The U.S. Senate will vote in early January on temporarily extending unemployment insurance to millions of out-of-work Americans, Senate leaders said Thursday. --- Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that a bipartisan plan to extend the benefits for three months will get a vote on Jan. 6 or 7, the first two days the Senate is scheduled to meet in 2014. -- "It's a good bill, and it deserves a vote, and I hope my Republican colleagues will work with us to schedule a vote in a very timely fashion, which to this point they haven't," he told reporters. -- But Reid and said that extending unemployment insurance "is just the first step. We need to raise the minimum wage. We need to take other measures that will help address income inequality in this country. We have income inequality." -- The bipartisan budget agreement overwhelmingly approved by lawmakers fails to extend the unemployment benefits for about 1.3 million long-term unemployed American workers. Dozens of House and Senate Democrats protested the oversight, but agreed to back the budget agreement after top Democratic leaders said they would take up the issue of extending the benefits in January. -- Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the third-ranking Democrat, said the issue of extending unemployment benefits would be "the next test" in the ongoing battle between conservative and mainstream Republicans. - More, Washingtonpost, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/12/19/reid-unemployment-insurance-first-on-senates-2014-to-do-list/