US Senate & US House Candidates: Your VFW VA Audio Forum Invitation

The Department of Virginia Veterans of Foreign Wars and their collective 43,000 plus members are extending this open invitation to the Virginia Senate and Virginia House Candidates to participate in the

VFW VA
2006 Election
Audio Forums

These neutral, non-partisan, not-for-profit forums are part of  an ongoing effort to engage our membership, our deployed military community and our state's voters in the democratic process .

The Department of Virginia will be asking questions of the Candidates on behalf of our membership over the course of the 2006 Elections.
 
Candidates are asked to take the oppurtunity to personally reply via phone to the following questions.

1. What is your position on establishing a budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs as a separate and independent budget from all other government budgets?

2. How would you ensure that the Department of Veterans Affairs receives sufficient funding to consistently provide for the Health Care and Benefits of our nations military and retirees?

3. Women are an important part of our military. What do you think should be the role of women serving in combat?

4. How would you ensure that Congress authorizes and fully funds legislation that allows all disabled military retirees (regardless of percentage of disability) to receive their full military retirement  pay and disability compensation without offset?

5. Our Active Duty, Reserves and National Guard are assigned to duties throughout the world.  Many units have been required to do multiple assignments in hazardous areas. What would you do to ease the current burdens on our troops?

6. Veteran's service organizations provide veterans, their dependents and survivors aid in the preparation and prosecution of claims for benefits free of charge. Few, if any, require the assistance of a lawyer. What is your position on permitting private for profit attorneys to practice at the initial claim level in the VA regional offices and be paid from the earned benefits of the men and women who served our country?

• Candidates need never be in the same place at the same time to participate.
• Candidates will be provided with a phone number and personal access code.
• Candidates can record their responses from anywhere home, office, car, the campaign trail.
• Candidates will be provided 90 seconds for their responses.
• Candidates will have an oppurtunity to review and record their responses as many times as they wish.
• Candidates responses will be posted in the order they are received with no editing.
• Candidates content will be donated to the public domain through the Internet Archive after the Election.

For more information or to request your phone number and pin to participate, e-mail choicesofdemocracy@gmail.com or call (540) 886-8112

Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to your support.