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. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter, where we will be live-tweeting the Senate health care debate.
National Security
AP reports, “arbitrators at the World Trade Organization on Monday upheld a ruling that China had illegally restricted imports of American music, films and books.”
BBC reports, “the CIA used at least two secret detention centers in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US.”
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was asked by ABC News about a report last week on what is claimed to be a confidential Iranian technical document describing a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the part of a warhead that sets off an explosion. “They are all fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government,” he told the network.
Immigration
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has announced plans to transfer undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of nonviolent crimes to federal custody for the last three months of their sentences in a desperate move to save money.
Federal prosecutions have reached a record high this past fiscal years largely because immigration prosecutions — “low-hanging fruit” — are up nearly 16 percent and now account for more than half of all criminal cases brought by the federal government.
The Associated Press reports that “President Barack Obama is on track to name more Hispanics to top posts than any of his predecessors, drawing appointees from a wide range of the nation’s Latino communities.”
Health Care
The New York Times reports that “it is unclear whether the House and the Senate will appoint a formal conference committee or just try to work out their differences in negotiations with Democratic leaders and committee chairmen from the two chambers.”
President Obama “downplayed the fact that final legislation is unlikely to include a public health insurance option.”
“As the health care bill moves toward a critical vote in the Senate, the five senators charged with overseeing the floor debate count health interests among their biggest campaign contributors,” USA Today reports.
Economy
According to federal projections, unemployment insurance funds in 40 states will go broke in the next two years, and “need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.”
The American Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America are squabbling over financial regulatory reform, “and their competing messages on Capitol Hill have made it easier for Democrats to ignore some of their arguments.”
The LA Times investigates the low bar that teachers in the city have to clear to receive tenure.
Climate Change
One year ago, an “earth-and-ash dam holding back 1 billion gallons of waterlogged coal ash” in Kingston, Tennessee, failed, but “most of the ash on the land is still there” and the Environmental Protection Agency is yet to regulate coal-ash ponds.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told E&E News that the Copenhagen Accord was a “nothingburger,” but then added “he had not read the actual language that was slowly emerging from Copenhagen.
“Not a chance in hell that after the president put American prestige on the line in Copenhagen that the Senate is going to give this issue anything less than a major push,” Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told reporters. “This is big — big — bigger than any individual agenda.”
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