Democrats want a blank check, and they’re comparing the fires to hurricanes. The fires are horrific and the damage in property and lives enormous. But the fire damage is worse than it would have been if not for the policy mistakes in Los Angeles and Sacramento on water and forest management.
Washington has in the past tied aid to financially troubled cities and Puerto Rico. New York state established a financial control board to impose fiscal reforms on a city that couldn’t muster the political nerve to make changes without outside pressure. The California fires are both a natural and man-made disaster, but California’s political leaders seem incapable of reform. What then should Congress and the Trump Administration ask for?
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A permitting thicket impedes proper management on federal lands, including in the Santa Monica Mountains and Angeles National Forest where fires have burned. It takes the U.S. Forest Service on average 4.7 years to begin a prescribed burn—9.4 years if an environmental impact statement is challenged in court—and 3.6 years for tree thinning and brush clearing projects.
The Fix Our Forests Act would clear some of the regulatory overgrowth by prohibiting courts from blocking fire mitigation projects because of technical flaws in environmental reviews. Federal agencies wouldn’t have to redo land management plans every time a new species is deemed to be threatened.
The bill would also let utilities clear trees within 150 feet of electric lines on federal land (the current limit is 10 feet), so they’d be less vulnerable to catching fire in heavy winds. Utility vegetation management plans would be automatically approved after four months.
But be careful with these conditions.
A Reagan-appointed Federal judge, John Coughenour, describes Trump’s attempt to rid the U.S. Constitution of its guarantee of citizenship to nearly every person born on U.S. soil as “a blatantly unconstitutional order.” Here’s a slice from Fiona Harrigan’s report on Judge Coughenour’s opinion:
Many legal experts have expressed skepticism that a birthright citizenship executive order would pass constitutional muster. Coughenour proved sympathetic to that argument. “Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order,” he said. “It just boggles my mind.”
The Supreme Court declared in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)—a case involving a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants—that the history and text of the Fourteenth Amendment demonstrate the “ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory.” Mr. Trump can’t change the Constitution or the High Court’s interpretation of it by decree.
Perhaps he is testing the constitutional limits of his authority to gratify supporters, the way Joe Biden did when he extended his nationwide eviction moratorium while acknowledging that “the bulk of the constitutional scholars say it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.” Liberals now howling about Mr. Trump’s chutzpah cheered Mr. Biden at the time.
Mr. Trump said Thursday his Administration would appeal, and he may be hoping the case makes its way to the Supreme Court. But other courts are likely to reach the same conclusion as Judge Coughenour, and the High Court may never take the case. Rather than mount fruitless appeals, DOJ would be wise to deploy more attorneys to defend the Administration’s lawful deregulatory actions against inevitable liberal challenges.
Jeff Jacoby warns of the width and depth of Trump & Co.’s unAmerican hostility to immigrants. A slice:
Trump and his inner circle oppose all immigration, legal and illegal alike. During his first term as president, he oversaw more than 400 regulatory changes that slashed legal immigration in half.
Now he has picked up where he left off.
In Monday’s inaugural address, Trump characteristically denounced “dangerous criminals … that have illegally entered our country” and vowed to begin “returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” The blizzard of executive orders he signed later that day did indeed begin a crackdown at the border. But the first people to feel the lash of Trump’s new border polices are not “criminal aliens.” They are law-abiding would-be migrants who have broken no rules.
Peter Wallison describes Trump’s pardon of the January 6th criminals as “a stain on the GOP.”
My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, explains the importance of renewing Trump’s tax cuts. Two slices:
The Trump tax cuts are set to expire later this year, and that poses a real challenge for policymakers, businesses and taxpayers alike. Americans face a $4 trillion tax hike as key provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act sunset. The stakes are too high to ignore, and it has to be done right.
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Not extending the tax cuts could be harmful for just about everyone. First, the cuts have proven their ability to foster GDP growth. In 2018, the economy achieved 3% annualized growth, with periods nearing 4%, even amid trade tensions and tariff wars. This underscores the significant role of a friendly tax climate in creating a robust economy.
A poll this month finds, however, that only 29 percent of Americans favor an across-the-board tariff. Last month a poll found that more people think tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and even China will hurt than help the U.S. economy.
