(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'm asking them to produce clear recommendations on how to cover the costs of all federal programs by 2015.

ERSKINE BOWLES, FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY AND REFORM COMMISSION: If we get the facts out there, if you look back at history, look at your Rock study commission, most of those recommendations end up getting implemented. If the American people know the facts, they are pretty smart. They'll get it, and we'll get something done.

BAIER: Critics are our saying he is the president. He should make the recommendations and put it in the budget and make it happen. Why do you need a commission to do that?

ALAN SIMPSON, FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY AND REFORM COMMISSION: Because nobody will do anything? Why should he step over the cliff?

BAIER: Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid?

SIMPSON: You bet. That's what the hell this is all about.

BOWLES: Everything is on the table.

SIMPSON: We are not into foreign aid and waste, fraud and abuse. That's the sparrow belch in the midst of this typhoon. That has nothing to do with it that's peanuts. We are talking about Social Security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Whenever you can get sparrow belch in there, that's always good. Those are the co-chairs of the president's new commission to tackle the national debt and the deficits. Democrat Erskine Bowles and there you see former Republican Senator Allen Simpson.

So what about this? We're back with the panel. Nina?

EASTON: A, I love Alan Simpson. You don't not get a good interview with Alan Simpson.

I think on one level, on the spending level, it can provide useful political cover. And Simpson is right. It's not just about waste, fraud, and abuse. You can do a lot just about doing sensible stuff like raising the retirement age for Social Security and pegging the increase in benefits to wages rather than prices. You can make enormous impact on the deficit.

What I fear with this commission is that you are going to see the usual handwringing about painful cuts on all sides that have to be made and painful tax increases. We're going to hear the whole thing about tax increases.

What do tax increase does? They impede economic growth. Even Christina Romer, the president's chief economic advisor when she was an academic completed a study saying that.

They are in danger of putting - we have already got $1.4 trillion of proposed taxes in this president's budget. You start talking about more taxes through this commission, you put taxes on the economy, you hobble the economy, and then you don't - you don't end up closing the deficit because you decrease revenues.

You grow the economy, you grow revenues.

BAIER: Fred, here is what the Washington Post editorial said today about President Obama - "His promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year was irresponsible when he made it and even more irresponsible now with the economy cratered and the debt engorged.

The commission may give Mr. Obama cover to wiggle out of campaign promises."

BARNES: Among other things the "Washington Post" editorial writers love tax increases, but then that's what this tax commission is set up to do. And I am sure it will want to tax people making less than a quarter of a million dollars a year.

First you have to stop and think how do we get in this fix right now? What has President Obama done so far to help reduce the deficit or impede spends that he can't handle on his own now and so he needs a commission? What's he done?

He has, in his first budget, 2011, it increases by nearly two percent of GDP the amount of spending. He is spending like a madman and won't do the things that he could do on his own.

He could take the TARP funds that are used to bailout banks and so on, the money given bank and the stimulus money not spent. This would be $600 billion to $800 billion. He could use that to apply to the deficit. That makes a lot of sense. It would be easy to do.

And instead he wants some commission that will report after the election, and the fear that I have and I think others do is that it will have a big tax increase in it. And there will be some phony crisis that, you know, our bond sale almost failed. And we will get the lame duck Congress to pass this.

And my understanding is that Democratic leaders have said they have a vote on these recommendations in the lame duck Congress.

BAIER: Charles?

KRAUTHAMMER: This is all about politics and nothing about real cuts in spending, because the Democrats have control of the White House, and the Senate and the House. And they are the ones who radically increase spending in the last year.

They have increased domestic discretionary spending by over 80 percent. And if you exclude stimulus, it's still over 20 percent. It's huge increases.

And now they want the Republicans collaborating new cuts out of this high baseline. They are the ones that have the radical increase in this deficit.

This is all about cover. Obama needs it because is he going to have to break his pledge about taxing those who make less than a quarter of a million. He wants Republicans on board.

He jacked up spending $1 trillion dollars on stimulus and $1 trillion dollars on the health care he still is attempting to pass and the TARP which he is not using as refunds. He is not using as a way to reduce deficit. He wants it spent.

That's his spending. He needs the reduction, and Democrats ought not collaborate and take the blame for Democratic overspending.