The supercommittee is struggling. After weeks of secret meetings, the 12-member deficit-cutting panel established under last summer's budget and debt deal appears no closer to a breakthrough than when talks began last month.

It's not just millionaires who'd pay more under President Barack Obama's latest plan to cut the deficit.

Its task complicated by the cost and politics of President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs plan, a special House-Senate deficit-cutting panel worked Tuesday to find a bipartisan consensus on tackling the government's fiscal woes.

The real takeaway from President Barack Obama's jobs agenda? Workers probably can count on continuing to pay lower Social Security taxes. Employers may not have to pay as much, either. The long-term unemployed probably will keep drawing jobless benefits.

Fights large and small await Congress as it gets back to business, with jobs and budget cuts topping a contentious agenda that also includes a lengthy roster of lower-profile but must-do items that also are potential victims of partisan gridlock.

The White House on Thursday predicted that unemployment will remain at 9 percent next year, a gloomy scenario for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

As a "supercommittee" tries to find $1.5 trillion in new deficit cuts this fall, Republicans will be pressing a far more ambitious goal: passing an amendment to the Constitution to require a balanced federal budget.

The budget battle is not over. Many of the most nettlesome questions have been left for a new bipartisan super committee of 12 lawmakers whose task will be to find at least $1.2 trillion more in deficit cuts spread over the next decade.