Gregory Korte
WASHINGTON — President
Obama made good on his threat to veto a $612 billion defense policy
bill Thursday, bringing the fight over domestic spending into the realm of
national security.
Speaking to
reporters for four minutes in a rare public veto message, Obama said the bill
fell "woefully short" because it kept across-the-board budget cuts in
place, blocked needed military reforms and prohibited him from closing the
prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With a pen stroke of his left hand, he
sent the bill back to Congress, saying, "My message to them is simple.
Let's do this right."
The veto of the
National Defense Authorization Act was an extraordinary use of one of the
president's most powerful executive tools.
While the White House had
problems with some of the bill's provisions, Obama's main objection
is that the bill anticipates off-budget spending to increase the defense
budget without increasing domestic spending first. The president wants Congress
to lift the automatic budget caps included in a 2011 budget agreement.
That,
congressional Republicans said, is an unprecedented and irresponsible use of
the veto power.
"The
president has vowed to veto it. Why? Because he wants to stop and spend more
money on his domestic agenda," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio,
said Wednesday. "It's time to put our troops first, time to stop playing
political games."
Since Congress
started passing annual defense policy bills in 1961, they've been vetoed four
times by Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. Each time,
it was for a specific policy reason: a nuclear aircraft carrier for Carter,
missile defense for Reagan and Clinton, and Iraq policy for Bush.
The 2016 bill
passed with large bipartisan majorities: 270-156 in the House and
70-27 in the Senate. The House would need 20 additional votes to override
the veto. Obama's Deputy Press Secretary, Eric Schultz, said the White
House was certain the veto would be sustained.
Republicans
complain that without the bill, important defense programs and reforms
will be delayed. And they say there's no way to tailor the bill to get the
president to sign it, because Obama is insisting on a broader spending accord
first — and that may not happen until the current short-term spending
bill runs out Dec. 12.
The
Republicans are right that this is extraordinary, but it’s also
extraordinary times and conditions. And the veto is an extraordinary
power," said George Krause, a political science professor at the University
of Pittsburgh who's studied how presidents use veto threats in budget negotiations.
Obama is trying
to avoid a situation like last year, when Republicans passed a spending bill
for every department but Homeland Security — which Republicans held
up in an unsuccessful effort to turn back Obama's executive actions
delaying deportations.
"Obama has
a record of coming out of these events pretty successfully, where usually
Congress gets blamed," Krause said. "He feels like he's playing
with house money. He doesn’t have much to lose, and he has a powerful
institutional tool at his disposal."
In two separate
veto threats to the House and Senate versions of the bill, the White House
also objected to substantive provisions. As with previous defense bills,
it requires him to keep Guantanamo open. It blocks another round of base
closings. It prevents the Defense Department from exploring alternative
fuels. And it uses off-budget war funding to boost defense spending.
The veto was
Obama's third this year and just the fifth of his presidency — still
fewer than any president since James Garfield's assassination-shortened
tenure in 1881.
But by another
measure — veto threats — the White House has been more active. TheOffice
of Management and Budget has issued 59 veto threats this year, more
than any year since the George W. Bush White House issued 85 in 2007,
the first year of a newly Democratic-controlled Congress.
This week alone,
the White House has threatened vetoes on bills that would prioritize payments
in case of a debt limit breach, ban federal funds to "sanctuary"
cities, and repeal key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
In another
unusual step, the White House invited reporters and photographers to
witness his signing of the veto message, a move that further rankled
Republicans. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush tweeted that he's
"disturbed that (Obama) is having a photo op where he's using funding for
our troops as bargaining chips."
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