(Reuters) - Here is a list of lawmakers seen by analysts and congressional aides as some of the front-runners for selection to a 12-member budget-and-tax "super" committee being set up as part of the U.S. debt ceiling deal.
The panel will have six Democrats and six Republicans, split evenly between the Senate and the House. The deadline for choosing members is August 16. Names likely will be announced before that, congressional aides said on Wednesday.
DEMOCRATS
SENATOR MAX BAUCUS: The Senate Finance Committee chairman is a moderate who has called for tax reform and cuts in entitlements. He was a member of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission created last year by President Barack Obama. He voted against its final plan, which would have hurt his rural home state of Montana by raising gasoline prices.
REPRESENTATIVE XAVIER BECERRA: A liberal, he is vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and sits on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. Known as a key lieutenant to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, he also was on the Bowles-Simpson panel.
SENATOR KENT CONRAD: The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee is a fiscal conservative who early in 2010 floated a plan urging tax increases and spending cuts to save $4 trillion over 10 years. He was on the Bowles-Simpson panel and was part of the so-called Senate Gang of Six, a bipartisan group that in mid-July offered an ambitious but failed $3.75 trillion deficit reduction plan.
SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN: The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate is a liberal who is likely to resist big cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He was a member of Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six.
REPRESENTATIVE CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: The top Democrat on the House Budget Committee was part of a bipartisan group led by Vice President Joe Biden that tried to forge agreement on a deficit reduction package. Van Hollen is former chairman of the House Democratic Campaign Committee and Pelosi confidant
.
REPUBLICANS
REPRESENTATIVE DAVE CAMP: The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee wants to balance the budget without raising taxes. On Tuesday, he said the super committee would not be the best forum for tax reform. He was on the Bowles-Simpson panel.
REPRESENTATIVE ERIC CANTOR: The House Republican leader was a key player in the debt ceiling negotiations, earning a reputation as an aggressive partisan disinclined to make deals. On Wednesday, he said, "The focus needs to stay on cutting spending. This select committee has been tasked with the job of trying to identify those cuts ... The House is not going to support an increase in taxes."
SENATOR MIKE CRAPO: A member of the Senate's banking, budget and finance committees, he also was on the Bowles-Simpson panel and in the Gang of Six.
REPRESENTATIVE JEB HENSARLING: As a conservative House Republican "young gun," he has pushed for a moratorium on earmarks and proposed capping federal spending at 20 percent of the size of the U.S. economy every year. Another Bowles-Simpson member, he supports private investment accounts for Social Security.
SENATOR ROB PORTMAN: A first-term senator from Ohio, he knows the budget-and-tax debate. Fellow Republican Senator John McCain said he would pick Portman for the super committee. When he was in the House, Portman served on both the Budget and Ways and Means committees.
REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: The Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee authored a plan to slash Medicare costs. Democrats say they won a May off-cycle congressional election in upstate New York on the issue. Naming Ryan to the super committee could put his plan back in play, a risky move for Republicans. Ryan was a Bowles-Simpson commissioner.
SENATOR JEFF SESSIONS: The top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee is a conservative who is unlikely to go along with any tax increase and is a vocal critic of Obama's economic policies.
(Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh, Donna Smith, Thomas Ferraro and Dave Clarke; Editing by Howard Goller and Bill Trott)