The Wonk Room

Yesterday, the Energy Department proposed lighting standards for fluorescent and incandescent lamps that could “save consumers and businesses almost $40 billion between 2012 and 2042 and eliminate the need for as much as 3,850 megawatts of power generating capacity by that date.”

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), speaking at an MIT conference on a clean-energy economy yesterday: “We have to set aside a certain amount of carbon credits to ensure that the steel and the paper and other trade-sensitive, energy-intensive industries are not exploited in the near term by the Chinese and others.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service announced it “will protect habitat for belugas in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, despite a lawsuit from Gov. Sarah Palin (R) seeking to wrest the whales from federal management.”

President Obama is lifting travel limits for Cuban-Americans to Cuba, part of a larger set of policy changes aimed at promoting freedom in the communist island nation. Administration officials have said the that president has no plans to fully end the 47-year-old U.S. embargo against Cuba, however.

North Korea has vowed to restore the nuclear facilities that it had been disabling and boycott international talks on its nuclear weapons program to protest the United Nations Security Council’s reaction to its recent rocket launching.

An Iranian-American journalist accused of spying in Iran went on trial this week and a verdict is expected soon, an Iranian official has said. Roxana Saberi, 31, is being held in Evin prison near Tehran.

Bloomberg reports that “Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Herb Allison is the leading candidate to run the Treasury office overseeing the $700 billion U.S. bank-rescue program”; Allison would replace Neel Kashkari.

“The number of U.S. businesses and individuals declaring bankruptcy is rising with a vengeance amid the recession, despite a three-year-old federal law that made it much tougher for Americans to escape their debt,” the AP reports.

Erin Dillon on making spending on Pell Grants mandatory: “If we are going to continue to guarantee middle and high-income families help with paying for college, the least we can do is make the same promise and commitment to low-income families.”

Jacob Hacker responds to the Lewin Group’s conclusion that a public health care plan “could lead to a massive shift of Americans from private insurance into public coverage.”

Here in Washington, the “more than $19 billion in stimulus money intended to revamp the nation’s health system has piqued the interest of some local tech companies that have in the past shied away from the complex industry. And for companies with expertise in the business, stimulus dollars mean new opportunities.”

The Wall Street Journal reports on the efforts of local organizations to help provide health insurance coverage to the employees of small businesses.