The supercommittee formed to deal with the nation’s debt problems has failed to reach an agreement.

The chairmen of the 12-lawmaker panel announced their failure Monday after one last-ditch effort at reaching an agreement.

“After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline,” the two chairmen of the panel, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), said in a joint statement.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the supercommittee member who authored the GOP’s deficit-reduction proposal rejected by Democrats on the special panel, said the groupl had “an extraordinary opportunity” to create “millions of jobs through a reformed tax system and put our government on a path to fiscal sanity by cutting spending.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, “this opportunity has been wasted.”

The announcement followed a final flurry of negotiating activity, which saw Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) put forward a revised tax code overhaul. The proposal was rejected by the GOP as a “gimmick” designed to secure a trillion-dollar tax increase.

While Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office released a memo earlier on Monday that laid a large portion of blame with President Obama for the failure, Boehner sought a more hopeful note in his own statement.

“This process did not end in the desired outcome, but it did bring our enormous fiscal challenges into greater focus,” Boehner said. “I am confident the work done by this committee will play a role in the solution we must eventually find as a nation.”

Over the weekend, the spinning game over who was the most to blame for the failure had already begun, with members of both parties taking to the Sunday talk shows to make their arguments. Republicans pointed to what they said was Obama’s failure to lead, and argued Democrats were unwilling to move on entitlements.

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