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.