Time To Call China's Dirty Hands. Congressional Spending Whores Raise Their Demands and Prices.

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As I have been writing/warning for years China is not a friend of the world but a predator.  If nations who embrace freedom deny this fact then China will eventually rule the world.

China is on the defensive and must lose the propaganda war they are engaged in trying to duck responsibility for hosting the latest pandemic. It is the obligation of Western Democracies to ban together and punish China in ways that will hurt and have a lasting impact.

For this to happen America must lead and Trump will have to change his tune.  His relationship with Xi is important but it also must be based on reality and not wishful thinking.

It is time to call China's dirty hands.

Watch Out in the South China Sea

As U.S.-China tensions increase, the chance of a miscalculation grows.

The Editorial Board

With the world preoccupied by the coronavirus pandemic, China has been looking to exert more military control in the South China Sea. This week three warships from the U.S. Seventh Fleet, joined by an Australian frigate, responded by sailing into the disputed waters in a show of force. The danger is that Chinese naval officers misread America’s public mood and think they can embarrass the U.S. without escalation.

The South China Sea is a critical waterway in the Western Pacific, bordered by Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brunei. Beijing has long claimed control over it, and during the Obama Administration it moved on its claim by militarizing islands despite international protests.

This month Vietnam said a Chinese ship deliberately rammed and sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat. Indonesia’s fishermen are also reporting escalating harassment, and in recent weeks Chinese government and militia ships have been tailing Malaysian oil-exploration boats.

U.S. freedom of navigation exercises are intended to affirm that Beijing cannot unilaterally seize control of the waterway. Some waters of the South China Sea are claimed by multiple neighboring countries, but China is the strongest power in the region and last week it announced its sovereignty over more islands over objections from Vietnam and the Philippines. China wants to assert its dominance, chasing other countries’ commercial maritime traffic out of waters even near their own coasts.

It’s widely believed that Chinese military officers are more hawkish and anti-American than Beijing officialdom claims to be. While the military has historically been reined in, President Xi Jinping has been doubling down on nationalism to consolidate his control amid the coronavirus crisis. Chinese propaganda has also amplified the virus troubles aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, a premier American naval asset in the Pacific, to suggest U.S. vulnerability.

Another potential flashpoint is Taiwan, which has won deserved international recognition for its handling of the coronavirus. That’s also infuriated China, which has increased military flyovers close to the island.

U.S.-Chinese tensions are also increasing, as Americans blame China for its deceptions about the coronavirus in an election year. Chinese propagandists have claimed the U.S. may have created the virus.

Under these circumstances the chance of a military miscalculation increases. Even something like the Hainan Island incident, when a U.S. and Chinese plane collided in 2001, would require careful de-escalation. The coronavirus is consuming most of America’s political oxygen, but Chinese military commanders should not think this is a moment to tangle with the U.S. if they encounter each other at sea. China’s geopolitical opportunism amid the pandemic has turned opinion against Beijing.

Freedom of navigation exercises are important but not enough to secure the Western Pacific from Chinese domination. The U.S. has remained neutral on territorial claims, but it may need to start recognizing claims of countries like Vietnam to make China pay a price for further expansion. The U.S. should also try to maintain its defense pact with the Philippines under mercurial President Rodrigo Duterte.

China’s recent behavior has badly damaged its claims to be a global stakeholder that plays by the rules. The U.S. is right to make clear that it remains a Pacific power and that the coronavirus hasn’t lessened its resolve.

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The spending whores in Congress just raised their prices and demands.

Congress Creates a Coronavirus Mess

A pandemic doesn’t excuse lawmakers from performing their most basic duties.

By Kimberley A. Strassel

“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong,” H.L. Mencken observed. Congress has found its own neat and plausible answer to the Covid-19 pandemic: spend, spend some more. Thankfully, a few elected leaders are starting to realize it’s wrong.

The world’s least deliberative body was at it again this week, as the Senate waved through by unanimous consent another $484 billion for loan programs, hospitals and testing. The House at least bothered to gather and hold an actual vote Thursday, though it forswore amendments. This was the fourth aid package Congress has whipped along since March.

By some estimates, lawmakers have already pushed this year’s budget deficit to $4 trillion—quadruple the previrus estimate. The only good news is that this number is finally pinging a few alarm bells. So cue the next iteration of Congress’s virus debate—a battle between those intent on more mindless blowouts and those belatedly determined to clean up the messes Congress has already made.

On the mindless side, we find Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who promised this week’s legislation was merely an “interim measure” and declared that “in the weeks ahead Congress must prepare another major bill in similar size and ambition to the Cares Act”—last month’s $2.2 trillion law. Joining him—unfortunately—is the White House, which senses an opportunity to realize long-stalled priorities. President Trump seems unaware that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will see his plans for infrastructure spending and raise him a bailout for every mismanaged blue state, a U.S. Postal Service rescue, a complete revamp of voting rules in time for November, and expanded unemployment benefits for everyone, forever.

On the other side are Republican lawmakers realizing Democrats are using each of these bills to take them—and the country—for a ride. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated an end to any more unanimous-consent spending and voiced his opposition to Democratic schemes to bail out badly managed state pensions. He wants a pause, thank the Lord.

Republicans are also realizing the virus has not caused voters to abandon basic principles. Their constituents expect conservatives to care about debt and the size of government, as well as to address the ballooning list of mistakes and unintended consequences in all these packages. There’s a growing Republican consensus that this must now be the priority.

That includes changes to the Paycheck Protection Program, the Small Business Administration’s new lending facility. The current rules allow bigger businesses that aren’t even in financial distress to tap the fund, which is helping to run it dry—a problem now being flagged by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Yet those same rules bar smaller, more desperate businesses from obtaining loan forgiveness if they use even 26% of the money on expenses beyond payroll. Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus, put together an amendment to loosen the 75%-on-payroll requirement, but Democrats barred him from offering it to this week’s legislation.

Then there are the Democrats’ “turbocharged” unemployment benefits from the Cares Act. Four Republican senators—South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse and Florida’s Rick Scott—warned at the time that benefits so generous would discourage able-bodied people from returning from work. They were generally treated like the skunks at the spending party, but we now know they were right, and the provisions could contribute to yet more bankruptcies. See the Journal piece this week from ChefStable owner Kurt Huffman, who can’t get his employees back on the job.

This week’s bill throws $75 billion more at hospitals on top of the more than $100 billion in the Cares Act. Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson proposes to turn at least some of those dollars from grants into loans—as the government is doing with other businesses. This makes sense, especially as hospitals will be among the first industries to reopen and are well-positioned to recover. Other Republicans call for a closer look at all the dollars Congress threw in its panic, wondering if it isn’t prudent to claw back some of the more wasteful or unnecessary handouts.

Congress has an obligation at least to ensure the money it is shoveling out—whether in grants or loans—remains with those for whom it is intended. Its failure to include any meaningful liability protection in its legislation ensures that a huge chunk of aid money is destined for the trial bar, which is already actively soliciting plaintiffs for cases against hand-sanitizer manufacturers, hospitals, vaccine makers, nursing-home operators—you name it. Democrats are fine with this, since the trial bar’s profits help elect Democrats. But conservative groups are pushing for Republicans to take a hard, if belated stance.

How about any stance? The Beltway story of Covid-19 has been one of Democrats holding hostage every aid bill to pet priorities, and the GOP caving in. Republicans need to make clear—to Democrats and the White House alike—that not another dime will leave the government’s coffers until Congress better accounts for the programs it has already enacted. A global pandemic doesn’t excuse lawmakers from their basic duties.

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