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.
Economy
Forbes’ Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein are already pushing President Obama to reappoint Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Bernanke’s term ends in January 2010.
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have “applied to refund a combined $45 billion of government funds…a step that would mark the biggest reimbursement to taxpayers since the program began in October.” Eric Dash writes that this may undercut the benefits for taxpayers.
“Commercial real-estate loans could generate losses of $100 billion by the end of next year at more than 900 small and midsize U.S. banks if the economy’s woes deepen,” according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Climate
“America’s future climate law began working its way through Congress this week, rewritten with new details and changes that were negotiated to give the coal industry generous incentives.”
“Detailed testing conducted on samples taken from the TVA coal ash spill near Kingston, TN have confirmed high levels of toxic elements present in water, sediment and fish tissue,” including “arsenic, barium, cadmium, lead, and selenium in water” exceeding “protective drinking water and/or aquatic life criteria levels.”
“A group of senior Republicans and Democrats” “led two missions to China in the final months of the Bush administration for secret backchannel negotiations aimed at securing a deal on joint US-Chinese action on climate change.”
National Security
Former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and representative to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad “could assume a powerful, unelected position inside the Afghan government under a plan he is discussing with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.”
CIA director Leon Panetta “has said that the US does not know the location of all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons but is confident they are ‘pretty secure’.”
Palestinian officials said that “they were disappointed that a round of U.S.-Israeli talks in Washington produced no clear progress on the removal of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank or other issues they feel are crucial to rejuvenating stalled peace negotiations.”
Health Care
As health care costs continue to climb in a poor economy, a growing number of employers are forcing “workers to take on a greater portion of their healthcare costs,” according to a new report.
The National Education Association, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the United Food and Commercial Workers are running ads attacking Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) for his long-standing proposal to remove the “tax exemption employers get when they provide health benefits to their employees.”
On Monday, the Justice Department “accused Wyeth, the drug maker, of cheating Medicaid programs out of hundreds of millions of dollars by overcharging for a stomach acid drug.”
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