The Daily Beast reports that the appointment of Democratic Washington State US Sen. Patty Murray as co-chair of the deficit-cutting congressional "supercommittee" is raising objections not just from conservatives but from some liberal allies as well. "The reason: while Murray will be one of 12 lawmakers charged with crafting $1.5 trillion in budget cuts, she also sits atop the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which will be raising money aggressively for her party."

“We thought the choice of Senator Murray said ‘business as usual,’” Mary Boyle, the spokeswoman for Common Cause, tells The Daily Beast. “It is a message to special interests to back your truck up to Senator Murray’s office and dump your money here.”

To Boyle’s point, the supercommittee is being called a “lobbyists’ bonanza” in Washington, a one-stop shop for special interests to channel campaign donations in an effort to save their clients’ bacon as the members debate which programs, tax cuts, loopholes, and special favors will get the ax to shrink the federal debt.

Among those interests will be Murray’s hometown companies of Boeing and Microsoft. Boeing in particular stands to take a major blow should the supercommittee deadlock, which would automatically trigger hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to defense spending.

As chair of the DSCC, Murray spends much of her time raising money for Democrats. Her spokeswoman tells the Daily Beast that she will continue her fundraising work while co-chairing the supercommittee, which has 12 weeks to come up with $1.5 trillion in budget cuts.