President Obama has named a bipartisan panel to offer proposals on tackling the national deficit. The eighteen-member commission will be led by former Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.

President Obama: “Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles are taking on the impossible. They’re going to try to restore reason to the fiscal debate and come up with answers as co-chairs of the new national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. I’m asking them to produce clear recommendations on how to cover the costs of all federal programs by 2015 and to meaningfully improve our long-term fiscal picture. I have every confidence that they’ll do that, because nobody is better qualified than these two.”