Obama to bypass Congress on housing

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Barack Obama wants to pose as a man of action on the economy, the New York Times reports today, and so he will announce a series of executive actions on housing and education. Obama hopes that these actions will contrast himself with Congress, where even Democrats have balked at passing his American Jobs Act either in whole or piecemeal:

With his jobs plan stymied in Congress by Republican opposition, President Obama on Monday will begin a series of executive-branch actions to confront housing, education and other economic problems over the coming months, heralded by a new mantra: “We can’t wait” for lawmakers to act.

According to an administration official, Mr. Obama will kick off his new offensive in Las Vegas, ground zero of the housing bust, by promoting new rules for federally guaranteed mortgages so that more homeowners, those with little or no equity in their homes, can refinance and avert foreclosure.

And Wednesday in Denver, the official said, Mr. Obama will announce policy changes to ease college graduates’ repayment of federal loans, seeking to alleviate the financial concerns of students considering college at a time when states are raising tuition.

Will restructuring student-loan debt really help the economy? It sounds more like a ploy to pander to the Occupy Movement, which in its occasionally coherent moments demands free higher education and complete forgiveness of tuition debt. States are raising tuitions, though, in response to demand created by cheap student loans, which Obama proposes to make even cheaper.