Defeating the deficit.

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From 2003 to 2005, economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin served as the sixth director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, where he developed a reputation as a sober-minded fiscal analyst. Since then, Holtz-Eakin has worked for a number of think tanks around Washington; and is currently president of the American Action Forum, a pro-market policy institute. Not long after President Barack Obama established an 18-member bipartisan commission to reduce the deficit, Holtz-Eakin told us three reasons why the effort is unlikely to accomplish its goals.

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1 Presidential commissions never work. George Washington appointed the first commission to negotiate the end of the Whiskey Rebellion. It failed.

2 The commission was never intended to work. The Obama administration's budget is a road map to a sovereign debt crisis and the downgrading of the U.S. as a...