A panel of top US business leaders advising Obama whose re-election chances could hinge on whether he can boost the fragile economy - offered its latest job-creation prescriptions at a meeting with him at the White House. Obama pledged to "push as hard as possible" on their recommendations but also sought to temper expectations. "Obviously this year is an election year, and so getting Congress focused on some of these issues may be difficult," he cautioned his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The panel, a who's who of corporate titans, has generated dozens of mostly modest proposals since it was created last February. Obama has acted on many of them through use of executive powers. But some of their bolder ideas have lagged and the overall benefit to the still-sluggish job market remains uncertain. Despite that, Obama said "those small, incremental steps, they add up." General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt, who chairs the non-partisan panel, acknowledged there was no "silver bullet" for the country's unemployment woes. But he insisted that a number of the panel's earlier proposals, such as streamlining infrastructure building permits, were bearing fruit and the new ones deserved bipartisan support. That could be a tall order in a divided Congress where much of the Democratic president's jobs agenda has stalled in in the face of Republican resistance and election-year gridlock.