The Greek government will announce as much as $6.5 billion of additional deficit cuts Wednesday, bowing to pressure from the European Union and investors to do more to tame the region's biggest shortfall, a person familiar with the plan said. The new measures will include higher tobacco, alcohol and sales taxes and deeper cuts in public workers' bonus payments, said the person, who declined to be identified because the details aren't public. EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said Monday that Greece must reveal new measures 'in the coming days' to allay officials' concerns that the current austerity plan falls short. The announcement would come two days before Prime Minister George Papandreou meets Germany's Angela Merkel and may help the chancellor justify aiding Greece to taxpayers and political opponents who say the country shouldn't be bailed out after living beyond its means. Papandreou said in a speech Tuesday to his Pasok party in Athens that the new measures will be 'painful' and that civil servants, who have already seen their wages frozen and benefits cut, 'will have to get by on less.' The main union for public works plans its third general strike of the year on March 16. Concern about Greece's ability to finance its debt pushed that premium to 396 basis points on Jan. 28, the highest since the start of the euro in 1999, making it more expensive for the country to sell new bonds. 'If our country doesn't manage to borrow with similar terms as is normal for a European Union country then the consequences will be something more than catastrophic,' Papandreou said. 'Our responsibility is to avoid this catastrophe.' Papandreou acknowledged that raising taxes might hurt economic growth, though the 'primary threat is not the recession, but something worse, finding ourselves unable to borrow,' he said. German lawmakers say euro-area officials are devising a plan to grant Greece about $34 billion in aid should the need arise. One option could involve using German state-owned lenders such as the KfW Group to buy its bonds. That would be enough to cover more than 20 billion euros of debt redemptions in April and May. Greece had planned to sell $6.7 billion in bonds as soon as this week. Greece is under no pressure to sell more debt and will do so when market conditions are 'favorable,' Petros Christodoulou, head of the country's debt management agency, said in an interview Tuesday. In its original deficit reduction plan presented to the European Commission on Jan. 15, the government pledged to cut a deficit of 12.7 percent of gross domestic product to 8.7 percent this year. The new measures, the second set of additional actions announced by Greece since the original plan was presented, are the equivalent of as much as 2 percent of GDP and aim to insure that Greece meets the deficit-reduction goal. 