Cox hits conservative note with students

By JIM KOZUBEK, New Hampshire Union Leader, Jan. 24, 2007

MERRIMACK - Republican Presidential candidate John Cox stopped by Thomas More College yesterday to meet with students and outline positions he intends to bring to the Republican primary.

Cox, 51, swept onto campus at midday and attended a chapel Mass along with 20 students before retiring to a second-floor lecture room for a discussion on values and national policy.

Allison Novak, a freshman, asked Cox why he was running when Sen. Sam Brownback R-Kansas was already running on many of the same issues. And by the way, asked Novak, what had Cox been doing the last few years while Brownback was working in the Senate?

Cox said he was working in the private sector, taking care of his teenage daughters, and had political experience running for the Senate and serving as the president of the Cook County (Ill.) Republican Committee.

Teddy Sifert, a senior, asked Cox why he would not just support Brownback, and Cox responded that Brownback was part of a legislature that has approved what he termed obscene spending bills, run up a national debt to $9 trillion and was thereby guilty by association.

Cox said Republicans need to return to the original intent of the conservative movement that invokes fiscal responsibility.

The U.S. government needs to stop regulating and subsidizing agricultural, transportation, pharmaceutical and energy companies because it creates an artificial market for those products and services, he said.

The same goes for foreign competitors, he said, pointing to the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry in Canada that has increased the costs of prescription drugs in the United States where strict market controls on the pharmaceuticals do not apply.

Cox said he supports fair and free trade, and that he would take an active role in trade negotiations with foreign countries to ensure that international trade was conducted on a fair playing field for U.S. corporations.

The most ambitious plan that Cox has is to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and replace that system of taxation with a federal sales tax that could be as high as 23 percent.

Opponents of this plan say that it will lead to dramatic inequities among working and professional classes.

Cox has argued that the move would significantly reduce the cost of consumer goods that have corporate taxes built into their sale price, make capital more accessible to all and create an inflow of investment into the country that is unparalleled.