U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (Va.-D) told a crowd of about 40 Franklin County citizens Saturday morning that it's going to take a bipartisan effort to reduce the country's deficit and get the economy back up to speed.

Warner made those comments and others during a stop in Rocky Mount at a community roundtable at the Hub Restaurant.

Warner said that during the last 20 years, 80 percent of the jobs haven't come from big business.

"If you look at jobs in the U.S., 80 percent are created by start-up firms," Warner said. "However, the problem is finding the talent and getting access to capital."

But Warner warned that "there's no silver bullet to finding ways to create more jobs."

Warner said new federal legislation called the Jobs Act will help by allowing companies to go public.

"They can now use the internet to help with business start-up," he said.

Warner also advocated finding a balance of U.S. imports and exports and reforming the corporate tax code."American exports are rising, but they're not equal yet (to imports)," he said. "We shouldn't have a tax code that allows shipping jobs overseas."

Commenting on his work as a U.S. senator, Warner said, "Washington is a hard place to work. There's lots of gridlock, but there are some small positive signs."

With the U.S. debt increasing $4.5 billion every day, Congress needs to act, he said, proposing a dedicated surcharge to be used only for debt reduction.

"Who's at fault? Over the last 75 years we have had a deficit. Both political parties are to blame," Warner said. "Let's stop being Democrats and Republicans and fix this thing."

Warner said he was embarrassed by the 2011 debt limit debate that took the U.S. to the brink of default and also resulted in a downgrade of the country's credit rating.

"I have spent all my time trying to find common ground," Warner said. "We've got to find common ground."

Many of Warner's comments were responses to citizens who asked him questions, mainly about the country's deficit spending and jobs.