What the president will be announcing today:

President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and his first idea is merging six sprawling trade and commerce agencies whose overlapping programs can be baffling to businesses, a senior administration official told The Associated Press. Obama will call on Congress to give him a type of reorganizational power last held by a president when Ronald Reagan was in office. The Obama version would be a so-called consolidation authority allowing him to propose mergers that promise to save money and help consumers. The deal would entitle him to an up-or-down vote from Congress in 90 days.

ABC News’s Ann Compton notes: ”At 11 a.m. President Obama will ask Congress for authority to consolidate some federal bureaucracy (Note- it’s a pledge he made LAST JANUARY).”

Ed Henry adds, “The president made the promise in last year’s State of Union to consolidate government; aides have met for months, and will focus on overlapping commerce/trade agencies.”

Obama often used the slogan “the fierce urgency of now”; in 2011, he used the slogan, “We Can’t Wait.”

The fierce urgency of whenever.