Global Paradigms

Business Times - 31 Mar 2011 Playing the blame game for US budget stalemate By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT TENSIONS are rising on Capitol Hill. The political rhetoric is getting ugly. And the suspense is growing: Will US lawmakers be able to work out a budget deal as soon as possible so as to avert a shutdown of the federal government? Now wait a minute. Haven't we seen that movie before? In fact, an earlier version of 'The Coming Government Shutdown' was screened only two weeks ago just before a brief Congressional break. During the last scene, we held our breath as Democratic and Republican lawmakers, after failing to agree on a substantive budget compromise, ended up negotiating a last-minute deal, a so-called 'stopgap' that provided funding for the operations of the federal government until April 8. That stopgap was the second in what some expect to be a series of several short-term deals between the two parties that - in theory, at least - could keep th...

Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org) Source URL (retrieved on Mar 30, 2011): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/sarkozy-gets-better-of-obama-5081 Sarkozy Gets the Better of Obama |More[1] | March 30, 2011 Leon Hadar [2] President Barack Obama has insisted that unlike his predecessor who launched a unilateral invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military strikes on Libya are part of a “multilateral” operation. It’s true that the Bush administration failed to win the support of the UN Security Council for the plan to depose Saddam Hussein, while the Obama administration persuaded Russia and China not to veto the Council’s resolution approving coercive measures against Muammar Gaddafi. Moreover, at least some members of so-called Old Europe who rejected Bush’s military adventure in Mesopotamia have backed the new adventure in Libya—with France among the principal cheerleaders. In addition, administration officials cite the green light (or at least a yellow light) tha...