House and Senate negotiators unveiled their compromise defense policy bill Tuesday afternoon, even as the administration promised to veto the bill over a funding mechanism to bump up defense spending.
The authorization bill approves funding for fiscal 2016 at the president’s requested level of $612 billion, but works around the budget caps imposed by sequestration by putting $89 billion in a war fund that skirts budget caps.
The conference report will be introduced in the House on Tuesday afternoon and lawmakers are expected to vote on it on Thursday, said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook restated Tuesday that the president intends the veto the bill and will not support a defense bill that funds the military above the spending caps, yet maintains caps for other domestic priorities.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he did not sign the conference report because of this funding mechanism, and that “most” other Democrats also did not sign the compromise bill.
Negotiators had to reconcile nearly 900 differences between the House and Senate-passed bills in the months-long conference process, including transfer rules for the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay and changes to the acquisition and retirement systems.
Following the shooting this summer in Chattanooga, Tenn., that killed four Marines and one sailor at off-base military facilities, negotiators promised the bill would address whether troops can carry weapons on bases for personal protection. Thornberry said the compromise bill gets rid of the Pentagon’s one-size-fits-all ban on troops carrying weapons and allows commanders to make decisions for their individual base to give more flexibility.
Troops would be able to carry either government-issued or personal weapons at the installation commander’s discretion, he said.
The Senate bill had offered the president a path to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, but, absent a plan from the White House on how to close the prison, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the compromise bill tightens transfer restrictions and makes it more difficult to close Gitmo.
“There is still no plan on what to do and how to do it with the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, so we acted as we have to without any plan or blueprint from the administration,” McCain said. “If the administration complains about provisions concerning Guantanamo, then it’s their fault.”
Under the conference report, the defense secretary has to sign off that each transfer is in the national security interest of the country. It also prohibits transferring prisoners to Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Syria.
The authorization bill also would ban torture, McCain said.
All of the negotiators stressed that the bill is a reform bill and said that the small changes included in the compromise will hopefully be first steps that can be built on. The bill would make some changes to the Pentagon’s outdated acquisition system, keeping McCain’s proposal to place more responsibility with the service chiefs. The uniformed leaders of each service, he said, will have to sign off that they are aware of major cost or time overruns.
The bill also makes some changes to help troops after they take off their uniform, including the creation of a joint formulary between the Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs so veterans won’t have to change prescriptions when they leave the military. It also makes some reforms to the military retirement system as recommended by a commission this year, the negotiators said.
