Virginia Democrat Mark Warner described a deficit-reduction plan he and other U.S. senators are promoting to a group of business leaders in Northern Virginia on Monday, saying that a solution to the country's ballooning national deficit can't wait much longer.

"If we fail to act, this is the future of our country -- deficits for as far as the eye can see," he said.

Warner and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia are leading a bipartisan group of senators, dubbed the "Gang of Six," that has been huddling to craft a plan to reduce the nation's $14 trillion deficit by more than $4 trillion by 2020 -- with the caveat that nothing, in theory, would be left off the table.

For Republicans, that means the plan might raise revenue by cutting back the deduction for mortgage interest, for example. For Democrats, that means the plan might affect entitlement programs like Social Security.

Warner said Monday that he thought President Obama -- who has laid out his own plan to trim the nation's deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years through spending cuts and letting the Bush-era tax rates expire on wealthy earners -- would be supportive of the bipartisan group's plan.

He added, though, that he was hesitant to discuss timelines for releasing more details.

"But I do think that if we don't move soon, the moment will pass," he told The Washington Examiner. "People will be kind of forced back into their ... partisan foxholes, and I think that would be a huge mistake."

The other senators involved in the effort are Democrats Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mike Crapo of Idaho.

In 2004, as Virginia governor, Warner helped shepherd a much-ballyhooed plan through the General Assembly that increased taxes, increased spending on services like K-12 and higher education, and preserved the state's prized AAA bond rating.

"Fairly quickly, we took the partisan piece of it out," he said. "Then it became kind of 'Who is for Virginia?' And that's what I think we need to turn this into. ... This ought to be who's ... really interested in fixing our country's balance sheet."

Preston Bryant, a former state delegate who was a Republican member of the House when Warner was governor, said that if the framework of the gang's plan gains steam, that could increase the profile of the moderate Democrat, who toyed with a presidential run in 2008.

"If he is able to do this -- a junior senator would immediately be launched onto the national scene, no question," said Bryant.