President Barack Obama pledged that he could close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay without harming national security, but members of Congress are still not ready to give the president the $80 million he needs to shut down the facility.
Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., say they will not provide the funds until they hear concrete plans about where Obama intends to move the detainees.
“The president [Thursday] gave us a broad vision about what he expects,” Reid said. “He is going to give us a detailed plan.”
Reid appears to have stepped back from his statement Tuesday that no detainees could be incarcerated or adjudicated in the United States under any circumstances. Instead, he told reporters following Obama’s speech that lawmakers were “willing to work with him to come up with a responsible solution.”
On Wednesday, the Senate voted to prohibit the relocation of Guantanamo detainees to prisons in the United States, and it stripped out the money to close the facility from a war funding bill. The House made the same move a week earlier, taking $50 million needed to close the prison out of its war funding bill as Democrats became skittish about terrorist suspects living in their districts.
It was a major legislative victory for Republicans, who have protested the Guantanamo closure.
Pelosi said Obama “offered a sensible, balanced approach to the treatment of detainees and to the handling of state secrets.”
But Pelosi also signaled that she was holding out for a detailed plan before providing the funds.
The war funding bill passed in the House last week “said that no detainee would be transferred to the United States until the administration submits a formal plan for closing Guantanamo Bay,” Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said.
Republican lawmakers, who have generally been supportive of Obama’s war policies but want Guantanamo to remain open, were unmoved.
“The decision to close this prison without an alternative in place is irresponsible,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Republicans would work to block funding for the closure, even if Democrats change their minds. McConnell said despite the security of U.S. prisons, importing terrorists provides them with the opportunity to recruit other prisoners, and trying them in civilian courts risks the disclosure of classified information.
“Once we get a plan, then I think we can review the adequacy of it,” McConnell said. “But the president did not announce a plan today.”
