Who knows what Willard thinks?

Richard Burr and Claire McCaskill are signaling that they will flip-flop on Audit the Fed in order to protect Wall Street’s secret bailouts from scrutiny.

On an oddly defensive conference call, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and White House environmental policy advisor Carol Browner tried to downplay the decision on offshore drilling as not the most important aspect of what was announced today, not as intrusive into coastal areas as suggested, and not even wholly the President’s decision, a remarkable pulling away from a policy they just advanced.

I have explained how if just one single senator that supported the public option offered an amendment during reconciliation, it would force an up or down vote on the matter. This means it would only take 51 votes to include a public option, and, at the very least, we would finally get to see on the record the senators that stood up for the American people, and which ones were fighting to protect the profits of the health insurance industry. Only a week ago, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) promised to stand up, if no other Democratic senator would, to offer a public option amendment and provide the country with a measure of accountability on the issue.

Under the Senate bill, without Medicare buy-in, insurance companies would be permitted to charge older people three times as much as they charge younger people. Yup, that’s “taking care” of seniors.