THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 24, 1994 TAG: 9410210749
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
This information was compiled from a ``A Letter To The People of Virginia,'' a comprehenive position paper provided by Marshall Coleman to this newspaper.
The positions that the other two U.S. Senate candidates have taken on these issues and others appeared with their profiles on Tuesday (North) and Wednesday (Robb). On Sunday Nov. 6, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star Commentary section will bring together, in one place, all three candidates' views on these issues.
CRIME
Supports:
- Truth-in-sentenecing provisions and feels more must be done by states to ensure that convicted criminals will serve sentences without early release.
- Legislation to ensure evidence of a crime is not excluded because of technical violations by law enforcement officials acting in good faith.
- Grants to states for prison construction; also supports building regional federal prisons where space coud be leased by states with overflow problems.
- Giving police more tools to detect and stop criminals before they commit an offense: stop and frisk laws, community policing in high crime areas and training to use existing measures, such as sobriety checkpoints, to detect and disarm criminals.
- The option for courts to impose the death penalty for heinous crimes.
- The Constitutional right of citizens to keep and bear arms, but believes in a ban on assault weapons.
- Training for police to encourage Constitutionally-permitted stop and searches for criminals, and closer supervision of those on parole.
- No softening of laws that make drug use, possession, and sales illegal.
- Greater efforts to rehabilitate first-time offenders and believes ``each federal prison facility should have a program to discourage drug use and to rehabilitate drug users.''
HEALTH CARE
Supports:
- Permitting workers who switch jobs, or are temporarily out of work to take their insurance coverage with them.
- Restricting the practice of excluding pre-existing conditions in new insurance policies.
- Providing affordable health insurance to the working poor; and preserving choice and competition to reduce health care costs.
- Achieving medical care cost reductions through: tort reforms to curtail huge awards in malpractice suits; providing consumers better information so that they become part of the control process; encouraging co-payments for health care services; reducing duplicative administrative costs; and, maintaining maximum competition and choice for consumers.
- Lifting federal restrictions to allow states to try new methods to reduce health care costs including such things as vouchers and managed care.
BUSINESS and the ECONOMY
Supports:
- Reining in the cost of current federal programs: ``I support a wide range of tools. . . to get serious about spending cuts, including the line-item veto and a balanced budget amendment which would prohibit deficit spending or an increase in the debt limit except by a three-fifths vote of Congress (except in times of war or military conflict).''
- Reducing the tax burden on families and the economy, including an increase in the personal exemption, a tax credit for dependent children, as well as repeal of the 1993 retroactive tax increase.
- Federal tax policy that would do more to encourage capital formation, small businesses, and enterprise zones; also supports a reduction in the capital gains tax.
- Free trade. ``Protectionism distorts markets and ultimately hurts consumers, producers and workers.''
- The right of Virginians to work without being required to join a labor organization (opposes legislation which would prohibit employers from replacing strikers).
DEFENSE and FOREIGN POLICY
Supports:
- Maintaining a well trained, modern military which would require ``increases over current (defense spending) levels.''
- The Joint Chiefs of Staff decision to pursue a ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy on gays in the armed services.
THE ENVIRONMENT
Supports:
- Efforts to clean up America's air, water and land, but adds ``There must be a balance between efforts to protect the environment, what is scientifically possible, and what is practical. I support state plans which encourage voluntary cooperation and apply best management practices which reflect state and local conditions. . . . I believe it is wrong for the federal government to dictate how each state should achieve (environmental) goals.''
SOCIAL PROGRAMS
Supports:
- Breaking ``the cycle of dependency in our current welfare program. . . . First, individuals should be held responsible for their actions. Parents must work, children must go to school, absent parents must pay their share, and out-of-wedlock births will not be rewarded by the system.''
- Redesigning the welfare program so that it ``encourages, rather than discourages two-parent families.''
ABORTION
``I have come to the conlusion that my personal opposition to abortion should not be translated into law. I believe that there are people of good faith on both sides of this issue and that it is such a deeply personal issue that government should not intervene on either side. While I will not support legislation to outlaw abortion, I also will not support legislation to subsidize it.''
EDUCATION
Supports:
- Reduction of federal governmental intrusion in schools and restoration of more local control, discipline, basic academics, and parental involvement.
- ``I support vouchers, tax credits and other tools which will give parents a choice and encourage competition in the education system. To be effective, choice must include regular public schools, magnet schools, charter schools, private schools, vocational schools and youth apprenticeship programs.''
- Voluntary prayer in any surrounding, including schools. MEMO: [For a related profile of J. Marshall Coleman, see page A1 for this
date.]
ILLUSTRATION: [J. Marshall Coleman]
KEYWORDS: CANDIDATE U.S. SENATE RACE POSITION ISSUES by CNB