Some proposals are so obviously sensible that objections should be summarily swept aside. Such is true of a bill just introduced by multiple Republican senators to ban affiliates of adversarial regimes from buying land near U.S. military installations.

This is the third time in four years that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has introduced legislative language to do this. This year he is joined by fellow GOP Sens. Eric Schmitt (MO), Mike Braun (IN), Marco Rubio (FL), Steve Daines (MT), and Tommy Tuberville (AL).

The Protecting Military Installations and Ranges Act would apply to any foreign person “connected to or subsidized by” China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. The bill would set specific distances away from installations, bases, training areas, or airspace related thereto, closer than which the agents of those foreign adversaries could not own land. There’s more, but that’s the gist of it.

Frankly, this is such an obviously good idea that it is a major blot on the record of the Democratic Senate majority that they didn’t make this bill a priority for passage when Cruz introduced it as a stand-alone bill in April 2021 and also tried to attach it to the National Defense Authorization Act that same year. All four governments listed in the bill are hostile to the United States, and at least Russia and China conduct major espionage and surveillance against this nation. There also is evidence that China, at least, has nefarious designs on the U.S. electric grid — and of course, as we have seen in the past two weeks, it is brazen enough to send surveillance balloons across the entire U.S. mainland and dare us to shoot it down.

Some will argue, quite reasonably, that Chinese entities should be disallowed from purchasing any U.S. land, whether near a sensitive site or not. At the very least, though, Congress should make sure that national security installations are protected. It would be a sin against common sense to let this bill languish. Let’s pass it — now.