Gene Sperling, the director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, said Sunday that Obama is offering congressional Republicans “a grand bargain on jobs. He has said he would be willing to do corporate tax reform that lowers rates to 28 percent, simplifies taxes for small businesses, but do it together with a major infrastructure investment.”

In his budget proposal last year, Obama called for $50 billion in additional short-term federal spending on infrastructure projects such as bridges, highways, and mass transit systems, as well as creation of a National Infrastructure Bank to make loans to such projects.

“The economy is improving” and “we’ve had a lot of momentum,” Sperling said on NBC’s Meet the Press, but there are still “people who are desperately looking for work.” He said, “We have to admit – and we do admit — that the worst legacy of this great recession is the crisis of long-term unemployment.”