After months of focusing on Afghanistan and health care, President Barack Obama turned his attention on Thursday to the high level of joblessness, but offered no promise that he could do much to bring unemployment down quickly. At a White House forum, scheduled for the day before the government releases unemployment and job loss figures for November, Obama sought new ideas from business executives, labor leaders, economists and others. Confronted with concern that his own ambitious agenda and the uncertain climate it has created among employers have slowed hiring, the president defended his policies. Obama said he would entertain 'every demonstrably good idea' for creating jobs, but he cautioned that 'our resources are limited.' The president said he would announce some new ideas of his own next week. In the House, where lawmakers are particularly sensitive to the employment issue since they all face re-election next year, Democratic leaders on Thursday were finishing work on a jobs bill for debate this month. It would extend expiring federal unemployment benefits for people who have been out of jobs for long periods, and provide up $70 billion for roads and infrastructure projects and for aid to small business. House Democrats plan to pay for the plan by drawing from the $700 billion fund set up last year to bail out financial institutions. Obama's jobs event captured the political and policy vise now squeezing the president and his party at the end of his first year. It came on the eve of a government report that is expected to show unemployment remaining in double digits. Obama asked the chief executives which included executives and some critics from American Airlines, Boeing, Nucor, Google, Walt Disney and FedEx: 'What's holding back business investment and how we can increase confidence and spur hiring?' He got a blunt answer from Fred P. Lampropoulos, founder and chief of Merit Medical Systems Inc., a medical device manufacturer in the Salt Lake City area. Lampropoulos said some in his discussion group agreed that businesses were uncertain about investment because 'there's such an aggressive legislative agenda that businesspeople don't really know what they ought to do.' But W. James McNerney Jr., the head of the Boeing Co., said in an interview after the president's forum, that the administration's domestic agenda is a problem only to the extent that it 'is crowding out their attention' to the economy. He added: 'I think the purpose of today was to convince us that there's at least a half-pivot in the other direction.' 