Obama issues veto threat against House defence bill

US President Barack Obama threatened on Tuesday to veto a defence policy bill in the House of Representatives that would authorize higher Pentagon spending and tie his hands on national security issues from nuclear arms reductions to handling war detainees.

In a move that set the White House on a collision course with lawmakers in the Republican-led House, the administration warned that the National Defence Authorization Act being debated by the House this week hampers the Pentagon's new defence strategy and infringes on the president's powers as commander.

"If the cumulative effects of the bill impede the ability of the administration to execute the new defence strategy and to properly direct scarce resources, the president's senior advisers would recommend ... that he veto the bill," the White House said in a statement of administration policy.

It was the second time in less than a week that the administration has expressed displeasure over provisions of the measure, which would add nearly $4 billion to Obama's defence-spending request and undo many of the cuts the Pentagon proposed in an effort to meet cost-reduction targets set by Congress.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta warned at a news conference last Thursday that the House was courting gridlock by trying to increase defence spending to about $554 billion while slashing social programs for the poor and needy in an effort to prevent a new round of defense cuts.

Representative Buck McKeon, head of the House Armed Services Committee, responded sharply in a letter, saying Panetta himself had said that efforts to trim $487 billion from projected Pentagon spending over the next decade had taken the Defence Department "right to the razor's edge."

The Defence Department was directed to make the spending cuts as part of the administration's efforts bring its trillion-dollar budget deficit under control. The Pentagon will be hit by another $500 billion in cuts over the next decade beginning in January unless Congress acts to avert them.