In devoting six pages — 10 percent — of its latest issue to the political infighting between President Obama and congressional Republicans that’s likely to follow the fiscal cliff deal, TIME devotes not a single word to the issue animating the GOP’s concerns: government overspending.
While ignoring that key aspect of the political debate, writer Michael Grunwald does offer an interesting — and, of course, uncritical — synopsis of the ways in which President Obama has sidestepped the check and balance of Congress’ legislative power.
As Capitol Hill has become a black hole for policy, Obama has stretched his powers in creative ways. In the fall of 2011, after Republicans killed his jobs bill, he launched a We Can’t Wait initiative to advance pieces of his agenda through Executive action, from streamlined environmental reviews that should accelerate transit and renewable-energy projects to orders helping veterans find jobs and students pay back their loans. His Administration also bypassed Congress to engineer a backdoor revision of the No Child Left Behind education law, granting waivers to 34 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have agreed to adopt reforms such as tougher standards and teacher evaluations based on student progress.
Obama has also extended the steady post–World War II consolidation of presidential power over national security. The U.S. has used drones to patrol the skies in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia without congressional declarations of war. Obama even claimed in a report to Congress that U.S. military operations in Libya did not qualify as “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution. He has continued Bush’s muscular approach to surveillance, detention and military justice for suspected terrorists; he appended a signing statement to a 2012 defense bill asserting presidential prerogatives in those areas, even though as a Senator he criticized Bush for using signing statements. There has been barely a peep of protest from Capitol Hill.
