Doug Truax: Candidate Profile

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Note: Answers provided have not been edited for grammar, misspellings or typos. In some instances, candidate claims that could not be immediately verified have been omitted. Jump to:BioQA Bio City: Downers GroveWebsite: dougtruax.comOffice sought: Senate Age: 43Family: My wife Nicole and I have been married for 21 years and we have a 16 year old son, a 15 year old son, and 13 year old daughter.Occupation: Business owner. We specialize in helping mid-size companies manage their medical insurance and other employee benefit programs.Education: BS General Engineering from USMA, West PointCertified Employee Benefit Specialist, The Wharton School of Business, University of PennsylvaniaCivic involvement: Immediate Past Chair of Almost Home Kids, Naperville and ChicagoVice Chair, CareNet of DupageElected offices held: None.Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain: No.Questions Answers Why are you running for this office? Is there a particular issue that motivates you, and if so, what is that?As a former West Point and Army Ranger school grad and Army veteran, I have always believed in public service. What specifically motivated me to run for U.S. Senate was the way Democrats made Obamacare the law of the land on a partisan procedural maneuver on Christmas Eve, 2009.At that moment, I decided I couldn't stand on the sidelines any longer complaining about Washington. I needed to get into the ring and fight for the America I believe in, the one that our Founding Fathers and so many others risked or gave their lives to create and preserve.I'm running because I believe the current leadership in Washington and Illinois has let us all down. While it purports to help the poor and the middle class, the policies undertaken have done the opposite. We are stuck in an endless loop of ideological failure when it comes to our economy, education, our transportation system and energy.Our unprecedented debt and record spending, combined with runaway regulation is strangling our future. Technological advancements in medicine, transportation and energy give us reason to hope for a brighter future, but we need leaders who are not stuck in a 1960s time warp that believes government is the driver for all goodness in our country.We need leaders who believe as the Founding Fathers did that the true greatness of America is found in its people and their resourcefulness and that government, while necessary, can be a detriment if allowed to grow too large.What differentiates you most from your opponents in the race?The incumbent in this race has been in politics nearly his entire adult life and continues to rely on tired ideas and philosophies that have failed repeatedly in the public arena. Yet, the incumbent continues to advocate those same failed policies with a curious disconnection to the results.He has rarely met a program, a spending plan, a tax or a regulation that he hasn't embraced and enthusiastically supported.My primary opponent has not been in public office as long, but not for lack of trying. He has lost five major elections in the last 11 years and has "reinvented" himself several times along the way.I have little in common with either one of them. I have a military background, have never held public office and believe the ways of Washington and Springfield must change dramatically if we are to get our state and country back on track.I believe in results. I have little use for flowery words and good intentions that produce bad results for people. We must break the cycle of sound bite politics that drives our public policy toward policies that have surface appeal but produce the opposite results.We must break with the past and my two opponents are less likely to see that dynamic and are more likely to favor policy prescriptions that don't work well for Illinois families. I will be open-minded toward new thinking and new policies that break free from the old left-right paradigms.Do you favor measures included in Senate Bill 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013? Specifically, which segments do you support, if any, and which segments do you oppose, if any?I am very wary of any "comprehensive" legislation in Washington. The last attempt at health care reform was the disaster we are facing today known as Obamacare. Senate Bill 744 is a monstrosity of more than 800 pages that would take weeks to adequately analyze.I am in favor of a more logical, piecemeal approach to immigration reform.As someone who grew up in a border state, 30 miles from Mexico, I believe we must first secure our border in order to address the immigration problem. This, I'm convinced, can be done. We must then go about providing a pathway for legal immigration that is business friendly and doesn't disadvantage those already in line for citizenship. I believe in the rule of law and we shouldn't violate that in order to help someone's political agenda.I am confident with strong, honest leadership in Washington we can reform our immigration system in an effective way.Do you support moving ahead with the Affordable Care Act? Why or why not? Which parts of the law, if any, would you change?I do not favor moving forward with Obamacare. Its hasty, partisanconstruction is the reason I got into this race. The reason we shouldmove to repeal and replace Obamacare has nothing to do with partisanship â#128;#148; it is because this regulatory behemoth has no chance of working correctly or helping the American people overall. The net effect is that will hurt the American people quite dramatically.The very reason that it won't work is that Democrats ramrodded itthrough without any Republican votes. It is an ideological train wreck.During this campaign so far, I have spoken regularly about Obamacare and have outlined in detail what I think is wrong with it and how it couldhave been constructed had the Democrats been willing to compromise.To fix the pre-existing condition problem, we should give carriers theability to contract on a multi-year basis with individuals and smallgroups, and we should give stop loss insurance carriers that providecatastrophic coverage the ability to purchase high level stop loss from the federal government for certain pre-existing conditions.To get care to those without insurance, we could solve this problem at afraction of the cost of Obamacare by building clinics in areas wheremost uninsured live and allow young doctors to work there in order topay off student loans or allow older, semi-retired doctors to help out.To reduce costs, we should allow for the purchase of individual andsmall group fully insured products across state lines.All these solutions would solve the problems Obamacare purports to solve at a fraction of the cost and bureaucracy.What specifically would you do to end gridlock and partisan infighting in Congress and promote cooperative problem-solving?I believe a big part of the Washington problem stems from 1600Pennsylvania Ave. While we have three equal branches of government, the President has the ability to set the agenda for the country.This President, with the willing help of our incumbent senator, has beenthe most partisan Chief Executive in my lifetime. At every step of theway, he sought to divide, rather than bring people together. Heconsistently demonizes his opponents and even private citizens, and our incumbent senator is a ready and willing participant in the name calling and demonization.Obamacare, passed with zero Republican votes, is concrete evidence ofthis.As I stated above, I am results-driven and a problem solver. I willsupport any policies that help the American people that are consistentwith our Founding principles. My solutions won't often mirror liberalDemocratic solutions â#128;#148; not because they are Democratic in origin butrather because data says they don't work.I will strongly advocate for policies that help taxpayers, the poor andthe middle class. Rather than settle for solutions that will not helpthose Americans, I will push hard to explain and advance policies thatdo work.Unlike our incumbent, I will not become the foot soldier for failedpolicies while my state continues to suffer under a stagnant economy and a labyrinth of unneeded regulations.I will explain why my policies will work and unlike our current senatorI won't look to demonize the other party at every turn withinflammatory and misleading rhetoric.On what issues would you break with your party, or have you broken with your party, and why?Since I haven't been in public office, I have no examples of breakingwith my own party. However, I am an admirer of former U.S. Sen. PeterFitzgerald, who wasn't afraid to tell his own party they were headedin a bad direction.Fitzgerald even called out the governor of his own party when hebelieved he was making corrupt or unethical decisions. By contrast, ourincumbent senator was silent as a lamb when a corrupt governor of hisown party plundered our state's finances and ethical reputation. Evenwhen it was known that the governor was under multiple federalinvestigations, our current senator endorsed him for re-election.I will not be like our current senator. If I see and hear aboutcorruption or other acts of malfeasance in my own party, I will point itout when necessary. I won't hesitate to break with my own party if itoverspends or otherwise wastes taxpayer dollars. Too many Republicanswere silent during some of the spending abuses during the lastadministration.What should the U.S. Senate do, and what specifically will you do, to avoid another government shutdown crisis?As stated above, partisanship in Washington starts at the top. Thegovernment shutdown crisis is the outgrowth of a politics drivenPresident who has no interest in working with Congress or Republicans.The best way to avoid a government shutdown is for leaders in Washington to focus on their jobs, not politics. Democrats who controlled the U.S. Senate went four years without passing a budget because it didn't want to expose its policy choices to the American people. That was shameful.Nobody is seeking to shut down the government. I am running because I am trying to reform government to make it work for the American people, not against them.My agenda will be to improve and reform government, not shut it down. Iwill focus on my job, not politics. If that approach is taken by allmembers of Congress, there will be no government shutdowns.What is your approach to presidential appointments? Should a president largely be able to appoint the people he wants or should a senator be persistent in blocking picks he disagrees with?My philosophy is that the President should be given greater deference onhis/her cabinet picks than judicial nominees. Presidents need a goodteam to help run the Executive Branch and those picks out to be largelybe accepted as long as they are ethically sound and professionallyqualified.Judicial nominees are for lifetime positions and thus should be given anadditional level of scrutiny. Our Constitution provides that thePresident makes judicial nominations with the the "advice andconsent" of the U.S. Senate. I will take that Constitutional dutyseriously no matter what party the President is from.Should federal spending cuts known as the sequester be continued in their current form? Why or why not? Where specifically would you cut the federal budget, if any? What areas would you exempt from cuts?The sequester cuts were never the best systematic way to cut government spending. With that caveat, the sequester accomplished what Congress had previously been unable to do â#128;#148; make modest cuts in the rate of growth in federal spending.The federal budget is far too big as legislators have been spendingmoney we don't have for many years. We need to get serious aboutscaling back our agencies and our entitlements.One place I'd start is our regulatory agencies, which only grow andnever recede once a regulation has done its job or outlived itsusefulness. One recent estimate said it cost $1.8 trillion this year tomerely implement federal regulations. That figure is the same as all thespending in the federal budget in the 1990s. We need to figure out sometype of sunsetting provision on regulations to stop the out-of-controlgrowth of abusive and unneeded meddling with our economy.We need to stop the crony capitalism that has invaded every corner ofour federal government. The trend of micromanaging the economy has given rise to picking winners and losers, which distorts the economy andcorrupts the process.As someone with a strong military background, I believe a strongmilitary serves as a peace dividend and costs us much less in the longrun. As such, it should be a core function of our federal government.However, military spending should never be above scrutiny and there'sclearly lots of waste, fraud and abuse there that needs to eliminated.We need to infuse Congress with the notion that a dollar wasted anywhere takes a dollar away from our true priorities. I will treat taxpayer dollars as precious and seek to usher in a new era of fiscal discipline in Washington.How would you vote on cutting Social Security and/or Medicare?We need to reform Social Security and Medicare to ensure their long-term viability. That is the undeniable truth and any politician who tells you otherwise is pandering.This is an issue of such importance and sensitivity that it truly needsa bi-partisan solution to have the confidence of the American people.One of the main reasons Obamacare is widely disrespected by the publicis because it was crafted by one political party with little input fromthe other.There are many bi-partisan solutions available for both Social Securityand Medicare, including raising threshold age requirements, meanstesting, and, in the case of Social Security, allowing young people morechoices in investing their hard-earned money.I will work hard with colleagues of both parties to ensure the long-termsuccess of both programs and will refrain from political demonizationthat sadly too often has characterized these debates.Finally, is there anything we haven't asked about that you feel we should know?I am optimistic about the future of America. I believe our best days areahead and that we are on a verge of exciting new breakthroughs inmedicine, energy, transportation and technology. These breakthroughs are being created by wonderfully talented and hard-working men and women trying to make our nation better than ever. I am excited about this and realize the challenge ahead of us is to redesign our government to be equal in wisdom and foresight with these pioneers of the future.We can continue to live in the past ideologies that characterize ourpolitical and policy debates today, or we can look forward and figureout smart, lean policies that allow these breakthroughs to occur, ratherthan stifling them.As a U.S. Senator, I will side with those who want to remake ourgovernment for the better rather than continuing to fight over oldground and the failed policies of the past.