WASHINGTON — Congress sent President Barack Obama a $607 billion defense policy bill Tuesday that bans moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States — something Obama has been trying to do since he was sworn in as president.
The Senate’s 91-3 vote gave final legislative approval to the measure. The House overwhelmingly passed it last week, 370-58.
Obama does not like the Guantanamo provisions, but White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama will sign the bill.
Earnest said that Obama’s decision to sign the bill — because it includes provisions that are important to running and protecting the country — does not change his position about wanting to close the prison.
Obama vetoed an earlier version of the defense policy bill over a dispute, later resolved, about whether defense spending increases should be accompanied by boosts in domestic programs.
Among other things, the bill would:
• Provide a 1.3 percent pay increase to service members and a new retirement option for troops.
• Authorize lethal assistance to Ukraine forces fighting Russian-backed rebels.
• Extend a ban on torture to the CIA.
• Authorize the president’s request of $715 million to help Iraqi forces fight Islamic State terrorists.
Three senators — Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both Democrats from Oregon, and Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont — voted against the defense bill.
The legislation has become a lightning rod for debate over whether the president needs congressional approval to move some of the remaining 112 detainees from the U.S. detention center in Cuba to the United States, or if he could do it with an executive order.
Congress has repeatedly thwarted Obama’s effort to fulfill a 2008 campaign promise and close the military prison.
A Pentagon report expected to be released as early as this week identifies prisons in Colorado, Kansas and South Carolina where Guantanamo detainees could possibly be housed so the military prison in Cuba could be shut down.
