Days after voters vented their fury over government red ink in midterm elections, commission co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson floated proposals that they said would bring $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2020.

But their ideas might not even win the support of their own commission. Fourteen of the 18 members of the panel created by President Barack Obama must approve a final report before it can go to Congress for a vote, and some are already skeptical.

On the Social Security proposal in the Bowles-Simpson package, Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky, a commission member, told reporters: "It's not a proposal I could support."

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, soon to step down from her post since Democrats lost control of the House (of Representatives) in last week's congressional elections, said in a statement: "This proposal is simply unacceptable."

She called for the commission's final report to be fair to senior citizens who count on Social Security and to middle class families "unable to withstand further encroachment on their economic security."

The United States is under international pressure for continuing to spend its way out of recession when other countries have moved on to austerity, an issue being raised ahead of a meeting of the Group of 20 rich and developing countries in Seoul on Thursday and Friday.

The two heads of the commission called for reducing benefits and raising the retirement age for the Social Security retirement pension program, as well as setting limits on the popular Medicare program for the elderly and disabled, cutting payments to drugmakers and giving more power to a health cost-control board.

They proposed raising the gasoline tax gradually by 15 cents beginning in 2013; limiting the mortgage interest tax deduction and charitable deductions; cutting defense spending; and reducing corporate and individual tax rates.

Capital gains and dividends would be taxed as ordinary income, while budget cuts would be phased in beginning in fiscal 2012 to prevent a shock to the economy.

"It's all there. We have harpooned every whale in the ocean and some of the minnows," said Simpson, a retired Republican senator, at a press briefing. He and Bowles, a Democrat who served as chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, were named by Obama in February to head the panel.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said the ideas from Bowles and Simpson "are only a step in the process toward coming up with a set of recommendations and the president looks forward to reviewing their final product early next month.

MARKETS DON'T REACT

Markets did not react to the proposals. Expectations about the commission and its final report due out on December 1 are generally low.

Vassili Serebriakov, currency strategist at Wells Fargo in New York said: "It's probably not a story that is going to move the dollar in the short run, but I do think that the fiscal situation in general remains a source of medium-term vulnerability for the U.S. currency."