Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 10 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below, and subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, you can now follow The Wonk Room on Twitter where today we are live-twittering the Senate Finance Committee’s roundtable on how to expand access to health insurance coverage.
Economy
Kevin Drum on credit card regulation: “Retroactive rate hikes on existing balances are indefensible under any circumstances…Despite this, every single effort to ban the practice has failed.”
Profs. Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini ask “is there anything more important in solving the financial crisis than creating a law…that empowers the government to handle complex financial institutions in receivership?”
The New York Times editorial board writes, “if President Obama is serious about responsible action to control infectious disease threats, he should back legislation to grant Americans at least seven paid sick days a year — long enough to stay home until an influenza infection subsides.”
National Security
The Jerusalem Post reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told a closed-door meeting of 300 major AIPAC donors that the task of forming an international coalition to thwart Iran’s nuclear program will be easier if progress is made in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Responding to reports that the U.S. might seek to extend its June 30 deadline for withdrawing from some of Iraq’s cities because of continuing violence, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the deadlines are “non-extendable.”
“An Iranian court will hold a hearing next week on the appeal of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi against her eight-year jail sentence for espionage, the judiciary said.”
Health Care
The Commonwealth Fund has released a report showing that “private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans will be paid $11.4 billion more in 2009 than what the same beneficiaries would have cost in the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program.”
TIME’s Karen Tumulty reports that President Obama’s allies worry that Congress simply cannot act quickly on health care reform “without a much bigger investment of Obama’s enormous political capital.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) compromise on the public plan: require “the public plan to resemble private insurance as much as possible.”
Climate
Politico reports that “the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is taking heat from Johnson & Johnson, Nike and other corporate members over its opposition to global warming legislation pending in the House.”
“[U]sing short-term trends that show little temperature change or even slight cooling to refute global warming is misleading,” write two climate experts in a new paper, “especially as the long-term pattern clearly shows human activities are causing the earth’s climate to heat up.”
The Kansas City Star reports that a fight “over two coal plants planned for Western Kansas is over after Gov. Mark Parkinson worked out a deal for a single, smaller coal plant plus environmental concessions.”
Previous in TP Politics
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.