• Plank 37: Property Rights- Property ownership and free enterprise, the foundation of our collective wealth, must not be abridged nor denied by government. We support legislation to protect these bedrock rights. Areas of concern are: annexation, eminent domain (including foreign entities), property forfeiture, extraterritorial jurisdiction, seizure for public or private development, natural resources and conservation easements, groundwater and/or mineral rights, nationalization of lands, and the preservation of our 4th Amendment right to privacy. Property owners should be notified of their rights with regard to condemnation, annexation, or easement; and the condemner should be required to petition a court of jurisdiction to show public necessity. Taking of property should result in immediate compensation of fair market value to the owner. These issues should be administered by elected officials accountable to voters.
  • Plank 59: Fair Election Procedures- We support modifications and the strengthening of election laws to ensure ballot integrity and fair elections. We support the Secretary of State strictly enforcing printing of Results Tapes for electronic voting for early voting and Election Day at polling locations after the polls close for all counties. We support increased scrutiny and security in balloting by mail, prohibition of internet voting and any electronic voting lacking a verifiable paper trail, prohibition of mobile voting, prosecution for election fraud with jail sentences, repeal of the unconstitutional Help America Vote Act, and assurance that each polling place has a distinctly marked, where possible, separate locations for Republican and Democrat primary voting. We support all means of protecting the integrity of our elections, including the optional use of paper ballots. We oppose county-wide polling locations due to heightened potential for fraud.
  • Plank 87: Gender Identity- We urge the enactment of legislation addressing individuals’ use of bathrooms, showers and locker rooms that correspond with their biologically determined sex.
  • Plank 91: Funding- We support the elimination of public funding or the use of public facilities to advocate, perform, or support elective abortions, embryonic stem cell research, research on fetal tissue, or human cloning.
  • Plank 100: Patient Protection- We support patients’ rights, especially near the end of life, and call for reform of existing legislation so that: 1. Texas law should provide that medical personnel may not deny care, change advanced directives, or originate directives for any patient without the permission of the patient or the patient’s designate. 2. No “Do Not Resuscitate” order may be ordered for a patient without his/her own or family’s knowledge and consent; 3. We also support the passage of legislation to amend the Advance Directive Act by requiring hospitals intending or threatening to withdraw life-sustaining treatment against the patient’s wishes or their advance directive to continue all treatment and care for such patients pending transfer to another facility.
  • Plank 120: Funding- We support a simple, fair, and efficient method for financing our public school system. School districts that have an adequate tax base should be free to manage their finances without any state recapture of local funds. Those districts that do not have sufficient tax base should be provided resources from general state revenues to meet the Texas Constitution’s requirement of an efficient system of public free schools.
  • Plank 147: SCHOOL CHOICE – We believe that all children should have access to quality education. We support the right to choose public, private, charter, or home education. We support the distribution of educational funds in a manner that they follow the student to any school, whether public, private, charter, or home school through means of tax exemptions and/or credits.
  • Plank 167: Spending Limitations- Amend the Texas Constitution and state statute with a stricter spending limitation based on population growth and inflation, and apply the new limit to all General Revenue and General Revenue-dedicated state spending.
  • Plank 175: Tax Burden- We in the Republican Party of Texas believe in the principles of constitutionally limited government based on Federalist principles. To this end we encourage our elected officials at all levels of government to work to reverse the current trend of expanding government and the growing tax and debt burdens this places on we the people. We believe the most equitable system of taxation is one based on consumption and wish to see reforms towards that end at all levels of government Furthermore, we believe that the borrower truly is a slave to the lender, and so long as we continue to increase our tax and debt burdens we will never be a truly free people. Towards these ends, we support the reformation of the current systems of taxation at all levels of government: federal, state, and local. Examples of these reforms include the following: 1. Eliminating the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 2. The “Fair Tax” system 3. A Flat Tax 4. The 1-2-3 No Federal Tax 5. Abolishing property taxes, but in the interim, property taxes should be paid on the price of the property when it was initially purchased. 6. Electing appraisal boards 7. Exempting inventories from property taxes 8. Abolishing estate taxes or the “Death Tax” as it’s more commonly known
    9. Abolishing capital gains taxes 10. Abolishing franchise and business income taxes 11. Abolishing the gift tax.12. Discontinuing revenue generating licensing fee
  • Plank 197: Right to Work- We oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (Card Check) and any action that eliminates the secret ballot or requires an employee to be forced to join or pay dues to any organization. Texas should prohibit governmental entities from collecting dues for labor union dues through deductions from public employee pay checks. We also encourage the adoption of a National Right to Work Act.