WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton offered a new GI "Bill of Rights" for men and women in uniform, arguing that Democrats can do a better job of protecting and providing for U.S. troops than the Republican administration. "I am here to say that if the buck does not stop with this president, I assure you, it will stop with the next president," the Democratic senator said in excerpts of remarks prepared for delivery later Thursday.
Clinton was set to deliver the speech at noon at the Center for American Progress, a think tank run by former Clinton White House aide John Podesta.
The New York senator, who leads early polls of Democratic contenders for the party's nomination, said she would put together a package of proposals designed to ensure troops have all the equipment they need when they're deployed, to ensure they receive proper health care, and to provide for families.
Her call for better benefits for troops comes amid a public outcry over conditions at outpatient facilities at a Washington military hospital roughly seven miles from both the White House and Congress.
"In the leadership vacuum under the Bush administration, too many members of the military and their families have been left holding their breath," Clinton said in the remarks.
Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been an outspoken critic of Bush's handling of the Iraq war, but she has resisted calls by some in her party to label her 2002 vote authorizing the war a "mistake." She has said she wouldn't have voted to authorize the war if she knew then what she knows now.
Her proposals come as Democrats in Congress seek to curtail Bush's recent troop surge to Iraq—an efforts Republicans charge is tantamount to abandoning U.S. troops in the field.
