Tony Zirkle for Congress

SOUTH BEND — Luke Puckett says the American health care system needs to be overhauled; military commanders in Iraq need to be able to run the war without interference from bureaucrats in Washington; and strict measures need to be taken to secure the nation’s borders.

The 38-year-old Goshen resident kicked off his campaign this week for the Republican nomination for 2nd District congressman. He will face Tony Zirkle in the May 6 primary, and the winner will face incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly in the fall.

During a press conference Tuesday at GOP headquarters in South Bend, Puckett outlined the key planks of his platform.

On health care, he said the nation needs a free-market approach to make affordable care available to every American who wants and needs it. We can do that, he said, by expanding care beyond the state’s four borders in order to drive competition up and costs down.

We also need to put an end, Puckett said, to frivolous lawsuits that give extraordinary awards to plaintiffs, thus driving up the health care costs for everyone.

On illegal immigrants, Puckett said, we need to enforce the laws already on the books and take additional steps to secure our borders against illegal entry. He supports doubling or tripling the number of border guards, he said, as well as high-tech security measures to keep illegals out.

Puckett said he wants to bring American troops home from Iraq, but only when the job over there is finished. A large part of the problem with the war, he said, is that it is being directed by people in Washington instead of military leaders on the front. He said he would change that.

Zirkle Comments:

Hopefully, Luke Puckett will be the first candidate to debate me in my 8 years of campaigning.  I'm concerned that because he has the support of the party leadership, he will think he can sail through the primary by keeping a low profile, and he probably can because only he will get the invitations to speak at all of the Republican events, and with low votor turn-out, that may be all he needs. 

However, if he waits until October to campaign, the public will be consumed with the presidential election, and he'll never get the name recognition he needs or his ideas sufficiently disseminated in order to beat Donnelly, who clearly has a substantial advantage in both money and name recognition at this juncture.

1.  Health care.  It's important that we address this issue, and Puckett deserves commendation.  However, it's not absolutely clear that the free market is the answer to every situation.  All economists agree that some industries represent what is called a "natural monopoly."  We have socialized medicine for those over 65, those under 19 who have low income and for our veterans.  The best medical care I ever received was probably in the military.  Republicans will not sway voters with hackneyed mantras of "less government" and "more free market" without evidence when the free market has failed for at least the 47 or so million uninsured and the masses who file bankruptcy and get divorce in substantial part because of medical bills.  I can also state that I have personally observed a massive amount of attorney time and talent wasted on bickering over who pays medical bills.

My view is that we can not afford universal health care even though there is an increasing public outcry for it unless and until we address the social issues that directly attack the family and that are taxing us 1/2 to death.

2.  Iraq.  Puckett has addressed another important issue and he gets credit again.  However, I can't find a Web site for him where he outlines his Iraq policy other than to support the official Republican position.  If Uncle Sam knocked on our doors and asked us to write a check for Iraq for our fair share, how many of us would write that check?  The estimates I have heard for the cost of Iraq is somewhere between $500,000,000 and $2,000,000,000.  That's twice the entire nation's credit card debt!  If we continue to let the terrorists economically bleed us, we may be less able to fight future wars and conflicts. 

We have succeeded in our original mission of regime change.  We found Hussein and the Iraqis hung him.  I understand that we broke it and we need to fix it, but at some point, you have to push a bird out of the nest if he is to learn to fly.  Make no mistake, going to Iraq was a noble endeavor.  Freeing a repressed people and giving them the chance at liberty was and is honorable.  Sen. Obama is naively dead wrong on his point that we never should have gone; although if I were President Bush, I would have agreed to Hussein's call for a debate.  We very likely would have had much more international support.  However, at some point very soon, we need to begin bringing our troops home.  I understand we want to "win" there, but noone has yet defined what that means.  Perhaps we can announce that we will pull out of one city each week beginning in the north and for every terrorist attack, we will delay the next city pull-out for another week.  That way every time Al-Qaeda bombs a marketplace, the Iraqi people will blame Al-Qaeda for us delaying our departure.

3.  Frivolous lawsuits.  I haven't seen the evidence that frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits are a substantial cost factor in health care.  There are a few butchers out there and the 7th Amendment gives, in federal cases, the right to a jury trial for claims over $20.  If a doctor screws up and kills your family member, do you want the government saying that his or her life is only worth $50,000 for example?  Calling for more regulation of injury cases is not consistent with other republican positions of less regulation.

States often have similar jury trial constitutional rights.  In my personal experience, it is very, very difficult to get any attorney to take a medical malpractice case because they are so very expensive to handle for a law firm which typically upfronts the money and because hired experts are almost always necessary.  Every state also has provisions for frivolous actions that require plaintiffs to pay the defense attorney fees if an action is found to be frivolous.  In Indiana, no one can even sue a medical provider before first going to a 3 panel medical review panel.

4.  Immigration.  I still maintain that a focus on the border only is not going to solve the problem.  We have to give local law enforcement concurrent jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws.  Nothing else will solve the problem.  Almost anyone from a friendly nation can get a visitors visa and cross the border and just stay indefinitely unless they commit and are convicted of a deportable felony.  We need an internal policy and not just a border policy.

Tony Zirkle
317 658-0107
Campaign2008@tonyzirkle.com