Washington, DC – Rep. Joe Baca (D-Rialto) voted today to override the President’s veto of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act. The bill received a majority of support in the House, but not the two-thirds required to override the veto.

“I was proud to vote today once again to support a plan that would take Iraq in a new direction, with my vote to override the President’s veto,” said Rep. Baca. “With his veto, the President is ignoring the American people’s call for a new direction in Iraq. This measure would have required accountability from both the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government for the first time.”

Rep. Baca noted that four years ago the President stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared ‘Mission Accomplished’. “But as we know, the war was far from over and has had a great cost for our country. We have a moral duty to provide a responsible plan to get our troops home and require the Iraqi government to meet basic benchmarks for stability.”

The Iraq Accountability Act would have supported our troops, providing $4 billion more for our troops than the President requested. This includes additional funding for military health care, military housing, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and a Strategic Reserve Readiness Fund. The measure also would have honored our veterans, providing $1.8 billion not requested by the President to begin meeting the unmet health care needs of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to fully funding our troops, the bill would have required Iraqis to begin taking responsibility for Iraq. It would require the Iraqi government to meet key security, political and economic benchmarks endorsed by the President himself.

“It’s time for accountability,” said Rep. Baca. “For the first four years of the Iraq war, the Republican-led Congress failed to exercise its constitutional responsibility to hold the Bush Administration or the Iraqi government accountable – with tragic results for the American people.”

The measure also would have established a responsible timeline for the redeployment of U.S. combat troops from Iraq beginning in October 2007, at the latest, with a goal of being completed by March 2008. This represents the approach recommended by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which also called for a goal of redeployment being completed by March 2008.

“I have been against this war from the beginning. The President should have signed this bill, in order to get these needed resources to our troops and our veterans, hold the Iraqi government accountable, transition the mission of our troops from combat to training, and begin to strengthen our military,” concluded Rep. Baca.

Rep. Baca is a veteran who served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper with both the 101st and the 82nd Airborne Divisions from 1966-68.