Washington ? The co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction commission said Tuesday that Obama would endorse its findings, including politically toxic tax increases and painful cuts to retirement benefits that the president was unwilling to propose on his own.

But even as Obama urged the 18-member bipartisan panel to keep open all of its options to fight “exploding deficits,” forces on the right and left were urging just the opposite.

In opening-day testimony before the commission, panel members were amply warned that failure to reduce the deficit could lead to higher interest rates, harm the economy and ultimately erode Americans’ standard of living.