By John M. Donnelly and Eugene Mulero, CQ Staff

As the House opened debate on this year’s defense authorization bill Tuesday, the White House issued a lengthy set of objections to the measure, threatening to veto it over provisions related to terrorism and detainees, nuclear weapons and F-35 engines.

The Office of Management and Budget expressed “serious concerns” about several provisions, leading with those three, in a strongly worded Statement of Administration Policy on the fiscal 2012 bill (HR 1540).

The veto threats are likely to heighten the tension as the full House begins voting Wednesday on as many as 152 amendments to the $690 billion measure, many of them relating to controversial topics such as terrorism detainees, the military operations in Afghanistan and Libya and missile defense.

Indeed, the White House threats ensure that terrorism and detention policy will be front and center in the House debate, as well as when the bill reaches the Senate.

The administration threatened to veto the measure over several provisions that pertain to detaining and prosecuting alleged terrorists and “challenge critical executive branch authority.” These include a revision of the authorization to use military force in response the 2001 terrorist attacks (PL 107-40), which provided implicit congressional support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The language has been criticized by some groups as constituting a nearly boundless authority to conduct military operations.

House Republicans quickly blasted the White House threat, noting that the bill’s language echoed the Obama administration’s own justifications. The House will vote on a bipartisan amendment offered by six lawmakers to strip the authorization language.

“In issuing its veto threat, the White House might have actually undermined future legal efforts by attacking the same language that the administration has used in court filings to support its own policy,” Josh Holly, a spokesman for the Armed Services Committee, said in a written statement.

Also of concern to the White House is a limitation on where detainees can be transferred and another that would bar the use of civilian courts for prosecuting detainees. “It unnecessarily constrains our nation’s counterterrorism efforts and would undermine our national security particularly where our federal courts are the best — or even the only — option for incapacitating dangerous terrorists,” the White House said of the bill.

Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services panel, will get a vote on an amendment he offered to remove the detainee language. “In a time of war, we must not take options for trying and managing detainees off the table,” he said in a written statement.

Secondly, the White House threatened to veto any bill that included provisions that would “impinge on the president’s authority to implement the New START treaty and set U.S. nuclear weapons policy.” At issue are sections of the bill that would require the completion and operation of new nuclear weapons facilities prior to dismantling weapons that the administration said are not needed. The administration added that the bill raises “constitutional concerns,” because it “appears to encroach on the president’s authority as commander in chief to set nuclear employment policy — a right exercised by every president in the nuclear age from both parties.”

Alternative Engine Saga

The White House also issued a veto threat over a second type of engine for F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, saying it would reject any bill that funds or would force the continuation of the program. General Electric Co. would like to finish developing a propulsion system to compete with the base engine made by Pratt & Whitney, for inclusion in some of the more than 2,400 F-35s to be built over the next few decades.

Last month, for the first time in 16 years, Congress decided not to fund the GE program, and the Pentagon subsequently killed it. But the House Armed Services Committee included provisions in the defense policy bill intended to keep the GE program alive without authorizing government funding.