A couple of Washington’s most familiar con jobs are now front and center of our national leaders’ approaches to two of the most critical issues facing the nation. Frequently when the White House and Congress want to look like they are doing something concrete, when in fact they want to keep doing what they’ve been doing, they form a “bipartisan commission” or “task force” to study a problem and then recommend courses of action. Thus, President Obama and the Democratic leadership of Congress are pushing for the creation of a bipartisan commission to study the federal government’s exploding deficits and national debt, and recommend solutions. The object, of course, is not to cut spending or the national debt, but rather to provide a rationale for increasing taxes so that the career politicians and bureaucrats can continue doing what they are doing.

Similarly, the president and Democratic congressional leaders have rallied around convening a nationally televised Feb. 25 “summit meeting.” And to create the appearance of bipartisanship, they challenged Republicans to bring their best ideas for achieving health care reform, so that common ground can be found and a consensus achieved. The real objective here, however, is anything but finding common ground. Rather, it is to jump-start another effort to enact the Democrats’ monstrous 2,700-page bill that would put federal bureaucrats in charge of what’s left of America’s private health care system. That much became clear only hours after Obama proposed the summit, when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president remains “adamant about passing comprehensive reform similar to the bills passed by the House and the Senate.”