As Obama Finally Acts, He Exposes GOP Strategy

The Rev. Jesse Jackson writes in a blog entry at Huffington Post Black Voices that President Barack Obama is finally calling the bluff of an "increasingly dysfunctional Congress" by using his authority to issue executive orders to move reforms the country desperately needs. In the past, mostly GOP congressional members have accused him of inaction while blocking reform measures.

... He's issued orders that will help an estimated 1.6 million college students pay off their student loans, assist an estimated 1 million homeowners renegotiate their mortgages, help thousands of veterans find a job. He's established an online center to help small businesses looking for export markets. And Monday, he issued an executive order designed to help seniors with prescription drugs that are in short supply, calling on the Federal Food and Drug Administration to increase monitoring, move more rapidly to adjust production when needed, and using the Justice Department to crack down on corporate collusion or price fixing.

By issuing executive orders, the president takes the offensive, instead of waiting on Congress to act. When the Republican Congress repeatedly refuses to act on the president's initiatives, the public sees a government that doesn't work.

The tendency is to blame both sides, so the obstructionist strategy works. Congress has earned the lowest levels of public approval ever, but approval of the president has declined, as well. If your overriding goal is to ensure that Obama is a one-term president, as Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced, then obstruction of needed reforms makes a perverse sense, even if it virtually guarantees a stagnant economy, mass unemployment and declining wages.

Read the rest of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's blog entry at Huffington Post Black Voices.

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