Obey rains on Obama's parade

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey threw a bucket of cold water on the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda Thursday, admitting serious doubt about success in Afghanistan and Pakistan and no appetite for helping the International Monetary Fund until European allies do more to stimulate their economies. 

The Wisconsin Democrat, who has been largely silent to date, made his remarks as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared before his panel on the White House’s $83.4 billion request to fund continued military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as beefed-up spending to forge a closer partnership with Pakistan along the Afghan border. 

“I frankly don’t know what I am going to do on your supplemental request because I’m very concerned that it is going to wind up with us being stuck in a problem that nobody knows how to get out of,” Obey said of the increased U.S. commitment to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. After nearly eight years of war, largely in Iraq, he said he feared that the United States would find itself consumed by another eight years of conflict that would “devour” President Barack Obama’s ability to make progress elsewhere. 

In what appeared to be a slap at the White House’s persistent upbeat tone, Obey warmly praised Obama but then added that the United States can’t approach “problems as if we were presidents of the Optimist Club.” 

“We have got to look at reality,” he said. “I don’t want to see all of the other goals of this administration, both foreign and domestic, be devoured by this insoluble problem.” 

“I don’t question your goals, and I don’t question the rationale behind any of the decisions that underlie the policies that this administration intends to pursue,” Obey told Clinton. “What I question is if we in fact have the tools.” 

The administration’s strategy to battle the Taliban in Afghanistan rests on Islamabad’s help, but Obey said 40 years of experience in Congress and the foreign policy arena has only taught him that Pakistan is “a country of deal makers who don’t keep their deals.” 

“I have absolutely no confidence in the ability of the existing Pakistan government to do one blessed thing,” the chairman said. “And without a functioning government focused on the right issues in Pakistan, we cannot achieve our goals in that region.” 

For this reason, he hinted broadly that the administration must set some time limits — perhaps a year — on the U.S. commitment, after which some judgment could be made on the chances of success. 

“Americans are funny people. It seems to me in our nature that we think there is a solution for everything," Obey said. "But we also run into some problems that at best can simply be managed but not solved.” 

“I am convinced that this is one of those problems that we can’t solve; we can at best manage,” Obey told Clinton. And to get cooperation from Pakistan’s government and intelligence services, “they need to know we’re not going to be stuck there backing them up forever.”

Clinton acknowledged increased concern in the administration itself over the steady expansion of the Taliban insurgency inside Pakistan itself, but the secretary took heart that there is some evidence as well that Pakistan’s leaders — so historically focused on India — better seen the threat within their own borders.

“Changing paradigms and mindsets is not easy,” the secretary said. “But I do believe that there is an increasing awareness, on the part of not just the Pakistani government but Pakistani people, that this insurgency coming closer and closer to major cities does pose such a threat.”

“Now, there are no promises. They have to do it. I mean, we can support them; we can encourage them,” Clinton testified. “I want to underscore the feeling we get, which is that if you have been locked in a mortal contest with someone you think is your principal — in fact, only — real enemy, and all of a sudden circumstances change, but they don't change so much that you're still not worried about that other enemy, it just takes some time. And I think that there is a growing understanding of that within the Pakistani leadership.”

As proposed by the administration, the supplemental spending request doesn’t yet include an estimated $108 billion in additional funds covering U.S. contributions pledged to the IMF. Part of the delay is owed to a technical dispute over how the money should be scored under budget rules. But as a veteran of many such IMF funding battles, Obey knows how difficult they can be in any case, given conservative resistance and the bailout weariness of today’s Washington.

Thus his remarks addressed to European allies were striking as he seemed to demand more of an effort on their part first to do more to stimulate their economies — just as Obama has tried to do at home with his economic recovery programs.

“I’ve put a lot of IMF money through the Congress, but I have to tell you, I have great reluctance to do so given the fact that the Western European governments, especially Germany, have declined to provide the kind of economic stimulus that the world seems to expect of us but they don’t seem to be willing to deliver themselves,” Obey said. “If they don’t pull their fair share ... we are going to have a prolonged worldwide recession, and the United States isn’t going to be exempt from that.”