With less than a month remaining until its deadline to engineer $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, the Deficit Super Committee has worked exclusively over the past month behind closed doors – out of the public’s view to determine whether the panel is making substantial progress.

Today, the committee will hold its first open public hearing in more than a month, as the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf, testifies on “Discretionary Outlays: Security and Non-Security.”

The lack of transparency has left many on Capitol Hill scratching their heads and wondering just what progress the committee has made since it last met publicly on Sept. 22. Without a steady flow of information coming from the private meetings, it’s also left some political observers skeptical that the 12-member panel will succeed in reaching its mandate.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, denied that the committee is struggling to make progress and reasserted his confidence that the tight-lipped bipartisan group will succeed in identifying at least $1.5 trillion in cuts over the next decade by next month’s Nov. 23 deadline...