By Dave Boyer
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
The Washington Times
President Obama vowed Tuesday to take more executive action when he deems it necessary to get his agenda enacted and bypass a reluctant Congress.
“I’ve got a pen, and … I’ve got a phone,” Mr. Obama said at his first Cabinet meeting of the year at the White House. “And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward” to help middle-class families.
“We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help that they need,” he added.
But GOP House Speaker John A. Boehner told reporters Tuesday that it is Congress that is waiting — waiting for the president to cooperate on several bills that would create more jobs, after a dismal report on last month’s weak job growth nationally. He said Mr. Obama should use his phone to call Congress.
“The fact is, the president’s taken his eye off the ball — taken his eye off of the issue of jobs,” said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican. “If the president’s serious about wanting to improve the prospects for our economy — and higher wages and better jobs — all he has to do is pick up the phone and call Democrat leaders in the Senate and ask them to move one of these dozens of bills that we’ve sent over there that would help put Americans back to work.”
The president said his Oval Office phone “allows me to convene Americans from every walk of life — nonprofits, businesses, the private sector, universities — to try to bring more and more Americans together around what I think is a unifying theme, making sure that this is a country where if you work hard, you can make it.”
“And so one of the things that I’m going to be talking to my Cabinet about is how do we use all the tools available to us, not just legislation, in order to advance a mission that I think unifies all Americans: the belief that everybody’s got a big responsibility, everybody’s got to work hard, but if you do, that you can support a family and … meet the kinds of obligations that you have to yourself and your family but also to your communities and to your nation,” Mr. Obama said.
As an example of his emphasis on unilateral action, last week Mr. Obama announced the creation of five new “promise zones” in various cities to fight poverty with the help of federal tax breaks. And on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will travel to North Carolina to promote a new public-private partnership to boost high-tech manufacturing jobs.