Candidates talk issues

The five Republican congressional candidates for Texas District 17 answered questions in a forum addressing national and state issues in College Station Wednesday, in time for the March 2 primary.

"This election is not about me, it's about you and it's certainly not about enabling Washington to interfere with our lives even more," said College Station resident and candidate Timothy Delasandro, class of 1998. "I'm conservative Republican and I'm proud of that. What I'm not proud of is that those two terms have to be spelled out."

Candidates discussed positions on the $14 trillion national debt, healthcare reform, illegal immigration, abortion, taxes and the jobs bill passed by the Senate Wednesday.

"I would rather kill that bill and kill the stimulus bill passed last year and start over," said candidate Bill Flores, Class of 1976, in reference to the jobs bill. "I would stop [payroll taxes] for six months, lower income taxes and then let's see if we can get the economy going … By the end of that time period, we would have so much job creation we would start recouping part of the investment in job creation."

Running against Democrat Chet Edwards for the second time, candidate Rob Curnock set straight his stance on the Fair Tax.

"In the last election, Chet Edwards tried to beat me up unmercifully on that one and I was on record supporting the Fair Tax because I think we should be doing something like a national sales tax, so that, indeed, everyone is paying their fair share, such as drug dealers and prostitutes and pimps - whenever they buy something they're going to have to pay taxes and the rest of us aren't subsidizing them," Curnock said. "Edwards was trying to demagogue saying that I wanted to raise everybody's taxes 30 percent. That was the ad that you saw him running because quite honestly the numbers were getting closer in the last election and his internal polling showed that he was in trouble."

The forum centered on government limitation and reduced spending.

"We do take a serious look at cutting the size of government. When we do that, when we make the federal government smaller, we're going to explode our economy and these things are going to take care of themselves," Delasandro said. "But the last issue is the Federal Reserve. You know we can solve our issues with China over night, just have the Federal Reserve print a few more trillion dollars and pay them off and that seems to be the philosophy that's going on in Washington. I don't advocate that."

Though the Republican Party does not support the current health care bill, candidate Dave McIntyre said he believes reform is necessary.

"I would not favor a new or different health care bill. I would favor new or different healthcare bills," McIntyre said. "I am not in favor of trying to solve all of the bills of the United States, whatever challenges we have today, in a single bill. That's been part of our problem; it requires so many trade-offs. We have a number of individual issues to address, so let's address all of them individually."

All candidates said they opposed amnesty for illegal immigrant and government support of abortion.

"This next election is about something far greater than taxing and spending. It's about restoring our founding principles of individual liberty, free enterprise and a limited government that respects life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," said candidate Chuck Wilson. "As long as we cherish those things and our creator our future is bright."

Election information

Early voting ends Feb. 26. For a list of times and locations visit http://www.brazosvotes.org.