King, er, President Obama to raise fed worker min. wage to $10.10/hour

Fox News reports this morning that, in a move that should surprise no one, our celebrity President plans on circumventing Congress with the wave of his pen in order to give federal workers under new federal contracts a minimum wage hike:

President Obama, in the first of potentially many executive actions tied to his State of the Union address, will unilaterally increase the minimum wage for workers under new federal contracts to $10.10 an hour, from $7.25, in an effort to build momentum for a minimum wage hike for all Americans.

The executive order, which has been championed by progressive Democratic lawmakers, applies to all contractors performing services for the federal government and would effect more than 2 million employees, according to an administration official.

The president will use Tuesday night’s address to press Congress to pass a Democratic plan to increase the federal wage to $10.10 over three years, then indexing it to inflation, while also raising the minimum wage for tipped workers, the official said.

The president, who does not have the power to unilaterally raise the minimum wage for private sector workers, used last year’s State of the Union speech to call for a federal minimum wage hike.

“Let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour,” the president said to applause in his 2013 address.

[…]

Obama, in an effort to avoid the appearance of being a lame duck president, is expected to use Tuesday’s State of the Union address to make clear his intentions to use his executive powers to achieve his goals when Congress fails to pass legislation.

You know what? It’s one thing to be in the final weeks of your Presidency and make “unilateral” moves around Congress on any number of issues. It’s questionable but Presidents in the past – including President Bush – did it. In this case, President Obama has a full two three years left to go in his remaining term, and he’s already working to go around Congress every chance he gets – and on critical issues and decisions that, once implemented, will be hard to undo by future Presidents. This isn’t leadership – this is fascism and a monarchy rolled into one. I thought we fought a long time ago to get away from this exact type of dangerous rule. Would someone alert Dear Leader?