Detractors of the President claim that Barack Obama has overstepped his bounds on several occasions by issuing Executive Orders to bypass the Congress and thusly is expanding the power of the Presidency to never before seen levels, while  his supporters note the fact that Barack Obama has issued fewer Executive Orders than his predecessors to counter this claim.

  The latter is something that the President himself has pointed out when defending his use of the Executive Order:

 “The truth is, even with all the actions I’ve taken this year, I’m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years,” Obama said in a speech in Austin last July. “So it’s not clear how it is that Republicans didn’t seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did.”