The WonkLine: February 18, 2009

The U.S. Air Force has backed off of its request for 381 F-22 Raptors. Chief of Staff Gen. Schwartz “said he would not disagree with an earlier statement from Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that it may need only 60 more F-22s.”

Continuing her tour of Asia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Indonesia and “announced that the United States would move toward signing a treaty with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.”

UC Berkeley professor Brad DeLong has posted his letter to Chancellor Robert Birgenau asking that “Torture Memo” author Professor John Yoo be dismissed from the university for professional misconduct.

Paul Kedrosky examines cheap credit and higher education tuition: “While higher education sits apart from much of the credit crisis, or at least has so far, it will have its turn.”

President Barack Obama said yesterday that “he wants to see labor and environmental protections incorporated and enforced in the North American Free Trade Agreement, revisiting an issue that caused him some problems during his primary campaign.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said “banking’s ‘old excesses’ are coming to an end after Royal Bank of Scotland bowed to pressure and slashed its cash bonuses for staff by 90 per cent.”

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), a member of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health “says the House and Senate will wait to hear from the White House before moving legislation on health care reform. He adds that template will come from the President and Congress will work within that framework.”

The New England Journal of Medicine notes that the stimulus package “should have major and immediate effects” on health care.

Health care stocks “have performed better than their counterparts in other industries,” joining technology as the only sectors in the black, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“The Obama administration is legally defending a last-minute rule enacted by President Bush that allows concealed firearms in national parks,” while the Interior Department conducts an internal review of the controversial rule.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report that hundreds of thousands of acres of coastal wetlands were lost in the eastern United States between 1998 and 2004 due to development, rising sea level, coastal subsidence, and erosion.

As California’s multi-year drought continues, the “nation’s biggest public utility voted on Tuesday to impose water rationing in Los Angeles for the first time in nearly two decades.”

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