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Anticipating his Jan. 24 State of the Union address, a leaner budget proposal in February, and a platform that could support him during a competitive re-election bid, President Obama on Friday said Congress should grant him special authority to shrink government on a fast-track basis.

The outlook for congressional cooperation to allow the president special executive power to consolidate the Small Business Administration with the Commerce Department, as well as other business-related government responsibilities, appears murky considering the hyper-partisan climate during an election year.

That fact, however, may fit neatly into Obama’s political playbook. He has for months been campaigning through swing states assailing Republicans as obstructionists while challenging conservative lawmakers to join with him to bless policies they’ve traditionally favored, such as lower taxes. In addition, since last fall the president has championed a middle-class economic agenda and used his executive heft to move small pieces of his agenda when Congress declined to legislate.

Proposing to consolidate multiple agencies and eliminate federal duplication of help for small businesses -- Obama’s themes Friday -- are, in fact, long-held GOP goals that have garnered support across the political spectrum as federal deficits and debts have ballooned.

His announcement came on the heels of his request to Congress this week for an additional $1.2 trillion in federal borrowing authority.

“There’s a real opportunity right now for us to fundamentally rethink, reform and remake our government so that it can meet the demands of our time, so that it’s worthy of the American people, and so that it works,” the president said in the East Room. “This should not be a partisan issue. Congress needs to reinstate this authority that has in the past been given to Democratic and Republican presidents for decades,” Obama added.

The president said he will ask Congress to approve legislation that would grant him presidential reorganization authority -- the power to reshape the federal government after securing a fast-track, up-or-down vote from Congress. Obama said previous presidents from Hoover to Reagan employed versions of such authority, and he asked Congress to help him make sure that government works better and costs less.

The authority Obama referenced fell out of use after 1983’s Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha ruling, the upshot of which was that a joint resolution by both chambers of Congress is needed for any presidential reorganization plan to go forward.

The notion of reinventing the federal government is a recurring one as the population of the U.S. and the rest of the world grows; Congress legislates new mandates; citizens expect new public services and safeguards, and technological and scientific advances march on. In the past, White House-appointed teams, specially appointed commissions, congressional committees, independent good-government groups, university experts, and the General Accounting Office have all taken turns diving into the government-reinvention pool, with mixed success.

After the shocks of 9/11, President George W. Bush and a willing Congress created the Department of Homeland Security -- a behemoth -- to reorder the executive branch to better protect the country from terrorists. The department’s efficiencies and cost-effectiveness have been debated ever since.

In House testimony in 2003, former GAO Director David Walker described the fast-track presidential authority Obama now seeks, saying that “it is imperative that the Congress and the administration form an effective working relationship on restructuring initiatives. … [E]ach has a stake in the outcome. Even more importantly, all segments of the public that must regularly deal with their government -- individuals, private sector organizations, states, and local governments -- must be confident that the changes that are put in place have been thoroughly considered and that the decisions made today will make sense tomorrow. Only the Congress can decide whether it wishes to limit its powers and role in government reorganizations.”