What’s the purpose?

A year ago, former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles chaired the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, created by President Obama by executive order to come up with a plan to reduce the federal debt and deficit.

After working nearly a full year, the panel issued a number of recommendations, including a $200 billion reduction in discretionary spending.

Some expected President Obama to embrace and promote the panel's work in his State of the Union speech earlier this year. He did not.

Meantime, the Congressional Budget Office announced recently that the estimated size of the current year fiscal deficit had been understated and that we would find ourselves in the hole this year by $1.5 trillion.

Then, just last week, President Obama came up with a dramatic new proposal on the debt- and deficit-reduction front. The Washington Post reports that as of May 5, the president has asked a new "congressional task force" to start working on plans "to help cut the federal deficit."

Again?

"I'm at a loss to understand what the purpose is," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Thursday in an interview. He said Mr. Obama had not set a time line for any decisions, although lawmakers from both parties are calling for some agreement on deficit reduction before the government reaches a limit -- soon -- on how much it can borrow.

Back in early 2010, the last time the debt ceiling was raised, everyone in Washington agreed $14.3 trillion was all we'd ever need to borrow. What emergency has intervened? Has our fleet been sunk at Pearl Harbor? Has a huge meteorite destroyed California?

There is no emergency, and no reason we can't start living within our means -- right now.

So why yet another "task force," to study problems already studied, and issue yet another report to sit on yet another shelf?