The Nation - News from Jan. 11, 1989

President-elect Bush told the National Economic Commission that he wants it to present its recommendations for cutting the federal budget deficit March 1 as scheduled rather than to continue deliberating until autumn as its leaders had hoped. Both Drew Lewis, the NEC’s Republican co-chairman, and Robert S. Strauss, the panel’s Democratic co-chairman, have warned that the commission could end up split along party lines if it is forced to meet the deadline. They suggested that the NEC could have more impact if the recommendations were delayed. The 14-member panel, set up by Congress in 1987, was designed to hammer out a bipartisan deficit-cutting plan similar to the way an earlier commission formed a new Social Security financing blueprint.