a dead issue for the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans. I have asked before if we just abolish Obamacare, will we leave millions of Americans without health insurance until Congress can figure out what to replace it with? So instead of calling for repealing Obamacare, we should be asking how we can fix it. As a party we should be solution-centered instead of destruction-oriented. And frankly, any votes to get rid of Obamacare in its entirety do nothing but make us the party that wants to destroy. I believe any amount of time, money or effort aimed at repealing Obamacare only gives Democrats a tool to make Republicans look inhumane.

Congress first mandated the construction of a border fence in 1996 as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). IIRIRA called for the construction of a 14-mile, triple-layered fence along the border between San Diego and Tijuana. By 2004, only nine miles of fencing had been completed. As a result, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006. That legislation called for double-layered fencing along the border, augmented by manpower and technology, and directed by the Secretary of Homeland Security to construct “reinforced fencing along not fewer than 700 miles of the southwest border, in locations where fencing is deemed most practical and effective.” The project proceeded and in May 2011, the Department of Homeland Security reported completing 350 miles of pedestrian fencing and 299 miles of vehicle parries, for a total of 649 miles of physical obstacles. However, this total represented just half of the 700 miles of double-layered fencing mandated by the Secure Fence Act, while migrants on foot could simply walk around the 299 miles of vehicle barriers. By 2017, the border obstacles were being routinely climbed or circumvented. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported that both pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers were being defeated by various methods, such as using ramps to drive up and over vehicle barriers; climbing, jumping over, or cutting through pedestrian fencing; burrowing or tunneling underground. And even using small aircraft to fly over the border blockage. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure Fence Act of 2006]. During the 2016 election campaign, President-to-be Donald Trump proposed a wall across our entire southern border, consisting of 2,000 miles of hardened concrete, rebar and steel – much mor extensive than the fencing built under the 2006 act. On January 25, 2017, days after taking office, President Trump issued Executive Order 13767, directing construction of a U.S. border wall. Unfortunately, political realities limited its construction to just 52 miles of additional wall (where no barrier had existed before). In February 2021, newly elected President Joe Biden issued an Executive Order revoking the Trump construction mandate. In January 2023, House Republicans struck back by introducing the Finish the Wall Act (HB 336), but that legislation does not appear to be going anywhere as of this writing. I have not always been in favor of the border wall, but I’ve seen the harm that free trade has done to America’s workforce. Free trade has only benefitted powerful corporations and wealthy investors, while devastating the average American worker’s ability to earn good wages to provide for their family. Free trade also has disrupted Mexico’s farm economy while leading displaced Mexican laborers to cross the border illegally in search of work. So until the federal government reverses course on free trade, I believe a fully developed border wall will be necessary. I also believe we should immediately resume building the wall as proposed in 2006 and affirmed by President Trump and Republican leaders. But this time, we should augment the design with leading-edge technology, such as facial recognition software, cameras mounted on 20-foot poles, satellite uplinks, and solar energy sources. The result will be a strong barrier that will deter all but the most desperate illegal entrants.

The USA has been wrestling with illegal immigration issues for nearly a century. In the early 1900s, it wasn’t a crime to enter the country without authorization, although authorities could deport immigrants who hadn’t come through an official entry point. That changed in 1929, when Congress passed a law targeting Mexican migrants and making it a crime to cross the border without authorization. That law, Section 1325 of Title 8 in the U.S. Code, made unauthorized entry a federal crime for the first time in American history, punishable as a misdemeanor on the first offense and a felony on the second. Since then, Section 1325 has been applied at different levels of emphasis and is still in use. (https://www.history.com/news/illegal-border-crossing-usa-mexico-section-1325) Today, Texas is home to approximately 1.74 million unauthorized immigrants, representing 15% of the nation’s estimated total of 11.39 million. Nationally, this number expanded steadily from 3.5 million in 1990 through 2007, but leveled off to around the current total in the years that followed. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/646261/unauthorized-immigrant-population-in-the-us/). Free trade is one of the biggest reasons why we have had such an influx of undocumented people coming into Texas. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), coupled with generous U.S. subsidies to American farmers and big cuts in Mexico’s subsidies to their own growers, enabled U.S. agriculture to export corn and other grains to Mexico at prices much lower than Mexican farmers could compete with. As a result, Mexico lost nearly 1.3 million farm jobs from 1994 to 2004. https://www.thebalancemoney.com/disadvantages-of-nafta-3306273). And though NAFTA was replaced in 2020 by a new agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico (https://www.thebalancemoney.com/disadvantages-of-nafta-3306273#toc-mexicos-environment-deteriorated), the damage to Mexican agriculture was already done.

As a nation and as a state, we have an obligation to secure our border, but the wall is not a permanent solution, only a temporary bandage. We need to be focused on long-term solutions when it comes to the migrant crisis. We also need to put an end to separating children and parents who cross the border illegally. Congress should pass a law forbidding any U.S. agency or president from allowing such treatment of vulnerable people. Separating children from their parents and creating child detention centers is in my opinion a crime against humanity, unnecessarily doing large amounts of psychological harm to those families. We absolutely should be protecting migrants’ rights when they are in custody for being here illegally. We should always be mindful that we are respecting the human rights of these individuals according to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights). For too long, this country has preached about rights and freedom, but tramples all over people's human rights. If we as a nation and as a state are going to stand on the moral grounds of rights and freedom, then we must also recognize the rights of people not in a position to protect themselves from an overbearing government.

Josiah has written extensively about the US Armed Forces and their recruitment practices and policies. If you would like to read full paper you can find that Here