The House legislation proposes greater oversight of the White House’s National Security Council, prohibits prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility from being moved to the USA, and gives us service members a higher pay raise than the Pentagon recommended.
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The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a $602 billion defense policy bill that seeks to halt an erosion of the US military’s combat readiness by purchasing more weapons and forbidding further cuts in troop levels.
The White House opposes a number of provisions in the bill and has said President Barack Obama will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. The White House said the restrictions interfered with the executive branch’s authority to decide when and where to prosecute prisoners. Vowing to target the Islamic State with air strikes “wherever they exist”, Obama pledged to lead a broad coalition to fight IS and work with “partner forces” on the ground in Syria and Iraq.
Lee argued it’s long past time for Congress to grant new war powers that specifically approve the almost two-year-old campaign.
But opponents of her amendment said no new authorization should be granted until Obama produces a coherent strategy for defeating the extremist group. Most Republicans voted against the measure after Thornberry and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.), campaigned against it. It was approved by the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, and sent to the House floor for debate on Wednesday.
“I was an early advocate for Washington to escape gridlock, and to come together behind an agreement along the lines of last fall’s Bipartisan Budget Act, for which we in the department are very grateful”, Carter said.
The House Armed Services Committee has said that it will continue to review the reimbursements made to Pakistan and how it comforts with the future of USA policy, including key counter-terrorism and security objectives in the region.
The White House has already threatened to veto the bill, which passed 277 to 147, just 13 votes shy of a veto-proof majority.
The Senate’s bill does not have a provision echoing the House’s exemption for religious organizations that contract with the federal government from certain provisions of civil rights law and the Americans with Disabilities Act; it also contains a provision requiring young women to register for a potential draft with the Selective Service that was stripped out of the House legislation before it hit the floor.
The Obama administration’s primary objection is that the House measure would slashes $18 billion from the Defense Department’s Overseas Contingency Operations fund, which was used to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (Texas) defended the tactic upon the bill’s passage. He and other proponents of the spending increase say it is essential to halt a decline in the military’s ability to respond to global threats – which, they say, has worsened on Obama’s watch.
But Defense Secretary Ash Carter has called the plan a “road to nowhere” that actually degrades combat readiness by retaining troops and buying equipment that can’t be sustained, effectively creating a hollowed out force.
Carter said he “would respectfully suggest that the informed, expert judgment of the civilian and military leadership at the Department of Defense, which is embodied in our budget proposal, should receive greater support, and be subject to less micromanagement”.
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The plan also includes a 2.1 percent pay raise for troops, one-half of a percentage point higher than White House recommendations for 2017 and $330 million more costly for next year alone.
