The Trib asked all Republican candidates for U.S. Congress in District 17 to answer several questions succinctly. Their answers to three of the questions are below, slightly abridged. Others will be published at wacotrib.com this week.

The victor of the March 2 primary election faces U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards in November.

Q Considering recent projections showing budget deficits soaring in the coming years, how as a representative would you handle spending requests from cities, counties and school districts in the 17th Congressional District seeking federal dollars for local projects?

Rob Curnock: One of the most important things Congress must do to rein in deficit spending is stop the earmarks. Legitimate projects that need federal funding should go through a normal legislative review and face an up-or-down vote on their own; they should not be tacked on to unrelated bills and used as leverage to secure votes on other matters. I will fight for funding for projects within the district, but I will not seek special earmarked funding in exchange for my vote in Congress.

Timothy Delasandro: I believe that government should happen at the most local level possible. Your First Amendment gives you the right to petition government for redress of grievance. That means government must be local enough to listen and/or care about your concerns. If we kept our money in Central Texas in the first place, we’d have the money for these projects and they’d be governed by local committees and local leaders, ensuring that our values and priorities are best realized. I have a plan on my Web site how we can eliminate pork/earmarks. Washington can only do for you by first taking from you. It’s time to focus not on what Washington can do for us, but on preventing the federal government from doing to us in the first place.

Bill Flores: The appropriations, earmarking and budgeting processes in Washington are broken. In the past several years, the use of earmarks has exploded. This explosion has contributed to a culture of corruption, vote-trading, and back-room deals at the expense of the American people.  We must end the practice of earmarking. Americans deserve a more transparent budgeting and appropriations process in Washington. These processes must ensure that all of the nation’s vital needs, including local needs, are appropriately funded in an open and transparent manner. We must also drastically cut out-of-control federal spending and focus on expanding our economy. By doing these things, we can dramatically cut the deficit and more of our tax dollars will stay here in the state of Texas to be used in the manner that we, our families, and our communities choose. By creating jobs and reducing deficit spending, we will create a better economic environment that will also help increase local tax revenues to help meet the needs of our communities.

Dave McIntyre: The main source of deficits is entitlements. Congressman Joe Barton has suggested funding “earned entitlements” (where people paid in, like Social Security and military retirement), while reducing “unearned entitlements” (like free cell phones and social programs supporting special interests like ACORN). I support this. Second, distinguish between earmarks (which are “wish lists” for a few well-connected locals) and legitimate needs funded by traditional departmental appropriations.  I support eliminating earmarks. Last, align legitimate city/county/district needs against valid traditional appropriations and aggressively support valid projects. This legitimate funding will also be reduced in tight budget times, so our congressman will have to be creative in pursuing legitimate interests. For example, medical facilities in Waco, Temple and Fort Hood offer the seeds of an emergency medical complex for Homeland Security events like earthquakes and terrorist attacks. I support the development of a “trauma complex” and the road and air network to support it as a legitimate national need and appropriation — not as an “earmark” or grant. Address Interstate 35 funding as a security issue for evacuating cities, not as just a local grant for roads.

Chuck Wilson: Pork is no substitute for policy. Because of constituent concerns about the fiscal irresponsibility of the current Congress, I pledge to refuse earmarks and work for line item budget funding to meet local needs. I believe local officials understand current budgetary constraints and that all but the most pressing problems will have to wait for better economic and fiscal conditions. Actual or looming water and transportation problems exist throughout this district that have long been ignored by Chet Edwards. Water quality issues remain unaddressed in Hood, Hill and McLennan counties, while water supply concerns exist in Johnson and Brazos counties. Over 1,500 people a day move into Texas, yet we do not have a single new reservoir permitted for this district to ensure that we have the water resources to meet anticipated demand. Chet has done little to help Johnson and Hood counties meet pressing transportation problems. I-35 is a vital resource, yet it has the same two lanes through much of the district that were first laid 50 years ago.

Q What changes do you recommend for Social Security and Medicare, which some fear are headed toward insolvency?

Curnock: Future growth in these programs will create an enormous debt burden on our country. We must begin immediately to find solutions that reduce the costs to government while providing value to workers paying into these systems today. In both cases, I believe private markets hold the answer. We must respect the contribution our retirees have made into the Social Security system and keep promises we have made to them. But we also must provide options for workers at any stage in the process who want more direct control over their retirement by giving them the choice of individual accounts that they can manage. We need to begin moving people from Medicare to private insurance through targeted tax credits and limited direct subsidies. This should be a ramp-up process, with targets each year to move groups out of the federal system into the private insurance market. The federal government should provide limited assistance to private insurers who create effective policies to address the health needs of this aging population. I believe private competition is the best way to both costs low and provide better value to patients and doctors.

Delasandro: Social Security and Medicare are unfunded liabilities destined to fail if we do not address them — and soon. Your Social Security trustees have said as much for over a decade. I’ve spoken with thousands of citizens in this district under age 40 and have yet to meet one who believes that they’ll ever see a Social Security check. That should be a shrieking alarm about the long-term confidence of these programs. On my Web site, TimothyForCongress.com, under positions, I outline a plan to restore security to Social Security. The problem is inter-generational, and so will be the solutions. We must transit these programs to real savings programs and not simply payment transfers from one generation to another. The current system worked when there were 17 workers per retirees. Now that ratio is 3:1 and will soon by 2:1. Your congressman must have the courage to address Social Security. Failure to do so is the real danger.

Flores: First and foremost, our country must meet the obligations that have been made to those in their retirement years and those about to retire. That said, we must recognize that almost all of our entitlement programs were created with bad underlying assumptions, and they have become unsustainable in their current forms. The most important things we can do right now to improve the financial solvency of these programs are (1) to grow the U.S. economy by creating jobs and (2) to stop deficit spending. Another way to help these programs is to immediately start working on domestic energy security. If over the past 10 years we had been able to cut just half the money we sent overseas to purchase oil and natural gas, we would have saved hundreds of billions of dollars. That money would have helped create jobs, grown our tax base, funded our federal budget and improved the financial health of these programs. We must get serious and immediately fix these programs. If we don’t, we will leave our children with a terrible legacy.

McIntyre: We must accept tradeoffs to keep the programs we value most. More people are taking out of Social Security than are putting in. In fact, some are taking out LOTS when they did not put in ANYTHING. Here is reality: SS has become a retirement program. A big leap toward solvency would be taking all non-retirement payments out of SS and letting them compete for general welfare funding. For example, if we want to keep disability funding, then find some less useful program to cut. With Medicare, Congress has promised way more care than we want to pay for, so they bully doctors into accepting much less than they deserve for services. We can’t increase care by cheating doctors and hospitals much longer. One solution might be to create local medical care “units” to respond to major emergencies when needed (like earthquakes or hurricanes), but keep their skills sharp on a daily basis by treating the non-paying Medicare patients currently forced on hospitals. This is not free. But if we want to save Medicare and Social Security then we need to find new ways to organize them, and new ways to fund them, by killing off less desirable programs.

Wilson: Promises have been made to seniors and it is not appropriate to change the rules of the game when they are already in retirement. That said, both entitlement programs are facing severe actuarial pressure. Young and middle-aged Americans, who are paying for the entitlements of today’s seniors, must have confidence in retirement programs that will attend to their future needs. As is the case with health care reform, increased individual responsibility should be a prime goal in future policy reforms. Regarding Medicare: In the short term, we must enact policies that seek to increase competition as a cost solving mechanism, increase patient responsibility for health care, increase incentives for less care, and reform the arbitrary nature of the Sustained Growth Rate mechanism as a cost management tool. Social Security: Automatic enrollment in individual retirement accounts for individuals without company sponsored plans will be an important part of transitioning future generations to individually owned retirement plans. In the interim, we will need to index retirement age to life expectancy and ensure that benefits are targeted to the neediest retirees.

Q We’re still recovering from the collapse of our financial system. Some people blame lax regulation. What level of regulation do you feel is appropriate for Wall Street?

Curnock: We have had good laws in place to regulate our financial sector just as we have in other areas. As we identify areas where people have broken laws, we need to hold them accountable for that. I do not believe the government needs to step in and regulate the day-to-day activities of banks, investment firms or other financial institutions. We should make sure these organizations are operating with transparency to their stockholders and those who have invested with them, and we should also expect investors to do their own homework before buying into a new opportunity. Let’s be clear: The root cause of our financial crisis isn’t mismanagement on Wall Street. It’s government intrusion into the housing sector, pressuring lenders to make subprime loans to those who would not otherwise qualify. When the government enters a market it tips the scales in ways that prevent the private sector from working as it should, and the long-term consequences can be disastrous.

Delasandro: The current problems stem from a series of government influences on the market. The community reinvestment act, reckless guarantees by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and low interest rates combined to create a false market for securities that were not secure. Left to their own devices, mortgage companies for decades routinely required 20 percent down to buy a home. To quote our illustrious president, these kinds of mortgages insured that the homeowner had “skin in the game.” No-money-down, interest-only, balloon mortgage liar loans did put more people into homes but did not secure those homes by real assets. These loans could only have been made because so many of them were backed by Freddie and Fannie with their implied “full faith and credit of the United States.” Too big to fail is socialist construct. Too big to fail must also mean, too small to be successful. I trust the market — when the government keeps its hands off the scales. The risk/reward of business works, but only if Congress doesn’t eliminate the risks as it also bails out the losers.

Flores: In many ways, our financial collapse can be traced back to bad legislative mandates forced on banks as well as Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac by liberal congressional policymakers such as Barney Frank. These mandates helped create the housing bubble by requiring lending to people who could not afford the mortgages they were receiving. This bubble, in turn, contributed to government negligence in the regulation of these lending activities and secondary mortgage market activities.  In addition, the focus of many Wall Street financial firms on big payouts caused them to create complex financial instruments to take advantage of the rapidly expanding mortgage markets. We now know many of these derivatives were little more than casino-style, Ponzi-type schemes. I will not support bailouts for institutions whose greed, incompetence or corruption caused them to fail. Also, I will not support continuance of laws and regulations that allow our economy, our taxpayers and our financial future to be put at risk by Wall Street gambling or by any government mandate which encourages such activity.  Finally, I want all recovered TARP funds immediately applied to reducing the deficit.

McIntyre: Yes, lax regulation was one problem.  So was greed. So was dishonesty. But the biggest single problem was that Congress failed at oversight. The world of finance is changing constantly and people are creative at getting around existing laws and regulations.  So laws and regulations must adjust constantly. Otherwise they err on one side by choking off innovation, another by failing to control risks. The key player in this dance between prevention of irresponsible behavior and promotion of free market innovation is Congress. Every regulatory agency is empowered and funded by Congress. Yet Congress was not just asleep at the switch before the recent real estate bubble and market meltdown. Congress was driving the train — encouraging bad loans, papering over concerns about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, misdirecting auditors and even the American public. And all the while, key legislators were taking huge donations from precisely the lobbyists, firms and industries they were supposed to be watching. The right solution is not perfect regulation but continuing oversight — of industry by Congress — and of Congress by the people.

Wilson: We clearly did not have adequate regulation on parts of our financial sector. Unfortunately, Congress is punishing parts of our financial sector which did not contribute to recent problems, while at the same time leaving our markets exposed to the same issues which created the problem.  Here are urgent needs that Chet Edwards is ignoring. 1. Stop the regulatory onslaught punishing local banks for the sins of the mega-banks. 2. Stop policy support for subprime lending by tightening underwriting standards in secondary mortgage markets and privatizing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as soon as practicable. 3. Add a new bankruptcy chapter for “too big to fail” companies and prohibit direct use of taxpayer money in restructuring efforts. 4. Employ capital requirements to ensure that non-bank financial companies cannot pose a risk to the financial system. 5. Create a small Resolution Trust office within the Department of Treasury to model the health of the financial system, spot potential problems, propose preventive policy responses, and be prepared for timely intervention. We must learn the lessons of the financial panic of 2008-09 and enact appropriate preventive reforms. It will take new congressional leadership to make that happen.