Loaded with partisans and asked to deal meaningfully with the staggering federal deficit, prospects for the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform were never that great. “It’s true that their work is unlikely to lead to consensus,” said John Fortier, a political expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “But, we shouldn’t write them off? — they could still come up with something.”
The so-called debt commission, presently mired in partisan disagreement that forced its chairmen to delay until Friday the release of its recommendations, is just one of many such panels, some more obscure than others, currently at work in the federal government.
While most presidents have made use of commissions, such panels also underscore a key feature of President Obama’s leadership, which often relies on drawn-out negotiations and consensus building to make decisions. In addition to asking a commission to sort out the politically painful choices required to reduce the budget deficit, the president has appointed panels to consider matters ranging from the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the creation of a national Latino museum.
Next month, Obama is expected to receive a report from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Created in response to the Gulf of Mexico crisis earlier this year, the panel has been meeting with relatively little notice since July, their low profile a stark contrast to the hype, attention and blame that surrounded the disaster itself.
Whether the report reignites some measure of that controversy depends largely on its contents, which are expected to include recommendations on drilling policy.
“Oftentimes, the creation of a commission is a way of assuring the American public and the Congress that the president is not avoiding an issue and ducking it, but using knowledgeable people to address it,” said Bradley H. Patterson, an aide to three presidents and author of two books about White House operations.
Still, some commissions see more action than others. Currently gathering dust is a July report by the Joint Ocean Commission, outlining a new national policy for the seas.
Of uncertain fate is a report by the Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino, a project under study since 2003.
Vice President Biden chairs a commission of sorts with his Middle Class Task Force. And Obama asked his Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues for a report on medical research.
“The president can use commissions to put things off, saying ‘I appointed a commission on this,'” said James Pfiffner, professor of public policy at George Mason University. But, “ironically and unexpectedly, most commissions are still very useful.”
Pfiffner, who has studied presidential commissions, noted they have been in use since George Washington sent a delegation to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
“Commissions are often the response of presidents when they are in trouble and their aides say, ‘Don’t just stand there, do something,'” said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Some of the more famous include the Warren Commission, charged with investigating the assassination of President Kennedy.
The Greenspan Commission of the early 1980s, chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and charged with confronting a crisis in Social Security, is widely considered the gold standard of presidential commissions.
The panel, which recommended benefit cuts combined with tax increases, was successful largely because then-Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Reagan pushed their respective parties to accept the commission’s recommendation, a sharp contrast to the current imbroglio at Obama’s debt commission.
