The Imperial Presidency: Wresting $ power from Congress/ NY Times

Excerpts from the NY Times article titled, "Budget Chief Tried to Tilt Power to Executive Branch" by Matthew Bai:

Taken together, all of these proposals would seem to represent a clear exertion of executive power over the legislative branch from an administration that was supposed to have been more deferential to Congressional prerogatives.

Somewhere along the way toward wooing Congress, however, Mr. Obama seems to have decided that the problem, at least where reducing the cost of government is concerned, is Congress itself...  And so, in a variety of ways, the administration has deliberately set out to create alternatives...

Leading Democrats in the House aren’t arguing that the legislative process, with its dueling constituencies and parliamentary procedures, is necessarily the most efficient way to cut spending. But they maintain that it’s what the framers intended — and that subverting the process amounts to an assault on the democracy.