Members met for the first time today over at the White House and we're told that the debt could be a catastrophic threat to America's future prosperity.
Our senior political analysts Gloria Borger and David Gergen, they're here.
There is some tough decisions that have to be made, Gloria, sooner rather than later.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. Fix entitlement programs, we all know what they are. You've got to fix entitlement like Social Security and Medicare, cut federal spending and raise taxes or perhaps all of the above.
And that's the testimony they heard on this panel today. It's not rocket science. They all know what they have to do. The question is whether they're going to be able to get there because the president has said that these proposals, in order to go to Congress, need to have 14 out of the 18 members supporting them.
And so that means you've got to have Republicans and Democrats, and the question is whether you can get from here to there.
BLITZER: Here's what the president said. He said all options are on the table. Listen to this.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to deliver this message today. We're not playing that game. I'm not going to say what's in. I'm not going to say what's out. I want this commission to be free to do its work.
BLITZER: But they're going to do -- spend all year doing their work, David. The recommendations are not supposed to come out until December, a month after the election.
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's correct. And I think most people argue that this commission doesn't have any power. But it does have one power, Wolf. That is the power of a search light.
And I think what they could do, even though it's going to be hard to get anything done in Congress anytime soon, is they could hold hearings at night. Have television cameras there and help the country understand just how big the problems are and how difficult the trade- offs are.
If they could educate the public and prepare us for what's coming, it would be a major service. That's what Ross Perot did in his campaign, as you all remember, at 1992, for those charts.
Well, we need some charts at night on television. That would be a major television.
BLITZER: For example, if they want to help deal with the Social Security problem, one solution could be to raise the retirement age --
BORGER: Exactly.
BLITZER: -- from 67 to 70 or whatever.
BORGER: Exactly. And I spoke with Paul Ryan today. He's a Republican congressman, very involved with this whole question of entitlement reform and how you deal with it.
And in talking to him, I began to understand that what they may be looking for are new paradigms. You know new ways of kind of looking at how to fix Social Security, how to fix Medicare.
One of his solutions, he says is replace Medicare for younger people by allowing them to purchase vouchers for their insurance.
Well, gee, you know, that's an idea that ought to be on the table. Lots of Democrats, of course, are going to hate it. But we have to have new ways of thinking of these things or because you just can't tax your way out of this problem. It has to be a combination of things.
GERGEN: But since his idea was to move to a value added tax or a sales tax, but there's a huge amount of opposition to that now.
BORGER: Right.
GERGEN: From conservatives. The Senate has voted overwhelmingly against it in spirit. Now the idea this week is maybe to have Medicare retirement age pushed back to 67 or even 70, just so we push Social Security back. Now that's going to cause a storm. But it is a way to save money.
BLITZER: It seems everything is going to cause a storm.
BORGER: Everything -- (CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: And these taxes that will cause a storm.
GERGEN: These are brave people.
BORGER: You know, if these were easy -- if these were easy things to deal with, we would have dealt with them. But the December one day, by the way, it's probably not a bad idea, Social Security commission, happened after midterm elections, you know, we'll see what happens to the control of Congress.
BLITZER: And these will be recommendations that will go to Congress and we'll see Congress, whether they actually implement these recommendations to be determined. Guys --
BORGER: Or vote on them.
BLITZER: Yes, thanks very much.
Transcript from CNN's The Situation Room aired on April 27, 2010