Members of the super committee at their first meeting on Sept. 8 Photo: Sunlight Foundation

The bi-partisan committee has a deadline of midnight Wednesday to present a plan that would reduce the national defecit by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. 

If the committee does not reach an agreement by the deadline, it would trigger automatic spending cuts which would cut into social entitlement programs and military spending beginning in 2013, the Washington Post reports. But lawmakers on both sides have proposed turning off some features of the automatic cuts, which were designed to assure jittery markets the United States would avoid another near melt-down of the political and financial systems as was seen this summer.

The debt-reduction panel was formed after last summer's show-down over raising the debt ceiling, which caused Standard and Poor's to downgrade the U.S.' credit rating to AA+.  

Committee members from both parties took to the Sunday talk-show circuit and while no one admitted outright failure, some expressed frustration while others sought to place blame. 

"There is one sticking divide. And that's the issue of what I call shared sacrifice," said Patty Murray,D-Wash., a panel co-chair told CNN's "State of the Union."

Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona had a different reason for why negotiations failed.

"If you look at the Democrats' position, it was 'We have to raise taxes. We have to pass this jobs bill, which is another almost half-trillion dollars. And we're not excited about entitlement reform,'" Kyl told NBC's "Meet the Press.

Some non-committee members were more frank in their assessments.

"Put a bow on it. It's done," one aide to a Republican member of the committee told reporters.

Serious negotiations ended Friday after Democrats rejected a $644 billion package which comprised $543 billion in spending cuts, fees and non-tax revenue as well as $3 billion in tax increases from eliminating the tax break given to corporations for private jet purchases, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.