Senior Obama advisor pledges executive action

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday promised unilateral action from President Obama to enact his agenda in 2014.

{mosads}”We need to assure to the American people that we can get something done, either through Congress or on our own because what they want are answers,” Pfeiffer said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“He is going to look in every way he can with his pen and his phone to try to move the ball forward,” he added. “We’re putting an extra emphasis on it in 2014.”

Obama has trumpeted 2014 as a “year of action” and, in his State of the Union address, he’s expected to outline how he’ll use executive action to move his agenda.

Pfeiffer promised on “Fox News Sunday” that “if Congress doesn’t act, the president will.”

He said Obama’s speech would outline “concrete proposals” on issues like job training, education, manufacturing and energy.

“What you’re going to hear from the president on Tuesday night is a series of concrete, practical, specific proposals on how we restore opportunity,” Pfeiffer said. “There will be some legislative proposals but also a number of actions he can take on his own.”

The president’s insistence on using executive order to bypass Congress comes in response to persistent gridlock in the legislative body.

But reports last week indicated House Republicans might be moving forward with an immigration plan, which sources say would provide illegal immigrants a pathway to legality in the U.S., rather than a pathway to citizenship.

Though Democrats have demanded a pathway to citizenship in any immigration reform bill, Pfeiffer left the door open to working with Republicans on that plan.

“We think its progress that the Republicans are going to put something forward,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Let’s see what they put forward, and hopefully, we can come together and make some progress.”