Your 'Supercommittee' Nominations, Please: The Ticker

We know lots of things about the congressional supercommittee created by the debt-limit compromise: It will have six members from each party; it will come up with $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reductions; its recommendations will be given fast-track privilege in the House and Senate; it absolutely cannot raise taxes, unless, of course, it totally can; it gets to order Chinese any night it works past midnight. (OK, we made that one up.)

What we don't know, however, is the most critical fact: Who will be on it?

The congressional leadership -- John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi in the House, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell in the Senate -- has until Aug. 16 to complete its fantasy draft, and the field is wide open (with a notable exception hailing from Texas's 14th District).

As a public service, the Ticker has done a somewhat exhaustive Google search and come up with a thoroughly unscientific list of candidates proposed most frequently in news articles, opinion pieces, blog posts and the like. The sample size is small, but we suspect the results give a pretty accurate picture of who will be the lead dogs on this fiscal Iditarod.

Democrats

Top Six:

-- Representative Chris Van Hollen (Maryland) (13 votes)

-- Senator Max Baucus (Montana) (12)

-- Senator Kent Conrad (North Dakota) (10)

-- Senator Richard Durbin (Illinois) (7)

-- Representative Xavier Becerra (California) (6)

-- Representative Jan Schakowsky (Illinois) (4)

Runners-Up:

-- Representative James Clyburn (South Carolina) (4)

-- Representative Allyson Schwartz (Pennsylvania) (3)

-- Representative Steny Hoyer (Maryland) (3)

Wild Cards

-- Representative Gabrielle Giffords (Arizona)

-- Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (New York)

REPUBLICANS

Top Six:

-- Representative Paul Ryan (Wisconsin) (19)

-- Senator Jon Kyl (Arizona) (14)

-- Representative Dave Camp (Michigan) (14)

-- Senator Rob Portman (Ohio) (12)

-- Senator Jeff Sessions (Alabama) (10)

-- Representative Eric Cantor (Virginia) (7)

Runners-Up:

-- Representative Jeb Hensarling (Texas) (5)

-- Senator Marco Rubio (Florida) (4)

-- Senator Mike Crapo (Idaho) (4)

Wild Cards

-- Senator Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania)

-- Senator Jim DeMint (South Carolina)

Sources: Attack Democrat (8/3), Bloomberg News (8/3), Care2.com (8/3), Daily Beast (8/3), Fiscal Times (8/4), The Hill (8/3), Hugh Hewitt (8/1), Investors Business Daily (8/2), Los Angeles Times (8/3), National Review Online (8/3), New York Times (8/4), pbs.org (8/4), Politico (8/1),  Progress to the People (8/2), Roll Call (8/3), Sunlight Foundation (8/4),  Thompson Reuters (8/4), USA Today (7/31),  Washington Examiner (8/2), Washington Post Wonkbook (8/2), Weekly Standard (8/2),  WUSA9 (8/2)

(Tobin Harshaw is a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board. David Helene is an intern with Bloomberg View.)