Washington --

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.

While the panel members aren't doing much talking, other lawmakers, aides and lobbyists closely tracking the committee are increasingly skeptical, even pessimistic, that the panel will be able to meet its assigned goal of at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings during the next 10 years.

The reason? A familiar deadlock over taxes and cuts to major programs like Medicare and the Medicaid.

Democrats won't go for an agreement that doesn't include new tax revenue; Republicans are just as ardently antitax. The impasse over revenues means that Democrats won't agree to cuts to popular entitlement programs like Medicare.

"Fairness has to be a prerequisite for it," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.

The two parties have equal strength on the panel, which has until Thanksgiving to come up with a plan to submit for up-or-down House and Senate votes in December.

Thus far, say aides to panel members and other lawmakers, neither side has demonstrated the required flexibility in the talks.

"There's been no movement on (new) revenues, and I'm not sure the Democrats will agree to anything without revenues," said a Democratic lobbyist who required anonymity to speak candidly.

The $1.2 trillion target evolved after attempts by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to strike a so-called grand bargain on taxes and spending fell apart in July.

Failure to produce a measure would result in automatic and painful across-the-board cuts to the Pentagon budget and a big slice of domestic programs. The idea behind this automatic trigger was to force the two sides to come together because the alternative is too painful.