Obama wants the cost of his $450-billion jobs plan offset by the deficit-cutting committee. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Supercommittee's job may grow by trillions

The new supercommittee is facing growing pressure to seek even deeper budget cuts — potentially making its task even more unrealistic.

President Barack Obama wants the costs of his $450-billion jobs plan to be offset by the powerful deficit-cutting committee, and now a bipartisan group of senators is considering pushing for trillions more in budget savings. That’s on top of the $1.5 trillion goal laid out by last month’s law to raise the national debt ceiling.


As the White House prepares to formally send legislation to Capitol Hill, a group of about two dozen senators will meet early next week to decide whether to issue a joint statement urging the committee to “go big” and put the country on a path to slash $4 trillion over the next 10 years, participants say.

Taken together, the two efforts significantly raise the bar for the 12-member committee, which has just started to grapple with its goal of approving a $1.5-trillion budget slashing deal before Thanksgiving.

Even before the scope of the two new efforts came to light, the supercommittee was already struggling with how high to set the bar, with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) urging his colleagues to “limit the demands” in order to find a deal while others like Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) calling for a far-more sweeping plan.

Adding to the pressure, Obama said in his Thursday night speech to a joint session of Congress that the supercommittee should increase its goal “so that it covers the full cost of the American Jobs Act.” He also said he would release an “ambitious” deficit-reduction plan by Sept. 19.

Meanwhile, the new bipartisan group of senators does not plan to offer a specific set of budget-slashing proposals for the supercommittee to consider. Instead, it will simply encourage the panel to try to find a mix of discretionary spending cuts, reforms to the tax code and an overhaul of entitlements in the range of a $4 trillion reduction — an effort that participants say would show that there’s support in the Senate for a major deal to reduce the debt.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of the participants, said Friday that the group would look at possibly issuing a joint statement or a letter to the supercommittee, with a general call for a major deficit-reduction plan.

“I think we all agree that the joint special committee of 12 — that’s where the leadership has to come from now in this process and that we want to be supportive of them,” he told POLITICO. “Essentially, we want to say to them: ‘Please go big.’”

By not offering specifics, the bipartisan group of senators would be spared the task of making tough decisions - and would put that burden on the supercommittee to find those savings or risk looking like it was coming up short. The participants, however, insist their goal is truly meant to support the supercommittee if it chooses to broker a major deal on entitlements, taxes and discretionary spending.

“It’s a mission basically to help support the 12,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said in an interview Friday. “It truly is a support group.”

In a meeting organized Wednesday by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), about 25 senators met to talk budget cuts. But it’s far from clear whether all 25 senators would even get on board with a general statement calling for deeper spending cuts.

“This will be the challenge,” Lieberman said.

The Wednesday meeting included Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sens. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.). The Washington Post first reported the Wednesday meeting.

Max Gleischman, a Durbin aide, said his boss’ “focus right now is on supporting the joint committee.”

About 40 senators had issued some level of support for the so-called Gang of Six, a bipartisan group of senators of which Warner, Chambliss and Durbin were all members. They unveiled an outline in July but never released legislative text; though they claimed it would slash $3.7 trillion over the next decade through a mix of revenue raisers and entitlement reforms.

“There’s broad bipartisan support to get close to $4 trillion,” Warner told POLITICO on Friday. “And I think there’s an incredible opportunity with the supercommittee to go beyond simply the obejctives that were set. Senators would like to be supportive of that.”

Still, it’s easier said than done. There’s no indication that Republicans would agree to increase tax revenues, and there are few signals that Democrats would back a major Medicare overhaul.

For that reason, Kyl is pushing the committee to focus on cutting $1.5 trillion, rather than risk stalemating on a broader plan and allowing the so-called “trigger” mechanism to kick-in, which would slash billions more from defense programs if the committee deadlocks.

But Van Hollen, a supercommittee negotiator, said the president’s jobs push and calls for a bigger deficit deal go hand-in-hand. The president’s plan would include a mix of infrastructure spending, tax incentives to companies that hire unemployed workers, school construction and state aid.

“It makes sense to have this as part of a package that’s coupled with an ambitious deficit reduction plan,” he told POLITICO on Friday. “I think we’ve heard from all sides of the political spectrum that we need to reduce the deficit over 10 years. I don’t know why we would have a lesser goal.”

But some worry that Obama’s effort could actually undermine the push to cut $4 trillion.

“The bottom line is that it’s going to add $450 billion to the debt that has to be met,” Lieberman said Friday. “I think a short-term infusion in the economy is well-intentioned. It can’t hurt, but the most important thing we can do is to cut the debt.”