In his first full week as House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) is expected to prioritize the creation of a bipartisan commission designed to examine the national debt as lawmakers look for ways to cut spending before federal funding is set to lapse next month.

In his first speech after being elected speaker last week, Johnson vowed to establish a bipartisan debt commission to address the issue he claims is the “greatest threat to our national security.” The newly elected speaker reiterated that pledge during a GOP conference call over the weekend, during which he told House Republicans the creation of such a panel could be accomplished in the coming days.

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“We know this is not going to be an easy task, and tough decisions will have to be made. But the consequences if we don’t act now are unbearable,” Johnson said in his first remarks as House speaker. “We have a duty to the American people to explain this to them so they understand it well. And we’re going to establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately.”

Fiscal conservatives have long pushed for a debt commission to examine ways to cut federal spending and address the country’s growing debt, both on the Hill and from outside groups.

The conservative FreedomWorks renewed its calls for the House to establish such a panel in a letter to House members last week, urging lawmakers to pass a bipartisan resolution introduced by Reps. Scott Peters (D-CA) and Bill Huizenga (R-MI) that would create a debt commission tasked specifically with balancing the federal budget and stabilizing the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio.

The pair introduced the resolution in late September, just days before Congress passed a stopgap measure to maintain federal spending until lawmakers could come to an agreement on spending for the next fiscal year. The bill would require an equal bipartisan makeup with an additional four outside experts to propose recommendations to Congress after the 2024 election.

It’s not clear whether Johnson is seeking to advance that resolution as part of his efforts to create a bipartisan commission, but the move is being supported by several Republicans who are pushing for the panel to be created before the Nov. 17 spending deadline.

“There is no Republican and Democratic solution,” Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, told the Washington Examiner. “You actually have to get Republicans and Democrats on board to start solving that problem. So this fiscal debt commission, this is the first step in getting that done.”

FreedomWorks has been working behind the scenes to help orchestrate the creation of a debt commission, according to Brandon. Part of this includes conversations with former and current lawmakers to create a sort of “shadow commission” for outside experts to make policy recommendations and build up outside support for program reforms.

In doing so, Brandon said much of the focus would be on entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security that are often left out of federal spending conversations despite being two of the largest drivers of the country’s debt.

The current national debt sits just above $33 trillion and is expected to surpass $50 trillion over the next 10 years. Together, Social Security and Medicare are projected to make up nearly 80% of that deficit increase, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

“At some point, you have to start dealing with that,” Brandon said, adding his shadow commission would focus on “what is the purpose of these programs, not just how do we try and stall them for five years and pass the buck to a future generation.”

As Johnson begins to prioritize the creation of the commission, the House speaker has not yet decided who he would tap to be its chairman, according to a source familiar with the situation. But FreedomWorks has just the man in mind: Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ).

Since being elected to the House in 2013, Schweikert has spent the last several years speaking about the national debt in House floor speeches and urging his colleagues to vote for the creation of a bipartisan panel to cut spending.

“For the last several years, I've been screaming about this. And I'm also really good at the numbers,” Schweikert told the Washington Examiner. “This is my passion.”

Schweikert outlined the ways in which the commission must operate in order to be successful, calling the process “complex” and often difficult to convey to the public.

“[You] have to sort of find a way to communicate to the members, the staff, the media on just how rough the numbers are,” he said. “If I asked you right now, ‘What's the borrowing been over the last 12 months?’ … Almost no one knows.”

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The plea comes just over three weeks before federal funding is set to lapse, triggering a government shutdown if Congress doesn’t pass all 12 of its appropriations bills or some sort of temporary spending measure to buy time for its finalized budget. However, Schweikert said the commission could work in tandem with that process, arguing it “shouldn't be a conflict of anything else going on.”

“I already believe there will be intense pushback to slow or stop something like this because [of] the exposure of where the money's going, how it's being spent, how we borrow $6.5 billion a day,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, there's a lot of folks that benefit from that $6 billion every day. And if they see a threat to their income stream, they fight against it.”