Anyone who the administration believes is “part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces,” could face lifetime detention at Guantanamo Bay, without appeal or even a lawyer under the provision.
The House passed the bill on Wednesday, 283-136, and the Senate followed suit, 86-13, Thursday afternoon.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky led the attack on the new law.
“Detaining citizens without trial is not American,” he said, adding that passage of the law would signify that the terrorists have won.
“We’re talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantanamo Bay and held indefinitely,” Paul added. “It puts every American at risk.
“What security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us?” Paul asked. “The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts.”
Paul pointed out that current policy says that someone may be a terrorist if they are missing fingers, if they have more than seven days of food stockpiled or if they have weatherproof storage for guns or ammunition.
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A Senate Democratic leadership aide said the two-month extension "clears the way for negotiations to continue on a larger deal."
However, Boehner said Friday that any attempt for a short-term extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits would get altered in the House, in particular by adding a controversial provision to speed government approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.
The Obama administration has delayed until 2013 a decision on the pipeline that would transport oil from Canada's tar sands production facilities on northern Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
The delay followed complaints by environmentalists and Nebraska officials that the pipeline route could threaten that state's Sandhills region and vital Ogallala aquifer. Alternate routes are being considered, and Nebraska officials as well as the pipeline company, TransCanada, acknowledge that the process of approving a final route will last into the second half of 2012.
Republicans, who traditionally back the oil industry, accuse Obama of delaying the issue until after his re-election bid next year for political reasons. In the House, they added the provision to require a decision on the Keystone project within 60 days, arguing it would create jobs and reduce U.S. dependency on Middle East oil.
However, the State Department, which has final authority to approve the oil pipeline, warned that the shortened deadline would effectively kill the project because there would insufficient time to assess the route alteration.
The legislative maneuvering was a last-gasp bid to end weeks of political wrangling that threatened a partial government shutdown and raised public frustration with Congress even further.
A poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed public discontent with Congress at record levels, with two-thirds of voters saying most lawmakers should be voted out of office next year.
Failure to pass the payroll tax measure, a major part of Obama's job creation plan, would cost working Americans an average of $1,000 in higher taxes next year.
In the Senate, the payroll tax measure has faced an impasse over specific provisions sought by each party.
Senate Democrats proposed a new tax on income more than $1 million to help pay for keeping the lower payroll tax rate for another year, but Republicans have blocked the plan from proceeding on two separate occasions.
Democrats now have dropped that provision, but have yet to reveal details of any new proposal.
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