The Hill News

Sen. John McCain would like to see fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl on the so-called “supercommittee.”

“Jon Kyl is my nominee for this committee, and I believe he would do the right thing,” McCain said Tuesday on Tucson, Ariz., radio station KVOI 1030.

As part of the legislation recently passed to raise the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion while also cutting federal spending by $1 trillion over 10 years, a joint, bicameral committee of legislators is charged with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts. If the supercommittee comes up with a proposal, it will go to Congress for an up-or-down vote.

The top Republicans and Democrats in both chambers each have to pick three members for the committee by Aug. 16.

Since the debt-ceiling legislation passed, speculation has been widespread about who will be picked for the committee. But so far, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Min! ority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have stayed quiet about who they are considering for the committee.

Recently, McCain also said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), former head of the Office of Management and Budget, would be a good member for the committee.

“I’m not making the decisions, but one of my candidates would be Rob Portman, former head of OMB. A very sober, knowledgeable person â€" I think those are the kind of people that are going to be on this committee,” McCain told Neil Cavuto last week on Fox News.
If t he committee is unable to come up with a deficit-cut proposal, an “enforcement mechanism” in the debt-limit-increase legislation triggers 50/50 federal spending cuts between domestic and defense spending. In the same interview, McCain said the committee must act and that if it didn’t, he would fight the defense cuts.

“They’ve got to act, number one,” McCain said. “Number two, if there were cuts in defense spending I would be [speaking against those cuts] on the floor of the Senate â€" and I’m confident we would beat that.”