Michigan GOPer calls Obama Gitmo plan ‘cash for the clink’

Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers on Tuesday derided the Obama administration’s new proposal to move terror suspects from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the U.S. mainland as “cash for the clink.”

An interagency task force on detention policy drafted a proposal, which has yet to be approved by top officials, that will transfer detainees to the military base at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. or a maximum security prison in Standish, Mich. that will soon be closed.

“This is called ‘cash for the clink,’ I think,” Rogers said on an RNC conference call. Rogers referenced the “Cash for Clunkers” auto rebate program that ran out of funding after less than a week in operation.

The proposal would keep the prison open and theoretically preserve the jobs of guards and other prison employees.

Rogers stressed that moving terror suspects into his home state would pose a national security threat and discourage business and tourism from flocking there.

Should the government transfer Gitmo prisoners to Michigan, Roberts said “I doubt even Jeff Daniels could sell people to come to Michigan,” alluding to promotional advertisements for the state featuring actor Jeff Daniels.

The fifth-term congressman, who worked as an FBI special agent in the 1980s, said that Guantanamo Bay prisoners pose greater danger than inmates already housed in U.S. penitentiaries. They are “psychologically conditioned to commit murder to go to heaven,” Rogers said.

The Michigander said that the terror suspects could harm prison guards and radicalize the existing prison population should they be housed in the continental U.S.

Here is the Jeff Daniels ad that Rogers brought up: