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 The president, a Democrat, pressed the Republican-led legislature
to give his proposal a "fair hearing" and said he did not want to
pass the issue to his successor in January.
The Pentagon-authored plan proposes 13 potential sites on U.S. soil
to hold some 30-60 detainees in maximum-security prisons but does
not identify the facilities.
U.S. law bars transfers to the United States, and lawmakers are
unlikely to lift those restrictions, especially in an election year.
“We’ll review President Obama’s plan," Republican Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell said. "But since it includes bringing
dangerous terrorists to facilities in U.S. communities, he should
know that the bipartisan will of Congress has already been expressed
against that proposal.”
Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives,
said Obama had yet to convince Americans that moving the prisoners
to the United States was smart or safe.
 Obama is considering taking executive action to close the facility,
situated in a U.S. naval station in southeast Cuba, if Congress does
not change its position. The White House declined to rule out a
unilateral option on Tuesday.
Republicans oppose any executive order, and issuing one would almost
certainly generate legal challenges.
The Guantanamo prisoners were rounded up overseas when the United
States became embroiled in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The facility
came to symbolize aggressive detention practices that opened the
United States to accusations of torture. Most detainees have been
held without trial for more than a decade.
"Let us go ahead and close this chapter," Obama said at the White
House. "I don’t want to pass this problem on to the next president,
whoever it is. And if, as a nation, we don’t deal with this now,
when will we deal with it?"
Obama pledged as a presidential candidate in 2008 to close
Guantanamo. Doing so would fulfill that pledge and boost his legacy
during his final year in office. Pressing his case now thrust the
issue into the 2016 presidential campaign.
"Not only are we not going to close Guantanamo - when I am
president, if we capture a terrorist alive, they are ... going to
Guantanamo and we are going to find out everything they know," said
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio.
HIGH COST
The plan would send detainees who have been cleared for transfer to
their homelands or third countries and transfer remaining prisoners
to U.S. soil to be held in maximum-security prisons. Congress has
banned such transfers to the United States since 2011.
Though the Pentagon has previously noted some of the sites it
surveyed for use as potential U.S. facilities, the administration
wants to avoid fueling any political outcry in important swing
states before the Nov. 8 presidential election.
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Republican Senator John McCain, Obama's 2008 presidential opponent
and an advocate of closing the prison, scoffed at the plan as not
being focused. "Thirteen different possible sites. That's a
recommendation?" he said.
The White House has sought to buttress its argument for closing the
prison by focusing on its high cost. Obama said nearly $450 million
was spent last year alone to keep it running. The new plan would be
cheaper, officials said.
The transfer and closure costs would be $290 million to $475
million, an administration official told reporters, while housing
remaining detainees in the United States would be $65 million to $85
million less expensive than at the Cuba facility, meaning the
transfer bill would be offset in 3 to 5 years.
The administration hopes sending the plan to Congress will spur
lawmakers to help choose a facility they find amenable, but the
White House is well aware the plan may not move at all.
"I am very clear-eyed about the hurdles to finally closing
Guantanamo. The politics of this are tough," Obama said.
"Part of my message to the American people here is we’re already
holding a bunch of really dangerous terrorists here in the United
States ... and there have been no incidents. We’ve managed it just
fine."
The Guantanamo facility, which Obama said once held nearly 800
people, now houses 91 detainees. Some 35 prisoners will be
transferred to other countries in the coming months, bringing the
final number below 60, officials said.
More prisoners could be transferred other countries as well,
potentially lowering that number further. Obama said military
commissions would continue to be used to try some of the prisoners,
but he said that process also required reform.
Obama noted that his predecessor, Republican President George W.
Bush, transferred hundreds of prisoners out of Guantanamo and wanted
it closed.
(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, David Morgan, Susan Cornwell,
Richard Cowan, Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Howard
Goller and Alistair Bell)
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