The WonkLine: November 5, 2009

The Washington Post reports that despite a GOP boycott of the markup process, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is prepared to pass a climate bill without amendments when the committee convenes today.

Yesterday, legislators in California passed a series of bills that “would vastly overhaul the state’s troubled water system.” The historic water package, which Gov. Schwarzenegger pledged to sign, was “prompted by a protracted drought — which has reduced water supply, harmed the fishing industry and contributed to crop loss.”

Following more than 70 public hearings, South Korea, “the OECD’s fastest-growing carbon polluter,” announced that it would set its “carbon emission reduction targets for 2020 on November 17 at between unchanged from and 4 percent below 2005 levels.”

“House Democratic leaders struggled Wednesday to strike a deal that would restrict the use of federal money to pay for abortions under sweeping health care legislation headed for debate on the House floor this week,” the New York Times reports. “But the proposed compromise satisfied neither supporters nor opponents of abortion rights.”

Blue Dog Democrats face a dilemma this Saturday as the House prepares to vote for the health bill: “Should they oppose legislation they believe is flawed, or move the bill out of the House in the hopes of it changing in conference?”

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the House plan to prevent cuts to doctors’ Medicare reimbursement rates would cost $210 billion over 10 years.

After weathering weeks of Republican objections, the Senate finally passed a bill extending unemployment benefits yesterday, by a 98-0 vote. “The measure will increase to 99 weeks, or nearly two years, the maximum length of time that a jobless worker can get benefits in some states,” the New York Times notes.

“After spending more than a year in suspended animation, the commercial real estate industry is expected to hit bottom in 2010 with a wrenching thud,” which is going to spell trouble for a lot of small lenders and community banks.

Brad Delong writes that, while it wasn’t pretty, government intervention saved the country from a depression.

The Wall Street Journal points out that “Democrats may have to press ahead with a broad overhaul of immigration laws next year” if they want Latino voters to turn out and vote for them in 2010.

Republican candidate for Texas governor, Debra Medina, is the first candidate in the 2010 race with Spanish-language TV ads in which she claims she is “alguien como ustedes” — “someone like you.”

Two Guatemalan parents of US citizens with no criminal history who have lived and worked in the US since 1992 are about to be deported after spending $30,000 on legal proceedings in the absence of much-needed immigration reform.

Iran’s Arabic-language television network Al Alam said on Wednesday that “it had been taken off the air by Arab satellite operators based in Egypt and Saudi Arabia without explanation.”

In a profile of Secretary of State Clinton, Joe Klein reports that “the Palestinians are weak and divided. The Israelis have been difficult, as always: whenever Mitchell raises East Jerusalem in talks with the Israeli Foreign Minister, the Israeli stands up and walks out of the room.”

The New York Times reports that Abdullah Abdullah, “the erstwhile rival to President Hamid Karzai in the presidential election’s second round, held a news conference on Wednesday in which he denounced Mr. Karzai’s newly anointed administration as illegal and said that the government would be unable to cope with the problems facing Afghanistan, including security and corruption.”

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