The measure would retain current restrictions on transferring detainees out of the USA military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that have been in place since 2009 and presses the White House to send Congress a plan to close the facility.
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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Tuesday that he would try to avoid a shutdown and that he is open to working with Democrats to do so.
House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on a $612 billion defense policy bill that President Barack Obama has threatened to veto.
Sen. McCain was happy the bill extends ban on torture. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the veto threat “shameful” in a statement Wednesday. “If the administration complains about the provisions on Guantanamo, it’s their fault because they never came forward with a plan, that we probably could’ve supported, to get rid of this issue”.
The Senate is aiming to pass on either Tuesday or Wednesday a stopgap spending bill that would run from October. 1 through December. 11. Jack Reed, the top Democrats on the defense committees, signed the conference report of the final bill. “The president and Speaker Boehner and I spoke about getting started in the discussions last week and I would expect them to start very soon”, he told reporters in the Capitol.
Hard fiscal issues – from increasing a debt limit that is forecast to be breached before year’s end to settling on spending priorities through September 2016 – confront a Congress that has been rocked by Republican disarray that resulted in Boehner’s retirement announcement last Friday. The administration has been weighing that decision for months.”We provide defensive weapons to Ukraine right now, and they have nothing to counter Russian separatist tanks”, McCain said.
The members also would authorize $600 million to continue the embattled USA program to train and equip moderate Syrian opposition fighters.
“If we let defense out of jail, give it all of this money, then that’s just, that makes it even that much more hard to do anything about the budget caps on the other appropriations bills”, Smith said, pointing out that many agencies outside the defense budget – such as the Department of Homeland Security, Justice, and the Treasury – were equally vital elements of national security that shouldn’t be shortchanged.
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Knowing it’s a direct challenges to Obama’s veto threats, Thornberry implored the president to accept the bill, as is.
