The Obama administration on Monday threatened to veto several major bills, including the House GOP’s annual must-pass Defense authorization bill, as well as spending bills for military construction and the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget threatened to veto the House version of the annual defense authorization bill, arguing that it gambles with funding for the troops by shifting billions from war spending to pay for military readiness.
Over the last month, the House and Senate both passed versions of the National Defense Authorization Act providing $610 billion in overall spending for fiscal year 2017.
The House version, however, shifts $18 billion from the Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO, fund to pay for “military readiness,” or increased troops, as well as aircraft and shipbuilding.
It also includes several policy riders the administration argues are “non-germane.”
The OCO fund pays for U.S.-led military operations against the Islamic State and stepped up U.S. troop levels in Europe.
In recommending the president veto the bill, the OMB said the House approach is “dangerous” and “wasteful.”
“The bill would buy excess force structure without the money to sustain it, effectively creating hollow force structure that would undermine [the Department of Defense’s] efforts to restore readiness,” the OMB said in a statement.
“By gambling with war-fighting funds, the bill risks the safety of our men and women fighting to keep America safe, undercuts stable planning and efficient use of taxpayer dollars, dispirits troops and their families, baffles our allies, and emboldens our enemies,” the OMB said.
In addition, the administration strongly objects to several provisions of the bill preventing the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Specifically, the House version of the defense bill would prohibit the use of funds to transfer the detainees to the United States or to construct or modify any facility in the United States to house detainees.
“These restrictions would limit the ability of the executive branch to take the steps necessary to develop alternative locations for a detention facility, and from fulfilling its commitment to close the facility at Guantanamo,” the OMB said.
In addition, it bill continues “onerous” restrictions on the transfer of detainees to foreign countries, language the president has objected to in previous measures.
“These restrictions are unwarranted and threaten to interfere with the executive branch’s ability to determine the appropriate disposition of detainees…” the OMB said.
The OMB said the HUD legislation would also short-change efforts to help the homeless.
The bill would underfund “critical investments in ending homelessness and revitalizing distressed communities, leaving over 40,000 chronically homeless individuals and homeless families with children un-served, and failing to address the widening opportunity gap confronting the nation’s poorest neighborhoods,” the statement reads.
OMB also objected to the legislation’s treatment of Obama’s transportation request that includes efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
