The Imperial Presidency rolls on.
You don’t need Nate Silver or fivethirtyeight.com to tell you what the American people want their elected representatives to focus on — it’s the economy, plain and simple. Put another way and to steal a phrase — it’s the economy, stupid. That’s what President Obama is focused on, because despite tremendous progress over the last five and a half years, we have more work to do to expand opportunity to all Americans who are willing to work hard and play by the rules.
However, we have a Republican Congress focused on virtually anything but the middle class — obsessively trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, ginning up politically motivated investigations, and reflexively blocking any proposal that would grow the economy and create jobs.
Given this dynamic, President Obama has only one option — use every ounce of his authority to unilaterally improve economic security. He is more than willing to work with congressional Republicans, but he is certainly not going to wait for them. […]
When 2014 comes to an end and we get together in the White House to analyze our progress, the question won’t be “How many bills did the president sign?” (although he would like to sign many). The question will be, “How many people’s lives did we improve?” And on that measure we are off to a pretty good start, and we’re going to keep pushing forward. We have many more executive actions to come, and every day the president has charged us with looking for additional ways to expand opportunity.