WASHINGTON (AP) - Highlights of a $612 billion defense policy bill for next year that the House approved Friday by 269-151, despite a threatened veto by President Barack Obama:
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-Puts $89 billion of the total into an emergency war-fighting fund, which Democrats say is largely a ruse for escaping spending limits imposed by a bipartisan 2011 budget deal;
-Strengthens restrictions on Obama’s ability to transfer terrorist suspects out of the U.S.’s Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, a detention center the president has long wanted to close;
-Requires $179 million of $715 million for Iraq go directly to Iraqi Kurds and Sunni forces fighting Islamic State militants, which Obama says would undermine the Iraqi government;
-Provides $200 million for weapons and other assistance to help the Ukraine government in its war against pro-Russian separatists, despite administration opposition to providing arms;
-Restores money for the A-10 fighter plane that provides air support for ground troops, a program that the Pentagon wants to phase out;
-Includes $30 million to start planning and designing a missile defense site on the East Coast;
-Authorizes six additional F-35Bs fighter jets for the Marines and 12 more F-18s for the Navy;
-Creates a new position for a federal coordinator of American hostage rescue efforts;
-Drops Democratic-backed language from an earlier version of the bill calling for a Pentagon study on allowing military enlistments by immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children, which conservatives said would give them amnesty.
-Calls for providing service members a 401K-like benefit if they stay in the service for fewer than 20 years while retaining a defined retirement benefit at the two-decade mark.
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