By John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff

Republicans in charge of the House Armed Services Committee unveiled on Monday major elements of a $642 billion defense authorization bill for fiscal 2013, key sections of which will rub congressional Democrats and the White House the wrong way.

The provisions that could cause friction include one that would block planned increases in health care fees for certain military retirees, which the Obama administration had hoped to use to reduce the Pentagon’s costs.

Also controversial are proposed restrictions on retirements of Air National Guard planes, another potential money-saver for the administration.

The bill (HR 4310) also would require reports about transfers of insurgent detainees in Afghanistan, amid reports that releasing potentially dangerous prisoners there has been an inducement for peace talks. The measure would prohibit U.S. commanders in Afghanistan from hiring locals as security guards at U.S. bases there, amid mounting incidents of Afghan forces killing and wounding U.S. personnel. It would require the Pentagon to make plans for a military buildup to combat Iran, as concerns grow about the possibility of a new Mideast war over Iran’s potential nuclear weapons program.

The bill also would seek to clarify that U.S. citizens cannot be indefinitely detained in the United States without access to courts, an apparent response to criticism on the right and left that last year’s measure (PL 112-81) authorized the imprisonment of U.S. citizens without charge. But the language has already drawn flak.

The bill “keeps faith with our troops and their families while keeping America ready to face the threats of the future,” Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, the California Republican who chairs the committee, said in a written statement Monday. Six Armed Services panels wrote portions of the measure last week, and today McKeon released the remaining sections, known as the “chairman’s mark,” which only the full committee will consider.

Adam Smith of Washington, the committee’s ranking Democrat, lauded many aspects of the bill, but he opposed as excessive the total amount authorized for the Pentagon’s operations outside the war zones, $554 billion.

“Given the size of our debt and deficit and growing budgetary pressures, I am concerned that the top-line number is roughly $8 billion over” budget caps imposed by last year’s debt limit law [PL 112-25], Smith said.

On top of the $554 billion, the measure would authorize some $88 billion for war expenses, the committee said.

Smith also took aim at the provision limiting detentions of Americans, which the majority’s statement said “reaffirms the fundamental right to Habeas Corpus of any person detained in the United States pursuant to the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force” law (PL 107-40).

Smith countered that the language merely restates current law, which he said “gives the executive branch too much power.”

Aides said Smith is working with Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican who led floor challenges to detention provisions in last year’s law, to amend the bill in committee or on the floor to make explicit that the executive branch cannot detain someone captured in the United States indefinitely without charge or trial. Although the Obama administration has said it would not indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without trial, some lawmakers want to definitively ban such detention in statute.

Supporters of the potential Smith-Amash amendment consider the GOP Armed Services habeas corpus language a distraction, or worse.