This is a short paper and your choice of topic needs to reflect this. Try not to pick a topic like welfare reform, you won't be able to do justice to the topic. Think smaller, and perhaps, locally. If I were doing this paper my topic would be recycling in Corpus Christi. Feel free, however, to work on state problems, such as what to do about air quality in Houston, for example.
Any paper needs to have a thesis, an argument.
A thesis is the point of the paper and is used to move the argument forward. It is the one point you are going to prove, defend or illustrate. Thesis are assertions worth discussing, or arguments having more than one solution. For instance, if I were doing this paper, keeping in mind that my topic is recycling in Corpus, I might want to make an argument that if the program is not recovering its costs, then it should be cut. At this point I would look to see what is going on with the program.