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President Obama and Col. Christopher M. Thompson, the Vice Commander of the 89th Airlift Wing, walk toward Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base Wednesday. Obama was traveling to Charleston, W.Va., to lead a community discussion on prescription drug abuse and heroin epidemic.(Photo: Jose Luis Magana, AP)
WASHINGTON<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— President Obama will issue a rare<span style="color: Red;">*</span>veto<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a of a defense policy bill Thursday in a showdown with Congress over broader spending levels, the White House said.
It's an extraordinary use of one of the president's most powerful executive tools: While the White House had problems with<span style="color: Red;">*</span>some of the bill's provisions,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Obama's main objection is that the bill uses a budget gimmick to increase defense spending without increasing domestic spending first. The president wants Congress to lift the automatic budget caps known as sequestration and 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 the practice of 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: nuclear aircraft carrier for Carter, missile defense for Reagan and Clinton, and Iraq policy for Bush.
The bill passed with large bipartisan majorities: 270-156 in the House<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and 70-27<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in the Senate. The House would need 20 additional votes to override the veto.
Republicans complain that if they can't do that, 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<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— and that may not happen until the current spending bill runs out Dec. 12.
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"The Republicans are right that this is extraordinary,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>but it’s also extraordinary<span style="color: Red;">*</span>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<span style="color: Red;">*</span>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<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— which Republicans held up in an unsuccessful<span style="color: Red;">*</span>effort to turn back his executive actions delaying deportations.
"Obama has a record of coming out of these events pretty successfully,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>where usually Congress gets blamed," Krause<span style="color: Red;">*</span>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."
The White House has scheduled the veto for 3:45 p.m. and<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— in another unusual step<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— has invited<span style="color: Red;">*</span>reporters and photographers to witness his signing of the veto message.
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush<span style="color: Red;">*</span>tweeted<span style="color: Red;">*</span>that he's "disturbed that (Obama) is having a photo op where he's using funding for our troops as bargaining chips."
In two separate veto threats to the House and Senate versions of the bill,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the White House also objected to substantive parts of the bill:<span style="color: Red;">*</span>As with previous defense bills, it requires him to keep open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It blocks another round of base closings. It prevents the Defense Department from exploring alternative fuels.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>And it uses off-budget war funding to boost defense spending.
"The concerns that we've expressed about it is it advocates essentially the use of a slush fund for funding critically important national security priorities," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said after the bill was passed. "We believe that's utterly irresponsible."
The veto will be Obama's third this year and just the fifth of his presidency,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>still fewer than any president since James Garfield's assassination-shortened tenure in 1881.
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But by another measure<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— veto threats — the White House has been more active. The Office of Management and Budget has issued 59 veto<span style="color: Red;">*</span>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.
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