WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama would be allowed for the next four months to order Guantanamo Bay detainees into the United States to face trial under a compromise reached Thursday by House and Senate negotiators struggling with a war-funding bill.
Transferring detainees from the U.S. detention center in Cuba would be allowed only through Sept. 30, according to top House aides, leaving until later the question of whether Guantanamo detainees tried in military trials in the United States would serve prison time in other nations if convicted or would face imprisonment in the U.S.
The short-term solution to the debate over whether detainees should be brought to the U.S. buys the administration time as it struggles to come up with a permanent solution that would allow Obama to fulfill his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by Jan. 22.
The Guantanamo tangle was but one of several side issues Democrats have struggled with over the past two weeks as they have tried to reconcile Senate and House bills funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
House liberals successfully forced the Senate to drop a provision to block the release of detainee abuse photos Obama wants to remain sealed. Lawmakers from automobile manufacturing states won $1 billion for a new "cash for clunkers" program that aims to boost new auto sales by allowing consumers to turn in gas-guzzling cars and trucks for vouchers toward the purchase of more fuel-efficient vehicles.
The bill started out two months ago as an $83 billion war funding request from Obama, then morphed into a $106 billion measure brimming with money to fight the flu, buy military cargo planes and help poor nations weather the global economic crisis.
Lawmakers announced the informal agreement on the war-funding measure at a House-Senate negotiating session. The real work was done behind the scenes.
Competing House and Senate versions passed by wide margins last month, but several issues slowed House-Senate negotiations on a compromise bill. The most significant obstacle was the loss of support from House Republicans opposed to an $5 billion Obama request to secure a $108 billion U.S. line of credit to the International Monetary Fund to help poor countries deal with the world recession.
The loss of GOP support gave House liberals leverage to force out a Senate provision by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would block the release of photos showing detainee abuse. Obama doesn't want the photos made public because they could incite anti-American violence.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., weighed in on the matter Thursday by calling for Obama to simply issue an executive order turning the photos into classified material, thereby exempting them from the Freedom of Information Act.
"It's time for the president ... to stand up to the left wing of his party for the good of the national security of this nation," McCain said.
The numerous controversies obscured widespread support for the core of the bill: $79.9 billion for the Pentagon, most of which is for carrying out military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Included in that total was $2.2 billion for eight C-17 cargo planes, manufactured by the Boeing Co., despite Obama's call to terminate the program.
The measure provides $10.4 billion in foreign aid, including $700 million to help Pakistani security forces fight insurgents and $700 million in international food aid, more than double Obama's request.
There's also $7.7 billion to fight the flu — the World Health Organization declared a swine flu pandemic on Thursday — far higher than Obama's initial $1.5 billion request. Democrats rejected an administration plan to trim part of Obama's economic stimulus law to pay for part of an additional request submitted last week.
The measure provides $489 million requested by the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, to restore barrier islands along his state's coastline that Hurricane Katrina destroyed in 2005. That came despite a promise by Obama to keep the war-funding bill free of pet projects.
On the very week that Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., appeared at the White House to tout a "pay-as-you-go" law requiring new programs to be paid for instead of being lumped onto the deficit, the measure would use deficit dollars for the auto-buying subsidies programs and to give GI Bill education benefits to the children of military service members who die while on active duty.
by the associated press
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