Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 10 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration 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.
Health Care
Target may join Wal-Mart “in supporting the U.S. government’s drive to require all large companies to provide health care benefits to their workers.”
The New York Times editorializes in favor of the House health bill. “House Democratic leaders have unveiled a bill that would go a long way toward solving the nation’s health insurance problems without driving up the deficit…This is a bill worth fighting for.”
Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) “suggested” yesterday that the Senate Finance Committee “would include a co-op” in its plan, making it “the only bill not to include a public plan.”
Economy
Bank of America is reportedly “operating under a secret regulatory sanction that requires it to overhaul its board and address perceived problems with risk and liquidity management.” Citigroup already has a similar agreement with the Comptroller of the Currency and is negotiating a second with the FDIC.
Commercial lender CIT said yesterday that “there is no appreciable likelihood” that it will receive government support, “marking the first time since the collapse of Lehman Brothers that the U.S. has declined to aid a struggling financial company of significant scope and size.”
Businessweek’s David Henry reports on the time bomb in corporate debt.
Immigration
At yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s REAL ID hearing, several Senators “expressed a willingness” to make changes to the nation’s stalled plan to create national ID cards through the new PASS ID Act which would eliminate “untested technologies, provide greater flexibility to states in issuing IDs and include privacy-protection assurances.”
The Department of Homeland Security has reversed a Bush administration stance by concluding that “it is possible” for victims of domestic violence to seek asylum in the US.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a public records request asking the Obama administration to make public its recently announced changes to the 287(g) immigration enforcement program which allows local police to arrest and process undocumented immigrants.
Climate Change
“Coral reef survival is balancing on a knife edge as the combined effects of ocean acidification and ocean warming events threaten to push reefs to the brink of extinction this century,” warned a meeting of leading scientists.
A study prepared for public utility commissioners of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation finds that “any allowance allocation” in deregulated markets “will result in consumer-funded windfall profits,” and says investing allowance auction proceeds in “technologies and strategies that directly reduce energy use and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions is one effective strategy for lowering consumer costs.”
“Climate change advocates gained the support of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Tuesday, the first time the organization has addressed the issue head-on.”
National Security
Jennifer Urgilez reports on Israeli military raids into the village of Bil’in to arrest Palestinian activists. “Judging from their actions, the Israeli military’s goal is psychological warfare — the brewing of helplessness and terror among Bil’in’s 1,800 residents aimed at freezing the resistance.”
AP reports that “the Taliban threatened Thursday to kill a captured American soldier unless the U.S. military stops operations in two districts of southeastern Afghanistan. The Taliban said last week they were holding the soldier, who the U.S. military earlier described as possibly being in enemy hands.”
The Washington Post reports that India and Pakistan have agreed “to increase communication and information-sharing in an effort to prevent future terrorist attacks, and said dialogue was the only way forward in the wake of violence such as November’s siege in Mumbai.”
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