But does today's Congress (the 111th) have as much backbone as the 95th?
Funny thing. Wikipedia mentions how much more powerful the Presidency has grown in the 20th-21st century, but doesn't mention BO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress
The Constitution provides checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government. The authors of the Constitution expected the greater power to lie with Congress as described in Article One.[17]
The influence of Congress on the presidency has varied from one period to another; the degree of power depending largely on the leadership of the Congress, political influence by the president, or other members of congress and the boldness of the president's initiatives. Under the first half-dozen presidents, power seems to have been evenly divided between the president and Congress, in part because early presidents largely restricted their vetoes to bills that were unconstitutional.
The impeachment of Andrew Johnson made the presidency much less powerful than Congress. During the late 19th century, President Grover Cleveland aggressively attempted to restore the executive branch's power, vetoing over 400 bills during his first term. The 20th and 21st centuries have seen the rise of the power of the Presidency under Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09), Woodrow Wilson (1913–21), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–45), Richard Nixon (1969–74), Ronald Reagan (1981–89), and George W. Bush (2001–09) (see Imperial Presidency).[18] In recent years, Congress has restricted the powers of the President with laws such as the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and the War Powers Resolution; nevertheless, the Presidency remains considerably more powerful than during the 19th century.[18]
I don’t think the relationship between congress and the presidency is so much about backbone as it is self interest. So far, congress has given Obama wide latitude because he is essentially doing what the leadership wants and they have sufficiently large enough majorities to deal with most internal opposition. His problem will come when his party no longer has a large majority or when they lose control of one or both houses.
A major difference between the presidency and congress is that the longer a person is president, the less powerful they are while a member of congress becomes more powerful the longer they are in office. You can bet that many of the senior members of both houses in both parties are chaffing at the arrogance of this administration and are waiting for the opportunity to put him in his place. His time will come.