The U.S. Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed the sweeping defense policy bill that contained provisions that could make it more hard for Obama to carry out his pledge to close the detention center in Cuba.
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The overwhelming and bipartisan vote was 91 to 3, which means it has more than enough supporters to override a presidential veto, though Obama’s Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the President would sign the defense bill.
The wide margins suggest Congress has the veto-proof majority needed to keep President Barack Obama from sending the measure back to Capitol Hill for a second time.
The Pentagon would be banned from transferring enemy combatants to the USA and the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba would have to stay open under a $615 billion defense policy bill that won final passage.
DENVER | Fifty sheriffs in Colorado have written to the White House to oppose any plan to move detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention center to prisons in the state.
Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas – home of a maximum-security prison at Fort Leavenworth – said he wants a Government Accountability Office investigation of whether the scouting trips violated existing law that prohibits funds being spent to transfer detainees to the United States.
Mr. Obama had vetoed an earlier version of the NDAA, citing the funding dispute, but Republicans said this new bill is nearly the exact same.
Former White House counsel Gregory Craig and Cliff Sloan, Obama’s special envoy for closing Guantanamo in 2013 and 2014, claim that law is unconstitutional.
The Pentagon also is looking at sites in Kansas and SC for its proposal to move a few 53 Guantanamo detainees eligible for transfer.
In an attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of the situation at Guantanamo, the report examines a broad range of human rights issues, identifies violations of commitments to OSCE and other global human rights standards, and offers recommendations to address them.
“There are a number of provisions in the [National Defense Authorization Act] that are important to running and protecting the country”, Earnest said.
“Well, they set it up by executive action, there was no authorization of Guantanamo”, said Sen.
Authorizes the president’s request of $715 million to help Iraqi forces fight Islamic State militants.
But Earnest added that while inclusion of the prohibitions against relocating Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S.is “unfortunate”, it would not have any “material impact” on the president’s ability to put together and send a separate closure plan to Congress. “I’m not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the president’s executive authority”, he said. I’d bet on the autopen approach, perhaps sometime late in the evening.
“Instead of blocking President Obama’s efforts to close the costly Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Congress should be working with him to finally shut it down”, Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote in a November 4 editorial in the NY Times, calling on Congress to lift the ban on detainees transfers.
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The letter includes most of Colorado’s 64 sheriffs.
