Perhaps he'll find another way to do it, but kinda takes the air out of the notion that the President wasn't wiling to fight for DADT's repeal...
House clears annual defense billBy JEN DIMASCIO | 12/17/10 3:20 PM EST
A pared-down version of the annual defense authorization bill sailed through the House Friday afternoon by a vote of 341 to 48, despite a last minute change to ban on the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The defense policy bill had been carefully negotiated by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) to strip not just the repeal of "don’t ask don’t tell," but a host of other controversial items in the bill after it was defeated over concerns about the repeal of "don’t ask don’t tell."
But the slimmer version of defense authorization came under threat from Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who sought to place a hold on the bill in the Senate over detainee transfer language.
Skelton and Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, worked together Friday morning to toughen the language, according to McKeon spokesman Josh Holly.
That might have alienated liberals like Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), but he spoke on the House floor in support of the bill.
Frank told POLITICO agreeing to ban detainee transfers was part of a larger House-Senate compromise that also involved passing "don’t ask don’t tell."
“I didn’t like that,” Frank said of the detainee transfer ban. But passing the bill to allow gays to serve openly in the military was more important, he said, adding that the detainee language would have returned in a spending bill. “We would have gotten stuck with that anyway.”Read more:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46553.html Bookmarking this for the next time someone asks me why Obama hasn't closed Git'mo yet.
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