President Barack Obama has threatened to veto a defense bill that is vital to the military just so he can shut down Guantanamo Bay.
From Breitbart:
Buried in the middle of a Wall Street Journal story on the matter is what could be the more significant reason for the President’s veto threat: “Obama also is upset about provisions in the bill that would make it harder for him to transfer suspected terror detainees out of the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of his plan to close it before he leaves office.” His failure to deliver on that promise has long been a sore point with his far-Left constituency, especially after his outreach to the Castro regime.
Obama pledged to shut down Gitmo when he took office in 2009, but he hasn’t been able to close it due to a resistant Congress and a ban on moving Gitmo detainees into the U.S. The pressure on Obama to close Gitmo has intensified after he normalized relations with Cuba, as Cuban dictator Raul Castro has demanded that the prison be returned to Cuban jurisdiction.
The radical left-wing president also doesn’t like how the National Defense Authorization Act increases funding for the military by $38 billion more than sequestration caps, as Obama would rather have that money used for domestic purposes.
The Senate Democrats are standing with Obama, as Minority Leader Harry Reid has accused the bill of funding defense with “funny money.”
“Refusing to sign this bill would make history, but not in a good way.”
Washington Post
Heritage Foundation defense budget expert Justin Johnson told the Washington Free Beacon that the bill “is the biggest reform bill the Pentagon has seen in decades.”
“It moves the ball significantly on personnel and retirement reforms, acquisition reforms,” Johnson said. “So it’s really pretty significant change in a lot of ways that will be lost, or at least delayed at best, if the president vetoed this bill.”
Here are some details of the bill:
A new retirement system, scheduled to start in 2018, would expand the number of troops who receive retirement benefits while reducing the amount of direct government contributions to military pensions. It allows service members to divert a portion of their pay into 401(k)-style accounts, which the government will provide with matching contributions, up to 5 percent, for a 26-year period. Currently, 83 percent of troops do not earn retirement benefits because they did not serve at least 20 years.
The national defense act also aims to expand access for troops and veterans to prescription drugs, childcare, military flights for families of service members, and treatment at urgent care facilities.
Additionally, the defense bill presses the Pentagon to reduce its bureaucracy by shrinking headquarters’ budgets and personnel by 20 percent and achieving $10 billion in cost savings by 2019.
The NDAA, (the National Defense Authorization Act, which delineates the budget and expenditures of the United States Department of Defense), has received bipartisan support for over 50 years and has only been vetoed by presidents four times in that period. The Washington Post editorial board, typically Obama cheerleaders, criticized the president for his veto threat:
What matters now, however, is that the Pentagon have certainty and predictability in a time of mounting tension in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The bill’s $612 billion price tag is roughly the total Mr. Obama himself requested. As it happens, the bill also contains important policy changes: major compensation reform that creates retirement savings options for more service members, a ban on torture and $50 million in lethal military aid for Ukraine.
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Refusing to sign this bill would make history, but not in a good way. Mr. Obama should let it become law and seek other sources of leverage in pursuing his legitimate goals for domestic sequestration relief.
The Post’s editorial board thinks that Obama’s desire to close Gitmo is only a secondary reason for the veto threat. But this is unlikely, given Obama’s long-time desire to close the facility.
Congressional Republicans have been criticized by the left for their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood; the left accuses them of threatening to shut down the government. But is Obama not doing the same thing in his veto threat of the defense bill? The government might not shut down as a result of this veto, but it would deny the military of needed reforms. Defunding Planned Parenthood and a resultant government shutdown does not harm the military. In fact, during the last shutdown, 83 percent of the government was still functioning.
Shutting down Gitmo is not feasible, as Rick Moran at American Thinker points out:
In truth, there is no plan on what to do with the remaining 116 prisoners at the prison camp. President Obama has suggested that they can be safely housed in regular high-security American prisons, but Congress will not stand for that plan, and various other schemes have also been roundly rejected.
The only reason to close the prison is to assuage international opinion. Guantanamo is a “symbol” of American violations of international law – at least in the past. Currently, there are no prisoners in the world better treated. But a presidency of smoke and mirrors deals largely in symbolic gestures, so Gitmo has got to go.
Given Planned Parenthood’s horrifying butchery in dismembering and selling baby parts, threatening to shut down the government to defund the organization would be noble. A veto threat of much-needed military funding and reforms to shut down a prison that holds terrorists is anything but noble.
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