The top 8 foreign policy issues stuck in Congress
While imperiling global markets, enraging the American people, and generally doing little of benefit for the country besides giving pundits something to talk about, the U.S. debt ceiling crisis also brought almost every other piece of important congressional business to a halt for weeks, if not months. "Just to speak to how dysfunctional the U.S. ...
While imperiling global markets, enraging the American people, and generally doing little of benefit for the country besides giving pundits something to talk about, the U.S. debt ceiling crisis also brought almost every other piece of important congressional business to a halt for weeks, if not months.
While imperiling global markets, enraging the American people, and generally doing little of benefit for the country besides giving pundits something to talk about, the U.S. debt ceiling crisis also brought almost every other piece of important congressional business to a halt for weeks, if not months.
"Just to speak to how dysfunctional the U.S. Senate is, we’re here over the debt ceiling, but instead of focusing on the issue at hand, we’re going to focus on something that’s irrelevant possibly and has nothing to do with why we’re here," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said last month when he insisted that Congress not talk about Libya until the economy is fixed. "Let’s not take up an issue that will have no effect on and has nothing to do with the debt ceiling, and take on those issues that will."
Now that a deal has been struck, lawmakers should be able to return to the other pending matters on their agenda — after they get back from their five-week vacation, that is. And when they do finally return to town, they’ll face a long list of foreign policy and national security issues that are priorities for President Barack Obama’s administration, but which remain stalled on Capitol Hill.
Here are the top eight foreign-policy items currently held up by the do-nothing 112th Congress.
Read the whole thing here.
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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