Obama Deficit Commission Weighs Politically Toxic Fixes

ANDREW TAYLOR
HuffPost
04/27/10
AP

WASHINGTON — Even members of President Barack Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission admit the near impossibility of their task: finding a consensus by next fall for reducing federal deficits that threaten to erode Americans' standard of living.

The most obvious solutions, higher taxes or fewer government benefits, are the most toxic – one reason the 18-member panel has instructions to deliver its recommendations after the November election.

The commission begins work Tuesday with a charge to produce a deficit no bigger than $550 billion by 2015, an amount equal to about 3 percent of the total U.S. economy. That would require deficit savings in the range of $250 billion or more.

"This is a suicide mission," the panel's co-chairman, former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., said on "Fox News Sunday."

(More here.)