The Obama Administration asked for funds to buy a prison in Illinois to transfer Gitmo prisoners to:
Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.
As a result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.
While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he would miss the Jan. 22 deadline for closing the prison that he set shortly after taking office, the administration appeared to take a major step forward last week when he directed subordinates to move “as expeditiously as possible” to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center, a nearly vacant maximum-security Illinois prison, and to retrofit it to receive Guantánamo detainees.
So.
There are people here who keep telling me that if only Obama would just be clear and ask Congress for specifically what he wants, they would just give it to him. But here we see that not only have they asked (and asked multiple times if you count previous requests for funding to close Gitmo), but Congress has said No! WTF! Where is the outrage that Congress is not doing what the President wants? Where is the effort to remind Congress that their job consists of making sure that the President gets everything he proposes? Or even better, an effort to do away with that pesky Congress anyway. Because I can’t believe that the President has asked for specific funds and authority to close Gitmo that Congress just won’t give him.