U.S. President Barack Obama will open the first meeting of his new bipartisan debt-reduction commission on April 27, a White House official said Monday. Obama's remarks next Tuesday will be followed by testimony from Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Ben Bernanke and White House budget director Peter Orszag, the official said, adding that two former directors of the Congressional Budget Office also will speak. The 18-member commission will meet at the White House in the morning and then go to a separate conference center for an afternoon meeting, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity. The Bipartisan Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is a new fiscal monitoring group intended to find ways to bring public spending in line with revenue and reduce massive government borrowing and the ballooning national debt. The commission will offer recommendations to the White House by December 1 to get spending and income back into better balance so deficits fall to 3 percent of total national output by 2015. The committee's co-chairmen are Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff under Democratic President Bill Clinton, and former Republican senator Alan Simpson. It also includes four members appointed by Obama and 12 appointed in equal numbers by Democratic and Republican congressional leaders.
