Photo credit: Associated Press

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner said Wednesday that the loss of a key conservative senator from the so-called Gang of Six doesn't mean they're giving up on producing a complex plan to cut trillions from the national debt through deep spending cuts, entitlement reforms and changes in taxes.

The bipartisan working group is down to five senators after Tom Coburn, R-Okla., dropped out Tuesday, saying his departure is "just a recognition that we can't get there."

Warner, who along with U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., helped organize the group, said he isn't buying Coburn's analysis.

"I'm disappointed. I'm sure as heck not discouraged," Warner said in a conference call. "I think we're closer than many of the press stories today recounted."

The group of three Democrats and three Republicans had been meeting privately for months attempting to draft legislation that would follow the lead of a presidential debt commission's recommendations to lower the national debt by $4 trillion over 10 years by cutting spending - including in defense - rewriting the tax code to limit deductions and lower some rates, and revamping entitlement programs.

Many federal lawmakers agree that the federal debt, now more than $14 trillion and growing by $4 billion a day because of continuing borrowing, has to be reduced to avoid an economic collapse. 

But members of both political parties and an array of interest groups strongly disagree over what programs should be cut or exempted and whether any taxes should be raised.

Warner and Chambliss have said Congress needs to address the debt problem this year or nothing will be considered until 2013 because next year will be consumed by national elections.

"There's nothing self-correcting about this problem," Warner said.

"Every day that we delay, the hole keeps getting deeper."

Supporters of the effort have hoped that if the small, ideologically diverse panel can agree on what are expected to be controversial cuts and tax changes, their plan will carry more weight than legislation proposed by either political party.

The five remaining members met privately for 90 minutes in Warner's Senate office Wednesday afternoon but said little afterward about Coburn or their work, other than to confirm they're still talking.

"We've had a very constructive meeting today, we intend to meet again tomorrow, and we're going to keep working," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. "I think all of us are encouraged."

Other members are U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Richard Crapo, R-Idaho.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said Coburn's exit is a setback but shouldn't weaken the group's influence if they remain politically diverse.

"It hurts the momentum of this, but it doesn't diminish the need," MacGuineas said. "This is a group of people who want to do the issue big."

Warner, who often has called himself a "radical centrist," said the key will be to reach a compromise in which the suffering needed to correct the deficit is shared by everyone.

"It's stunning to me that there are some - particularly outside groups - that want to criticize anybody for trying to compromise," he said. "If you want to live in a parliamentary system where one party can ram stuff through, that's not our American system."