Saying that creation of a "bipartisan federal task force is an excellent idea," former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan this morning gave a strong endorsement to the idea of having such a commission design ways to head off a "pending crisis" in the funding of Medicare and Medicaid.

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, Greenspan said that:

The dire consequences of a failure to tighten sufficiently to balance our books ... calls for policies that err significantly on the side of restraint. I understand that this is politically very difficult to do. But our nation has never before had to confront so formidable a fiscal crisis as is now visible just over the horizon.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to give the federal government the power to borrow another $290 billion because the current $12.1 trillion debt ceiling is about to be exceeded.