Congress’s debt-cutting supercommittee must focus on revising social programs such as Medicare and revamping the U.S. tax code in seeking to cut at least $1.5 trillion from the federal budget deficit, members said during the panel’s first meeting.

“This committee must be primarily about the business of saving and reforming social safety net programs that are not only failing many beneficiaries but going broke at the same time,” said Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In addition, he said, “I hope we are able to bring about pro- growth tax reform.”

Congress created the bipartisan, 12-member committee last month in legislation raising the federal debt limit. It was assigned to create, by late November, a 10-year deficit-cutting plan that Congress would vote on in December. If the panel can’t agree or Congress doesn’t enact its proposals, across-the-board budget cuts will take effect in 2013.

“Let’s at least hit our $1.5 trillion target” for deficit reduction, said Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican.

Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the co- leader of the panel, urged members to “come together” around a plan that can be approved with bipartisan support.

“I hope we can continue to not allow ourselves to be boxed in or pigeonholed by special interest groups,” she said.

The panel today approved rules requiring it to conduct business primarily in public while also allowing members to hold some meetings in private. The meeting was briefly disrupted by a group of protesters chanting “now, jobs” in the hallway outside the hearing room.

Short Time Frame

The committee’s short time frame for its work may limit its ability to revamp the tax code now, leaving the group looking for an overhaul that could be completed next year. The group is likely to consider setting targets for major changes to be considered over the next year, before Bush-era income tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2012.

“That’s certainly possible,” panel member Representative Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican who also chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, said in advance of today’s meeting.

Such an approach “would have a date certain for tax reform that would be outside of the 100-day window” for the panel to agree on a plan, he said. Camp has been holding hearings on a tax overhaul and said he wants to keep major tax legislation out of the supercommittee’s proposal.

A tax-code plan that only sets overall targets would push much of the substantive work into the 2012 election year. Still, the panel would have to set the overall amount of money raised and structure of a tax plan, matters that already divide the political parties.

Targets and Deadlines

Other lawmakers have attempted this year to propose targets and deadlines to spur a tax code overhaul.

The bipartisan “Gang of Six” Senate members in July called for a plan that would have set tax-cut targets and instructed the Finance Committee to report a bill to fit the overall plan.

Those targets included a three-rate tax structure for individuals with a maximum top rate of 29 percent and retention of some tax breaks for health, charities, homeownership, retirement and low-income workers. The corporate rate would have been between 23 percent and 29 percent. Members of that group included Virginia Democrat Mark Warner and Idaho Republican Mike Crapo.

“We ought to force the reform to take place and set the parameters that require it to happen, but then let us have the time in the appropriate committees of jurisdiction to build it correctly,” Crapo said in an interview yesterday.

Obama, Boehner Talks

Similarly, as part of budget talks that collapsed in July, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, discussed targets for a tax overhaul. They couldn’t agree on a plan or what would happen if Congress didn’t meet the goals.

Obama and congressional Democrats have sought to let the Bush-era income-tax cuts expire for high-income earners after 2012 while keeping them for everyone else. Separating the tax cuts into the two income categories should be the enforcement mechanism for tax changes, said a Democratic aide who couldn’t speak publicly about internal deliberations. Republicans have resisted that approach.