House Democrats have turned down President Obama’s request for $81 million to close down the Guantanamo bay detention center. Apparently they ended up agreeing with Republicans that the administration doesn’t actually have a plan to relocate the detainees currently there.

Mr. Obama requested the money as part a spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Democratic appropriators left it out of the bill circulated Monday among House Appropriations Committee staffers.

Republicans have been criticizing Mr. Obama for rushing to keep his campaign promise to close the prison camp at the U.S. Navy base on Cuba without a plan for what to do with the roughly 240 terrorism suspects currently held on the island.

Closing the prison “just never stood up to logic. There is no place on the planet to take the worst of the worst that would treat them as well as they are treated at [Guantanamo],” said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, who visited the facility a month ago.

“The bottom line really is that [if the prisoners are released], innocent people will die and some of them likely will be Americans,” he said.

Democratic leaders were not immediately available to comment.

I’m sure they weren’t.

Powerful members of both parties oppose moving the terror suspects to the United States, while the task of finding another nation willing to handle them in a secure manner (read: no “accidental” escapes) has proven a more difficult task than thought. This once again goes to show that talking about shutting the prison down for political points is one thing, while actually doing it in a safe and timely manner is another issue entirely. Campaigning is one thing; it’s governing that’s difficult.

Via Michelle Malkin.