Readership of the RAO Bulletin I estimate has grown to over 400 thousand veterans. I send it to over 40 thousand email addees of which many are points of contact for fraternal organizations who in turn forward it on to their members. One of the main reasons I do it is because I believe informed vets are better voters than ones who do not know what the facts are and/or what their representatives are doing to or for them.

Complacency is our biggest problem and when vets fail to speak up Congress and SECDEF who control the VA & DoD purse strings have traditionally placed us near the bottom in their expenditure priorities. Among other things we are the only segment of federal employees that must pay for our own disabilities through forfeiture of our retirement pay [aka: Disabled Veterans Tax]. We made some progress on this issue with the president's latest compromise but 68% of the tax remains on those 100 thousand who are 50% disabled and over and 100% of the tax is still applicable to the over 300 thousand remaining disabled vets plus the 194 thousand veterans who did not complete 20 years of service but are drawing military disability retired pay.

Hopefully we will eventually stop this forfeiture and the SBP offset for everyone in years to come. Especially since the only one blocking both of these issues is the President despite the majority of Congressman being in favor of eliminating them. Perhaps he will change his mind with enough input but his 2005 proposed budget shows a continuing pattern of slighting the veteran to provide more money for tax cuts to the more affluent.

The best way our 25 million veterans can have an impact on any issue is to write the congressmen of their state/district and president or vote them out of office. Ongoing legislation and current status can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov. How your representative voted on any particular bill can be found at www.vote-smart.org . A Congressman's office normally screens out communications from anyone who is not a constituent. A hand written legible letter of no more than one page is most effective. Next most effective is a FAX. It is not productive to attack the recipient of your letter. Attack the position or the point of view of your of your representative with carefully researched facts and accurate information. Many do not understand military life nor military benefits and entitlements because they did not serve. They need to be educated not vilified because their point of view is inaccurate or may not correspond with yours.

Your congressman's staff will be opening and reading your correspondence along with the thousands of others on various subjects. Most have been machine produced and thus receive very little attention as does email. If you do not get the attention of the staff reader it will never get to the Congressman's desk to influence him in his decision on any vote.

You can locate your congressman at http://www.house.gov/writerep/ by entering your zip code. Out will come the names of your representative with full comm details for electronic and surface methods. Your senator can be located at http://www.senate.gov/. Another site to gather contact info is http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/.

If you get a response (even a canned one) most likely your voice is being heard or counted. If you do not, it means either you did not get your point across or your representative does not deserve your vote in the next election.

Mabuhay

EMO