Democrats are still pounding on the table, unwilling to do what they claim to want on their own:

In a letter to Obama yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and three other top Democrats said Obama “must be willing to take any lawful steps to ensure that America does not break its promises and trigger a global economic crisis --without congressional approval, if necessary.”

There are no other lawful steps.

There are unlawful steps, of course, but Reid doesn't give a damn about the law.  Neither do the others.  All have advocated and passed laws that advanced blatantly unlawful actions for decades, and the worst of it in the budget sense is that Reid has violated the one duty The Senate has as an absolute -- to take up and pass a budget.

Obama must act on his own to prevent default “in the event that Republicans make good on their threat by failing to act, or by moving unilaterally to pass a debt-limit extension only as part of unbalanced or unreasonable legislation,” wrote Reid of Nevada and Senators Richard Durbin of Illinois, Charles Schumer of New York and Patty Murray of Washington.

But... he can't.

And it seems he knows he can't too:

“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” Coley said in an e-mailed statement.

That's because the law provides for this as a commemorative coin issue, not a monetary instrument.  Current law has a statutory cap on the amount of monetary metallic coinage the Treasury can issue, and it's tiny.  It would be blatantly illegal to attempt to circumvent that law in this fashion, and the appropriate response from The House to such an attempt (or, for that matter, trying to invoke the 14th Amendment) would be immediate impeachment and refusal to consider all other legislation until Obama was removed from office.

That, incidentally, is entirely Constitutional.  The House can refuse to bring anything to floor, and by doing so shut government down entirely.  No spending resolutions, no bills on the floor, nothing.

 “The President and the American people won’t tolerate Congressional Republicans holding the American economy hostage again simply so they can force disastrous cuts to Medicare and other programs the middle class depend on while protecting the wealthy. Congress needs to do its job.”

Uh huh.  Congress has done its job.  The Senate has refused to do its job and as a consequence it can be argued that the government has been illegally spending money for the last three years.

That the President wishes to spend more than the government takes in, and refuses to address this issue, does not make it something Congress must do.

Wake up Herr Obama; you're not a dictator (yet.)