Point, Counterpoint

With foreign relations authorization ($) and appropriations legislation released in the past week, House Republicans threw down the gauntlet on foreign affairs spending for the coming fiscal year. Senate Democrats came back Wednesday with their own -- very different -- vision for American foreign policy with a rival version of the authorization bill ($).

Some of the starkests differences between the two chambers' bills:

• House Republicans want to distance the U.S. from the United Nations, Senate Democrats want to cozy up further
• House Republicans want to cut Pakistan civilian aid and add a bevy of new strings to the aid that is left, Senate Democrats did not entertain any additional restrictions on non-military aid
• Senate Democrats want to expand, while also improving upon, the Millenium Challenge Corporation model; Republicans are looking to significantly pare back funding
• Overall, Senate Democrats would keep funding for diplomacy and foreign assistance in line with the president's request, while Republicans want to chop the budget by more than $7 billion

It shouldn't be terribly surprising that the parties are as far apart on policy as they are on these two bills, given the way the rest of this Congressional cycle is going, but the contrast between their views of America's role in the world is disconcerting, nonetheless.

And in Non-Budget Battle News ...

With the debt ceiling debate sucking up most of the oxygen in Washington these days, you might have missed some interesting research on U.S. relations with the Muslim world that was released last week. These two are definitely worth a perusal:

- As part of its Global Attitudes Project, the Pew Research Center published a report on Western and Muslim views of one another on Thursday. The polling, conducted March through May of this year, provides a snapshot of attitudes at a tumultuous time for the Muslim world, which has affected, of course, various states' relations with their peoples, but also with the outside world. So it was fascinating to see how much things are starting to change in public views both there and here, since 2006, as well as where attitudes are holding steady. Good stuff.

- The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a paper Friday on Egypt's democratic transition -- which given Washington's nanoseconds-long attention span right now already seems to be passe -- addressing five myths about the situation on the ground there. The paper doesn't seem to be up on the CEIP Web site yet, but hopefully should be soon, because it's worth a read. Dispels a lot of the flawed conventional wisdom circulating amongst policy makers on the state of the country these days.

Count on some of the issues raised in the reports to come back up in the days to come -- the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations is marking up its spending bill for fiscal 2012 on Wednesday, which will be an important indicator of where Congress is headed on some of the more controversial aid funding issues -- far more so than the State Department Authorization bill mark-up/free-for-all (CQ, $) in House Foreign Affairs last week.

Time Warp, DC-Style

After a short holiday I'm back and blogging. And given how much D.C. seems to be turning into Groundhog Day, it doesn't seem I've missed much. In fact, I had a bit of a 'Back to the Future' moment -- to mix my movie metaphors -- when I landed back in Washington last week, having spent what felt like a lifetime away (in reality, seven days), only to return home to the exact same bickering on debt reduction and deficit ceiling that was raging when I'd left. An Only-in-the-Beltway Time Warp. Sigh.

Speaking of issues that don't seem affected by the passage of time, U.S. aid to Pakistan continues to be the subject of intense debate in Washington -- without any sense of a breakthrough on the way forward.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to consider a State Department Authorization bill, sponsored by Republican Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, on Wednesday that would eliminate all Pakistan aid until Islamabad can demonstrate it is cooperating on counterterrorism efforts, conducting a real investigation into the bin Laden affair and readmits military trainers (my article for CQ on the bill is HERE, $$). Members of the committee are bracing for a combative mark up that could go late into the night, and Pakistan will certainly be one of the main things members clash over.

Interestingly enough, one of the things the (neo-) conservative Ros-Lehtinen calls for in her bill is something the liberal Center for American Progress analysts Sarah Margon, Colin Cookman, Caroline Wadhams and Brian Katulis echoed in a brief on Pakistan aid policy released Monday - an audit of where the U.S. money is going. Pakistan's government spending is notoriously opaque and corrupt, which raises a whole raft of questions and concerns about the billions in aid the U.S. aid and how its being used.

Of course, where the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Ros-Lehtinen diverge is on how the U.S. should respond to the current failings in the American aid program. Ros-Lehtinen wants to end it until Pakistan can demonstrate it is a fully responsible steward. CAP and a growing number of other think tanks, policy analysts and development advocates, have concluded that the aid program is desperately flawed, but that doesn't mean aid to Pakistan is not a potentially valuable tool for the U.S. Like the latest CAP analysis, other experts like Isobel Coleman at the Council on Foreign Relations and a report by the Center for Global Development have recently argued that U.S. aid to Pakistan ought to be 'reevaluated' -- not as a code word for ending it entirely, but to determine genuine fixie for what a growing consensus of observers agree are fundamental failings in the current system.

Syria a Hard -- But Perhaps Not Impossible -- Nut to Crack

When it comes to Syria and the Arab Spring, the common argument I hear in the Washington these days is that the United States has no leverage with Damascus and, thus, there is not a whole lot the U.S. government can do to squeeze dictator Bashar al-Assad, at least not hard enough to force his exit.

Syrian dissident's Ausama Monajed's op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday challenges that assumption. While he obviously has an agenda, Monajed also highlights some interesting potential pressure points with the Assad regime. And he points out how the Obama administration might now be able to capitalize on some of the networks the U.S. has established in Syria in recent years as part of international efforts to isolate Assad and his cronies.

Over the past decade, U.S. envoys to the Middle East have established significant relations with members of the Syrian regime, particularly intelligence officers. The West should quietly make it known that in exchange for documented information that could result in International Criminal Court indictments, amnesty and political asylum will be granted to high-level informants — a desirable offer for those at the highest echelons who realize how shaky the regime is.

That and other suggestions Monajed offers are food for thought. And they might also provide a ready rebuttal for the calls from some on Capitol Hill to recall the U.S. ambassador to Syria -- Robert Ford -- who just arrived there last year.

Making News on CSPAN with Congressman Adam Smith

I interviewed Congressman Adam Smith, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services, for CSPAN's Newsmakers program, which aired Sunday.

He had just come off the floor from Friday's series of votes on Libya, which settled, well, nothing in the months-long debate in Congress over the conflict.

I thought it was interesting that Smith didn't think this would be the end for the House face-off on the U.S. role in NATO-led mission.

The subject is certainly going to be a hot topic in the Senate (CQ, $$) this coming week, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee slated to hold a hearing on Libya Tuesday morning, and a mark-up of the resolution authorizing the use of American force that afternoon.

Resolutions Could Resolve Libya War Powers Face-Off, For Now ...

Congress' months-long feud with the White House on Libya is likely to come to a head later this week.

Votes coming up in the House and possibly Senate ($$) will weigh in, finally, on whether or not to authorize the use of force in Libya. But they are unlikely to do much to settle the age-old dispute about how much Capitol Hill should be able to influence decisions to go to war (or "hostilities" or "kinetic military action" or whatever the kids are calling it these days).

Last week, the White House tried to argue that military operations in Libya were not "hostilities" of the sort that would trigger the 1973 War Powers Act, a line of reasoning House Speaker John Boehner's staff called "creative," at best. Boehner introduced two measures Tuesday - one that would authorize the mission and one that would in effect de-authorize it, calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Libya.

Leading Senators, however, are pushing for a vote authorizing limited military engagement, and they have an impressive bipartisan roster of support for their effort. So it seems the worst Congress will do is send a mixed message on Libya -- certainly not helpful for Obama politically or for international PR on the coalition efforts in Libya. But it's also not the sort of thing that's likely to force White House action, let alone any resolution over the battle between the branches on war powers.

Pakistan: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

The New York Times story on Pakistan's arrest of CIA informants who helped spy on Bin Laden in his final days in Abbotabad is just the latest of what seems like a revelation-a-week that is roiling our relations with Islamabad.

I went on Fox 5 (DC's local Fox affiliate) Thursday morning to talk about the reaction in Washington to that development and the broader outlook for U.S.-Pakistan ties going forward.