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.
Immigration
Day laborers sued a Southern California city, claiming a ban on seeking work on the street violates their civil rights after police dressed in plainclothes posed as employers and arrested a dozen workers.
A report released for the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration, identified six areas of the system needing reform — DHS, immigration courts, Board of Immigration Appeals, Circuit Court Judicial Review, representation, and system restructuring.
The Associated Press and Univision Communications are teaming up with The Nielsen Company and Stanford University to explore the opinions and experiences of 2,000 Latinos in the U.S. and their opinions on a wide-ranging set of topics.
Economy
By June, 5.1 million homeowners are expected to have homes worth less than 75 percent of their mortgage balance, which according to new research is the point when an owner “starts to think hard about walking away.”
AIG has agreed to cut employee compensation by $20 million, but will still distribute $100 million in bonuses for 2009, a move which Special Master for Compensation Feinberg called “outrageous” but legal.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) “is set to join forces with several business groups on Wednesday to call for Congress to end the ‘reckless speculation’ in commodity markets as the Senate prepares to take on financial reform.”
Climate Change
Washington press overhyped President Obama’s acknowledgment that a “key bloc of Democrats is agitating” for an energy bill “that lacks any kind of cap on carbon, and contains so many concessions to the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear industries” that one environmental group has dubbed it a “flashback to Bush energy policy.”
Scholars & Rogues: A paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters shows that the availability of soil nutrients will probably limit how much human-emitted carbon dioxide (CO2) plants can absorb, “so global warming will likely be worse than current projections.”
British journalists are fanning the flames of attacks on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with misleading claims and outright false assertions, lapped up by the denialist right.
Health Care
“The Obama administration, in an effort to forge ahead with its sometimes-contentious effort to compare various medical treatments, is proposing a big boost in funding for the agency that oversees the research.”
On Thursday, the Senate “passed so-called pay-go legislation that would require Congress to pay for much of its future spending without adding to the deficit, but it exempted $82 billion from the requirement to prevent reductions to doctors’ Medicare reimbursement rates.
“With their sweeping health-care bill on hold, House Democrats plan to revive a sliver of the legislation as soon as next week that would repeal an antitrust exemption for insurance companies.”
National Security
“A roadside bomb killed at least three U.S. soldiers and five Pakistanis in a corner of northwestern Pakistan where Pakistani forces have struggled to subdue the Taliban, officials said.”
The Islamist group Hamas on Wednesday formally rejected allegations it had committed war crimes during last year’s fighting in Gaza, charges made in a United Nations report.
“U.S. President Barack Obama still plans to meet the Dalai Lama, the White House said on Tuesday, despite China’s warning that such a meeting would hurt ties already strained by U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan.”
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