Senator John Cornyn

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
October 12, 2008

State Rep. Rick Noriega, who never misses an opportunity to inform potential voters of his military service as an Army National Guard commander, is undoubtedly sincere in his desire to afford Texans a choice in the U.S. Senate race in November.

Voters should know of Noriega's decision to serve his country in uniform and thank him for it. But that and sincerity don't make up for a lack of specificity on how the challenger to incumbent John Cornyn would pay for the litany of new federal programs he would support should voters elect him.

In the areas of education, healthcare and immigration reform, Noriega, 50, proposes new programs but doesn't provide for how much they would cost or how he would pay for them.

At the same time, the Houston lawmaker does not support a move to require the federal government to reimburse the states for the cost of educating the children of undocumented immigrants.

According to a 2005 report from the state comptroller's office, the cost of educating the estimated 151,000 undocumented children in Texas public schools was $957 million for the 2004-05 school year.

Republican Cornyn, who is seeking his second six-year term, believes that Texas taxpayers shouldn't be footing the bill for the federal government's negligence in addressing immigration, an issue that is a federal responsibility.

One of Noriega's main campaign tactics is to paint the former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court judge as walking in lockstep with President Bush, a popular stand at a time when the president's approval rating couldn't get lower if it were in a wagon-wheel rut.

While it is not unexpected that a conservative Republican senator from Texas would agree most of the time with a conservative Republican president from Texas, the state's junior senator did break with the administration on the important issue of open government.

Cornyn, 56, took his lifelong commitment to government transparency and public access to information with him to Washington and found a kindred spirit in Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. The two worked together for three years on passage of the Freedom of Information Reform Act, important changes that shed more light on government and expand Americans' right to know what's going on.

In his first term, Cornyn has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to reach across the aisle to work with key Democrats on issues such as enhanced housing benefits for military veterans, an accelerated citizenship process for noncitizens who serve in the military and a homeland security allocations process that distributes funds based on risk assessment rather than an equal share for every state. Let's face it: Idaho and Texas aren't equal when it comes to potential targets for terrorists.

Libertarian Yvonne Schick also is running.

Since his election to the Senate in 2002, Cornyn has disappointed on more than one occasion. His three votes in the fall of 2007 against renewing the Children's Health Insurance Program were wrong, and his flip-flop on the border fence bill - going from opposing the fence to supporting it - was troubling.

But his commitment to open government and his history of working with Democrats will be sorely needed in the next session, regardless of which party is in the White House.

The Star-Telegram recommends John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate.