Obama seeks 2014 extension of jobless insurance

The Obama administration wants Congress to extend emergency jobless benefits for long-term unemployed workers into 2014.

Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling says that without an extension more than 2 million long-term unemployed people stand to lose their benefits next year.

He says that with a 7.3 percent unemployment rate and with a labor market that has yet to get back to strength, many Americans can't find work.

He says the administration is willing to find ways to pay for the cost of extending such emergency unemployment insurance.

The benefits were last extended at the beginning of the year as part of a deal designed to avert a so-called fiscal cliff of tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts.

Sperling spoke Thursday at the Washington Ideas Forum.