Editorial roundup: Saturday, June 29, 2024

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States:

The Philadelphia Inquirer

June 25

Careful decisions needed by U.S. in war in Gaza

As hopes for a cease-fire in the war in Gaza continue to dim, it's important to underline that the United States is already engaged militarily in a broader Middle East conflict.

More than 37,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed and many more displaced since Hamas terrorists set off the war nine months ago by murdering 1,200 Israelis and taking dozens of others hostage.

American involvement goes beyond weapon sales and aid to Israel.

It also comes with the daily participation of 7,000 sailors and jet pilots aboard ships in a strike group that includes the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. That aircraft carrier has been strategically placed in the Red Sea to shoot down drones and missiles being launched at commercial shipping vessels by Houthi rebels in Yemen who support Hamas.

Pentagon officials worry that sailors and pilots in their ninth month of a twice-extended deployment may be losing the sharpness needed to respond, often in seconds, to a detected drone or missile. Their constant anticipation of combat while on alert has also taken a mental toll that may result in post-traumatic stress. But an even longer deployment may be unavoidable.

Efforts to begin a temporary cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas-led Gaza government seem to be going nowhere as they consider what should happen after that. Neither wants a return to the status quo that existed before Israel's military response to the Oct. 7 massacre and kidnappings. With three-quarters of its buildings destroyed, there's a question of whether Gaza can recover from the devastation wrought by Israel's retaliatory assaults.

Houthi militants in support of Hamas began launching Iranian-supplied drones and missiles from Yemen in November and vowed not to stop until Israel gets out of Gaza. The Houthis have since attacked more than 60 commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, killing four sailors, including one aboard a Greek-owned coal carrier that was struck June 12 by a remote-controlled boat filled with explosives.

The Houthis' use of drone boats is viewed as an escalation by Pentagon officials trying to decide whether to once again extend the Eisenhower strike group's deployment. But there aren't many options.

The United States has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, which represent about 40% of the total worldwide, but three have crews undergoing training and four are undergoing maintenance and repairs that can take a year. Of the remaining carriers, one is off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, two are in San Diego, and the fourth is scheduled to head to San Diego from its deployment in the Philippine Sea near Japan.

If another carrier isn't given orders to relieve the Eisenhower, the U.S. could ask the United Kingdom, which has two carriers, and France, which has one, to take over at least temporarily in safeguarding commercial traffic in the Red Sea. But Europe hasn't fully engaged in what the Biden administration calls Operation Prosperity Guardian, which makes little sense given the disruption to worldwide commerce the Houthis' stranglehold on the Red Sea has caused.

Companies are rerouting their ships an additional 3,500 nautical miles around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. That's an expensive route the Suez Canal was built to circumvent in 1869. Perversely, some global shipping companies have taken advantage of the situation to boost their prices beyond any additional costs to avoid the Red Sea. Sounds like the price-gouging of consumer goods here in the United States that too often is falsely blamed solely on inflation.

But money isn't why the Israel-Hamas war must end.

Too many lives have been lost, too many families left homeless, too many loved ones separated. Ending the human carnage we only see on our TV screens while real people thousands of miles away are starving, dying and grieving should motivate every move this country makes.

While U.S. military strategists try to figure out what to do with our aircraft carriers, our diplomats must apply more pressure on Israel - with which, as opposed to Hamas, we have some leverage - to reach at least a temporary truce that, in a lesser regard, would provide more time to figure out the Eisenhower dilemma.

The carrier group's action in the Red Sea means America is at war to a limited extent. Now, careful decisions must be made to keep our involvement from escalating.

The Wall Street Journal

June 23

'Tax Armageddon' is Democrats' strategy for next Congress

That headline isn't our phrase. It comes from Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who like other Senate Democrats has been laying out in public the party's tax strategy for the next Congress. Democrats are saying out loud that they plan to use the scheduled expiration of the 2017 tax cuts at the end of 2025 to insist on the largest tax increase in history.

"The main goal here is this can't just be a debate about the 2017 tax cuts," Mr. Warner told Bloomberg. "This is going to be Tax Armageddon."

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who runs the Finance Committee, on Thursday revived his pitch to tax the appreciation of assets for those with at least $100 million in income. Mr. Wyden plans to run through the door on wealth taxes that the Supreme Court left open Thursday in its lamentable decision in Moore v. U.S.

Mr. Wyden floated his version of a wealth tax in 2021 to pay for President Biden's Build Back Better plan. Opposition from Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema scuttled the $4.8 trillion bill, but both are leaving the Senate.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren last week said she'll hold the middle-class tax cuts that expire in 2025 hostage if Republicans don't agree to soak corporations and people who earn more money than she thinks they deserve. "Better to let all the Trump tax cuts expire than be accomplices to another slash-and-burn tax bonanza for America's billionaires," she said. Her plan also includes a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households with more than $50 million in assets.

The Massachusetts senator rebuked Barack Obama for agreeing to extend the Bush middle-class tax cuts as part of the 2012 "fiscal cliff" deal with Republicans in Congress. Recall that the 2012 deal that Mr. Biden helped negotiate raised the top marginal individual tax rate to 39.6% from 35%, plus the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 23.8%.

She blamed that extension - and huge tax increase - for blowing up the deficit. "Once Obama made that tax cut deal with Republicans, the federal deficit ballooned," she said.

Well, no. The deficit didn't balloon until the pandemic when both parties agreed to throw a spending party under the guise of Covid relief. Then Democrats kept partying long after the emergency was over.

The government is still running $2 trillion in annual deficits even though the economy is growing and taxes as a share of GDP are roughly the historical average. Spending has driven the deficits and is now at 24.2% of GDP, well above the 21% modern average.

Ms. Warren added in her speech last week that "Joe Biden is right: if the 2025 tax bill doesn't call on wealthy people and giant corporations to shoulder a bigger share of what it costs to run this country, Democrats should reject it outright."

The Warren position conflicts with Mr. Biden's promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000. Note that Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who is running for re-election this year, also didn't close the door on Thursday to raising taxes on those earning less than $400,000. "We haven't made decisions about that yet," he told Roll Call.

Is this Mr. Biden's negotiating position if he is re-elected with Republican control of one or both chambers of Congress? If so, he ought to tell voters.

Donald Trump should ask Mr. Biden in this week's debate. Mr. Trump will also have an opening to link his tax cuts to the strong economy before the pandemic, as well as tie Mr. Biden's spending to the inflation breakout in his presidency. There's no excuse for Mr. Trump losing a debate over taxes.

All of this raises the tax stakes in this year's election more than most voters appreciate. Mr. Biden will keep repeating his talking point about taxes not rising for anyone earning more than $400,000, but if his first term is a guide he'll be taking orders from the Wyden-Warren faction in the Senate.

They'll be happy to raise taxes on the middle class as well as the affluent because they know there aren't enough rich to finance their vast spending plans. Tax Armageddon is right.