For those of us frustrated by a year of brinksmanship and inaction in Congress, President Obama is finally providing some welcome relief. Bypassing a legislative branch held hostage by those determined to thwart his agenda at any cost, the president has taken a number of steps recently to take matters into his own hands:

• In December, the White House announced a $4 billion energy investment program leveraging public and private funds to upgrade government buildings – at no cost to taxpayers. The program, part of a coordinated effort to help the economy with action that the Executive Branch can take without waiting for Congress to act, also includes a housing initiative designed to help people refinance their homes and a program to help repay student loans.
  
  
• In early January, President Obama took advantage of the congressional recess to appoint Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bureau was a key part of financial reform legislation passed in 2010, but fell victim to the Tea Party sweep in Congress later that year. While Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, was well-qualified to lead the new agency, Republicans had refused to let his nomination even come up for a vote, insisting that the bureau itself would be too powerful in its oversight of consumer financial products. According to Cordray, the bureau has already begun overseeing payday lenders, mortgage servicers, private lenders and other nonbank financial firms that were unregulated before Obama’s financial reform legislation was passed.
  
  
• A few weeks later, the White House announced a small but important change to immigration rules that will make it easier for citizens to get waivers for family members who may be in the country illegally. Previous rules had resulted in years of separation for family members and provided an incentive to stay in the legal shadows. Immigration specialists hailed the change as a "welcome rational solution to a simple problem" that will mean "thousands upon thousands of families will remain together."
  

While all these initiatives are a welcome sign of progress, they are just the beginning. With a Republican Party likely to double down on its intransigence in the coming election year, look for the president to make more of these moves in the months ahead.

The assault on unions finally brought the Republican Party the backlash it deserved: earlier this month, voters in Ohio resoundingly rejected the GOP's efforts to roll back collective bargaining for public employees. The reaction was so intense it took even party leaders by surprise and exposed the growing gap between working-class voters and the right-wing Republican base. Coupled with the frustration and anger expressed in the nation-wide Occupy Wall Street protests, conservatives are getting nervous. As a writer for the neoconservative The Weekly Standard put it:

"The GOP base voter believes the deficit is as large a problem as the economy; the white working-class independent does not. The GOP base voter believes cutting entitlements is necessary to cut the deficit and that taxes on the rich should not be raised; the white working-class independent disagrees. The GOP base voter wants to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan; the white working-class independent wants to come home. The GOP base voter scorns Occupy Wall Street; the white working=class independent thinks the Occupiers have something of a point."

While the Republican Party struggles to appeal to these voters, Democrats should be jumping for joy. We don't have to bend over backwards to find common ground with this voting bloc: We already support what they want! It is Democrats who defend Social Security and Medicare. It is Democrats who believe millionaires and corporations should pay their fair share. It is Democrats who want out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Democrats are the party of the 99%. We can claim victory in 2012 by fighting hard for what voters already expect us to defend. Social Security and Medicare must not take a back seat to millionaire tax cuts. Wall Street must be held accountable. Jobs must come before deficits -- indeed, the current climate of austerity robs us of our ability to invest in our infrastructure and our people and guarantees economic hardship for years to come. Poll after poll shows that Americans back Democratic priorities -- let's be loud and clear in defending those priorities. We must not be afraid to fight for the values -- justice, accountability, protecting the middle class -- that 99% of us hold dear.

Last Sunday, Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, wrote a powerful op-ed in the New York Times asking that Congress "stop coddling the super-rich." He pointed out that he pays a lower effective tax rat than any of his employees. Returning the capital gains tax rates to historical levels and closing tax loopholes would help provide revenue to the federal government, and would ask the richest Americans to pay their fair share.

Of course, Buffett has been attacked all week on Fox News and in other right-wing forums. He has even been called a "socialist." While Republicans in Congress go after spending for programs that benefit lower and middle class Americans, they turn their back on the $700 billion that would result from returning the top two tax brackets to where they were under President Clinton.

While Republicans decry what they call "class warfare," they are making the case that the poor need to pay more taxes. Keep in mind that while those with the lowest incomes often don't pay federal income tax, they do pay sales tax, vehicle license fees, gasoline tax, and plenty of other taxes. Last night, Jon Stewart showed clips of these attacks on working Americans. The worst was from Fox News, who questioned whether they really are "poor," since they have refrigerators and microwave ovens. Watch the segment from the Daily Show shown below, but be warned - some of the clips made my stomach turn at the sheer callousness of the arguments.

In an interview with ABC this week, Nancy Pelosi said that Democrats have "a very good chance" of taking back the House in 2012, laying out the party's election-year strategy in the clearest possible terms: "What we want is to change the view that the Republicans have that it is OK to abolish Medicare [and] to make seniors pay more for less while we give tax breaks to big oil. That's not a formula that I think works for the middle class."

Pelosi was unbending in her successful fight against Republican attempts to privatize Social Security in 2005, and she has been just as ardent in defending Medicare, insisting that cuts to benefits for seniors are "absolutely" off the table.

Prioritizing Grandma's health care over tax cuts for millionaires? That's not just a winning message; it's how civilized societies operate. Let those who think otherwise defend their position. In fact, looking ahead to 2012, Democrats should give them every opportunity to do so.

Even though their latest show-vote on the deficit is now behind them, don't expect Republicans to let up on their austerity plans any time soon. After all, "We're broke," says House Speaker John Boehner, a sentiment echoed ad nauseum by conservative politicians, pundits and teabaggers everywhere.

What can we afford, according to this group? Well, tax cuts for millionaires, actually. Every time you hear a prominent conservative wring his or her hands over the country's huge deficit remember this: those deficits are caused almost entirely by the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (put entirely on the nation's credit card without a peep from the GOP, by the way) don't contribute as much to the deficit problem as those tax breaks given to our richest citizens. Late last year, in the middle of an unemployment crisis not seen in decades, Republicans even threatened to cut jobless benefits unless tax breaks for the wealthy were protected.

We know then, according to the GOP, that tax cuts for millionaires are more important than unemployment benefits or continuing Medicare. What else must be cut so we can continue to line the pockets of the rich? Here's a small sample:

Medicaid

Food safety

Schools, environmental protection, healthcare

Clean air and drinking water

Weather forecasting satellites and tsunami warning centers

Disaster relief for tornado victims

Public broadcasting

Financial regulation

Infrastructure investment and research

The chart below, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, illustrates the source of our current fiscal deficit. The list above actually illustrates something else: the GOP's moral deficit.

UPDATE: Add nutritious school lunches to the list of things we "can't afford" because millionaires need their tax cuts.