A14| Friday, August 2, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
National Judicial Injunctions and the Law
Regarding your editorial “The Na-
tional Injunction Dysfunction” (July
29): Your diagnosis of the national
injunctions problem is right, but the
prescription should be stronger. I
share your hope that courts will vol-
untarily eschew the practice, but the
Framers didn’t trust any branch to
police itself. The Constitution gives
Congress the authority to set the
rules for federal courts including
available remedies.
As chairman of the House Judi-
ciary Committee (2013-19), I wrote,
and the committee approved, the In-
junctive Authority Clarification Act
of 2018 (H.R. 6730). The bill restored
the traditional understanding that
federal courts have the authority to
bind only the parties before them,
not the entire nation. The effort en-
joyed the support of a bipartisan
group of some of America’s leading
legal scholars. By passing this legis-
lation this year, Congress can perma-
nently enjoin this disturbing form of
judicial overreach.
BOBGOODLATTE
Roanoke, Va.The recent filing by the Sierra
Club(Sierra Club v. Trump)over
President Trump’s use of Pentagon
funds for the border wall should be
a clear signal that Big Green is no
longer about ecology, but rather
about promoting leftist ideologies.
The proclamation by the Sierra
Club’s managing attorney Gloria
Smith that the use of military funds
for border security “will wall off and
destroy communities, public lands
and waters in California, New Mex-
ico and Arizona” is laughable. “Walloff” these communities from what?
Human waste from illegal immigra-
tion, fouled waters from pollution,
litter and additional crime from
drug trade and human trafficking?
Sounds terrible.
Big Green has simply become an-
other surrogate bullhorn in the so-
cialist agenda.
JIMWILLIAMS
San Clemente, Calif.Your editorial states: “we oppose
the precedent of taking scarce re-
sources from the Pentagon to fulfill a
campaign promise unrelated to de-
fense.” If protecting our southern
border against an invasion of people
from Central America (and almost
any other place imaginable) isn’t re-
lated to national defense, what is?
VIRGILWEATHERFORD
Woodland Hills, Calif.You seem to have forgotten that
judicial injunctions are conserva-
tives’ most powerful weapon against
the ever-expanding power of the ex-
ecutive branch. Presidents appoint
officials eager to administer laws in
ways that Congress never imagined
when the law was passed. Judicial
injunctions are our best protection
against such abuses.
The judicial injunctions that held
up the Trump travel ban illustrate
the importance of these restraints,
not their abuse. After an injunction
was issued, the Justice Department
found the executive order impossi-
ble to defend in court, and it was
withdrawn.
FRANKHOBBS
Fairfax, Va.LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters intended for publication should
be addressed to: The Editor, 1211 Avenue
of the Americas, New York, NY 10036,
or emailed to [email protected]. Please
include your city and state. All letters
are subject to editing, and unpublished
letters can be neither acknowledged nor
returned.
“Where’s Greenpeace
when you need ‘em?”THE WALL STREET JOURNALPepper ...
And SaltLibraries Need Access to E-Books for Patrons
As executive director of the high-
est lender and buyer of e-books of all
American public libraries, I have sev-
eral comments regarding “Macmillan
Limits Library E-Book Access” (Busi-
ness & Technology, July 26). Librar-
ies have promoted e-book usage over
the past 15 years, investing in the
market long before the public was
familiar with it.
Libraries spend double and some-
times triple the amount for e-booksas compared with print books and
often need to rebuy an e-book after a
certain number of checkouts. We
have worked well with publishers
and hope to continue to do so, bal-
ancing their need for profit with
ours to provide access.
Public libraries promote authors
and their readership. Neither writers
nor readers will benefit from this
practice to limit availability to e-
books to library patrons. Patrons
have always had the choice with
both print and digital to buy the
book if they don’t want to wait for a
library copy. They often do. There is
nothing new here except a disturbing
idea that the public library is the en-
emy of profit.
Patrons of large library systems
that span substantial geographic ar-
eas such as the King County Library
System (50 libraries over 2,
square miles) have come to depend
on e-books. Some of our patrons can-
not drive to a library. It is an issue
of equity and access to information.
We wouldn’t tolerate limiting ac-
cess to the number of print books to
force people to buy them. Instead we
buy more of them based on demand,
as we currently do for digital copies,
and as our collections budgets allow.
LISAG.ROSENBLUM
King County Library System
Issaquah, Wash.Child Detainees and Geographical Preference
Neither the Border Patrol nor the
Office of Refugee Resettlement is to
blame for the number of children re-
maining in border stations longer
than 72 hours (“Agencies Spar on
Child Detentions,” U.S. News, July 13).
The federal systems of care for unac-
companied children are simply over-
whelmed by the tens of thousands of
children who have been entering this
country every year since 2012. Border
Patrol stations aren’t equipped to
serve as nurseries, day-care centers
or overnight shelters for children.
When I served as deputy director for
children’s services at the Department
of Health and Human Services’ Office
of Refugee Resettlement, I met Bor-
der Patrol officers who used their
own resources to buy supplies and
food for children at their stations.
The fault for the overcrowded con-
ditions and the years-long influx of
children is the federal statute that re-
quires that any child from a countryother than Mexico or Canada who
presents at the border unaccompa-
nied by a parent or legal guardian
must be taken into custody by the
Department of Homeland Security
and transferred to HHS’s Office of
Refugee Resettlement. Children are
ultimately placed with an adult se-
lected by the child’s parent pending
the conclusion of immigration pro-
ceedings. Most of these children
won’t qualify to remain lawfully in
the U.S.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of
children in refugee camps all over the
world who qualify to enter and re-
main in the U.S. lawfully. But because
they cannot walk to our borders, they
wait their turn to be transported
here, a wait of many years.
Our immigration policy shouldn’t
prioritize needy children based on
proximity to our borders.
BOBBIEGREGG
Forest Park, Ill.Reaction to Trump’s Tweets
Reveals America’s Division
Holman Jenkins recommends that
journalists “Prove the Tweets Were
Racist” (Business World, July 24) be-
fore churning out news stories that
take it as a given that President
Trump’s tweets are racist.
Just as Nike made a business deci-
sion that it didn’t need old, flag-wav-
ing Americans to buy its products,
most U.S. news organizations have tai-
lored their products to the more-edu-
cated, younger, urbane and hipper
anti-Trump left and accepted that
people on the right (i.e., predomi-
nantly racists) will get their news
from Fox. A Columbia Journalism Re-
view poll, conducted in partnership
with Reuters/Ipsos, found that confi-
dence in the press plunged to a new
low and now sits below confidence in
Congress. More than two-thirds of Re-
publicans have hardly any confidence
in the press, while nearly 75% of Dem-
ocrats have a great deal or at least
some confidence. The demographics
of groups that have the least confi-
dence in the press skews conservative,
white and less than a four-year college
degree—i.e., racists who voted for
Donald Trump. If you need proof that
President Trump is a racist, then you,
too, must be a racist.
TIMWATSON
Jacksonville, Fla.Kamala’s Medicare-for-All Straddle
E
ven liberals say Kamala Harris had a bad
second debate Wednesday as she strug-
gled to defend her record as a prosecu-
tor and her new health-care
plan. The latter is especially
revealing about the Demo-
cratic debate on health care
and is worth explaining in
more detail.
Ms. Harris in the June de-
bate raised her hand when the moderators
asked who would eliminate private health in-
surance. Then she backtracked. Ahead of the de-
bates this week in a post on Medium, Ms. Harris
tried to clarify how she’d “make transformative
change for the better” on health care. It’s trans-
formative all right.
The Harris plan would move the country to
single-payer health care over 10 years, rather
than the four years in the Bernie Sanders bill
Ms. Harris co-sponsored in the Senate. The first
step is that anyone in America could buy into
Medicare. At least Ms. Harris is honest that this
is a way station to single payer.
Ms. Harris says she’ll provide a “common-
sense path” for folding everything from Medic-
aid to employer insurance into the federal sys-
tem. She conveniently leaves out details on how
she’d land this Evel Knievel jump, but her politi-
cal goal seems to be to claim that she wouldn’t
eliminate private insurance.
She does this by saying that private offerings
will continue to exist similar to Medicare Ad-
vantage, the program that lets private plans
compete for retiree business. One reason to be
suspicious: Democrats have hated Medicare Ad-
vantage for years and raided the program to pay
for the Affordable Care Act.
Ms. Harris says: “Essentially, we would allow
private insurance to offer a plan in the Medicare
system, but they will be subject to strict re-
quirements to ensure it lowers costs and ex-
pands services. If they want to play by our rules,
they can be in the system. If not, they have to
get out.” In other words, she’ll regulate insur-
ance companies as public utilities.
The Harris campaign website says employers
could offer either the private Medicare Advan-
tage plans or dump workers into Medicare for
All. She wants her plan to appear less disruptive
than the Sanders bill, yet the obvious conclu-
sion is that it would still blow up traditional
employer-sponsored insurance, which 150 mil-
lion Americans have.
Ms. Harris said Wednesday that she’d “lis-
tened to American families” who want “an op-
tion that will be under your Medicare system
that allows a private plan.” But could Americans
keep the employer plans they have? No.
This is bad policy and politics. Democrats
paint all of U.S. health care as
a dystopian hellscape, and
there’s certainly room for im-
provement. But some 69% of
people rate their health-care
coverage as excellent or good,
according to a Gallup poll
from December 2018. The number who say the
health care they receive is good or excellent?
Some 80%.
Ms. Harris also ducks whether her plan
would slam the middle class with higher taxes.
Ms. Harris distances herself from a Sanders
proposal to levy a 4% income-based premium
on households making above $29,000. She’d ex-
empt households who earn less than $100,000,
supposedly with more dispensations for those
who live in expensive areas.
Instead she’d impose a tax on financial trans-
actions, which means a 0.2% tax on stock trades,
0.1% on bond trades and 0.002% on derivatives.
This is an old idea that never goes anywhere in
Congress. She also makes overtures to “a more
progressive income, payroll and estate tax,” not
that all of this would cover the $30 trillion or
more price tag.
Joe Biden was right Wednesday to call out
this double-talk. “Thirty trillion dollars has to
ultimately be paid,” he said. “And I don’t know
what math you do in New York, I don’t know
what math you do in California, but I tell ya,
that’s a lot of money, and there will be a deduct-
ible. The deductible will be out of your pay-
check, because that’s what will be required.”
iii
Progressives say Medicare for All merely re-
places the premiums you hate with taxes, but
it isn’t so simple. A 2016 analysis from Kenneth
Thorpe at Emory University found that more
than 70% of working privately insured house-
holds would pay more for health insurance un-
der the Sanders plan. Medicare for All would
also encourage folks to consume more health
care even as it slashes payments to doctors and
hospitals and thus contracts supply. Rationed
care and waiting lists are inevitable.
Mr. Sanders called the Harris proposal “not
Medicare for All,” and no doubt she wants to
appear more moderate than the Vermont social-
ist. Ms. Harris’s straddle is an attempt to appeal
to independent voters while satisfying progres-
sives. Sooner or later the progressives will fig-
ure out she’s giving them the policy while trying
to trick everyone else.If you like your private
health plan, she
wouldn’t let you keep it.
House Democrats’ Missile Mess
T
he 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces Treaty officially passes into the
annals of Cold War history on Friday,
dumped by the Trump Admin-
istration after more than a de-
cade of Russian violations.
Congressional arms-control-
lers can’t revive the treaty, but
they are aiming to deny the
U.S. any defense advantages
from its demise.
The INF treaty name is misleading, because
it bans all ground-based missiles, nuclear or
conventional, with a range between 500 and
5,500 kilometers. As a result of the treaty, the
U.S. has the ability to launch mid-range missiles
(like the Tomahawks used to strike Syria in
2017 and 2018) from the air and sea, but not
from ground bases.
With the treaty defunct, the Pentagon now
seeks to develop and test such weapons as part
of its strategy to maintain an advantage over
Russia and China. Yet House Democrats are try-
ing to block this. A National Defense Authoriza-
tion Act amendment, passed on a party-line vote,
essentially forces the U.S. to continue to abide
unilaterally by the INF. An appropriations bill
eliminates funding even for research and devel-
opment of mid-range weapons, though that was
not prohibited under the treaty.
The INF was the result of the Cold War stand-
off over Europe, yet in recent years it has eroded
U.S. power in particular in Asia. China was never
bound by the treaty and has undertaken a major
arms buildup to unseat the U.S. as the dominant
power in the Pacific. It has as many as 2,
missiles that would be prohibited under the
treaty and can target U.S. bases and allies. Adm.
Harry Harris of the Pacific Command (now am-
bassador to South Korea) told Congress in 2017
that “restrictions on conventional land-based
weapons are hindering the U.S. military’s ability
to keep up with China.”
The U.S. has had to depend on air and sea
power to counter China. As
military analyst Eric Sayers
points out, this is far more
costly and inefficient, as
planes and ships might be bet-
ter used for other missions. A
destroyer can carry a small
fraction of the missiles that could be launched
from a U.S. base like Guam. Adm. Phil Davidson,
commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific,
told the Senate this year that ground-based
missile capability “restores maneuver to the
force, making the air, maritime and land compo-
nent much more viable.”
Critics say U.S. intermediate-range missiles
would spark an arms race. Yet such weapons are
already the norm in the Pacific theater. As El-
bridge Colby and Mike Gallagher have explained
in these pages, if Moscow or Beijing becomes
convinced that it has a conventional advantage
over the U.S., they could be more easily tempted
to seize territories in a fait accompli. This is the
most likely route to nuclear war. If the conven-
tional balance of power shifts further away
from the U.S., it becomes more likely.
The INF treaty did not happen because the
U.S. stopped investing in defense out of high
moral principle. It was achieved through credi-
ble deterrence and after the U.S. military
buildup of the 1980s, as Ronald Reagan de-
ployed U.S. missiles to Europe to counter Rus-
sia’s. Adversaries don’t seek arms agreements
if they have a military advantage.
The Democratic missile ban will be sorted
out in conference with the Senate. A ban would
vindicate Russia’s contempt for its treaty com-
mitments and accelerate China’s drive for mili-
tary dominance in the Pacific.They want to block
weapons the U.S.needs to deter China.
The China Tariff Ratchet
O
ne problem with President Trump’s
China trade strategy of gradually esca-
lating tariffs is that no one knows when
or whether they’ll stop. Mr.
Trump’s tariff ratchet is now
18 months old, and on Thurs-
day he escalated again with a
10% levy on $300 billion of ad-
ditional Chinese imports to be-
gin September 1.
This is the third round of tariffs on China, and
this time the border tax will hit consumer goods
such as cellphones, laptops and tablets, clothing
and toys. The stock market went in reverse on
the news, but that isn’t the biggest economic
risk. Bond yields also fell and oil fell nearly 8%,
both warnings of slower growth in China and
perhaps around the world.
An even bigger risk may be the impact of the
Chinese yuan, which fell sharply against the dol-
lar. That puts further pressure on Beijing to sup-
port the currency or risk capital flight. Mr.
Trump no doubt thinks this adds to the pressure
on China to capitulate in trade
negotiations, but it also carries
risk of a larger run on the yuan
that would do further harm to
the Chinese economy.
As we learned from the sec-
ond quarter GDP report, tariffs
result in mutual pain. They’ve hurt U.S. exports
and contributed to what is close to a global re-
cession in manufacturing.
Mr. Trump’s Thursday tweets on China were
respectful and anticipated further bilateral trade
talks. But the President is embarked on a high-
risk coercive showdown with the world’s second
largest economy in which neither side wants to
bend first. Trade wars aren’t easy, especially for
the innocent economic bystanders.Trump escalates
his coercive tradeshowdown with China.
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
OPINION