Even as the so-called supercommittee's deficit-reduction efforts appeared to languish this week with a Thanksgiving eve deadline looming, U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., was leading a bipartisan coalition of 145 legislators calling on the panel to "go big."

"Failure can't be an option. The whole rest of the world is watching," Warner said at the Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday surrounded by dozens of colleagues.

"Whether we like it or not, this debt and deficit debate has become in effect a proxy for whether our democratic institutions are up to the job in the 21st century," Warner added.

The supercommittee's recommendations to slash a minimum of $1.2 trillion in the next decade are due Nov. 23. If the committee fails to produce a plan, automatic across-the-board cuts divided evenly between defense and domestic programs would take effect.

Warner, a founding member of the "Gang of Six," a bipartisan group of senators who recently offered a plan to reduce the debt by $3.7 trillion, is now heading a coalition of 45 senators and 100 House members in saying that the minimum is not enough.

"If they don't get something done, they ought to fire us all," Warner said in an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, saying that the U.S. can't afford to "pull a Greece and keep kicking the can down the road."

Acknowledging that no outcome would make everyone happy, Warner said he hopes that the bipartisan, bicameral support he has mustered will say to the supercommittee members, "You're not going to have to walk this plank alone."

Meanwhile, a group of high-income earners dubbed the Patriotic Millionaires stormed Capitol Hill to urge Congress to tax them more. The millionaires met Wednesday with senators' staff aides.

The millionaires want the supercommittee to raise taxes on people who earn more than $1 million, even though most Republicans are committed against the idea.

A meeting with an aide to Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., opened with the aide announcing that the senator believes the wealthy pay more taxes than their fair share, according to one of the millionaires, Matthew Palevsky, a consultant and founder of the Council on Crime Prevention.

"We defined it as not paying our fair share," Palevsky said of the 20-minute chat. "It was clear we were coming from different points of view."

The group later met with Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, a group that has gotten almost all congressional Republicans to pledge to vote against tax increases. "If you think the federal government can spend your money better than you can," he said, "then by all means" pay more in taxes than you owe.

The supercommittee has been tangled up on the topic of taxes for weeks, with Democrats suggesting new revenue through tax code changes. Republicans have agreed to increased revenue but have demanded large cuts to entitlement programs, a sacred cow to Democrats.

And, as with the debt-deal debacle this year, both sides blame the other for the impasse.

Warner suggested that the committee would be better off aiming for $3 trillion, to include both entitlements and new tax revenue, than the $1.2 trillion, suggesting the latter solves nothing.

"If you're going to make folks angry doing revenues or entitlement reform, at least get something out of it," he said. "You're going to get basically the same amount of grief if you nibble or if you do real reform."

Virginia would bear a disproportionate burden if across-the-board cuts are instituted, because of its heavy reliance on federal funding, particularly in Northern Virginia and at military installations in Hampton Roads.

"We will take a bigger hit," Warner said. "But the real hit might be another debt downgrade. Or it might be Europe spinning out of control and people questioning if we're still a safe haven."