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10.03.2012 0

Lindsey Graham stands up against Obama lawlessness

Senator Lindsey GrahamBy Robert Romano — South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has beef with the Obama Administration. He denounced an Obama ploy to reimburse the legal fees of defense contractors that do not follow federal requirements to give 60 days notice to employees of layoffs.

The layoffs are set to occur for contractors expecting cuts in the sequester budget Congress adopted last year. The notices would have been issued just days before the Nov. 6 election, an outcome thought to be politically damaging to Obama.

“I will do everything in my power to make sure not one taxpayer dollar is spent reimbursing companies for failure to comply with WARN Act,” Graham said in an exclusive interview with The Hill. “That is so beyond the pale — I think it’s patently illegal.”

Already, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and other contractors have cancelled plans to notify employees of impending layoffs thanks to the Obama promise to reimburse legal fees derived from failure to follow the law.

Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson praised Graham for quickly taking a stand, and urged others to follow his lead. “The Obama White House is openly violating the law and encouraging others to do the same. It is now fully a criminal enterprise,” he said.

Wilson also urged House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers to block any monies from reimbursing defense contractors for violating the WARN Act. “Chairman Rogers needs to declare that not one penny will be allowed to be spent on covering up the illegal activity,” Wilson said.

“If Obama wants to shut down the government just so he can pay off the trial lawyers and those convinced to break the law, that will be up to him but Republicans in Congress must not become accomplices after the fact,” Wilson added.

Obama, who signed sequestration into law — which would supposedly save $4 trillion over the next ten years — now wants to avoid the political fallout of laying off employees of government contractors simply by not warning them as required by law.

But this is not the first time Obama has flouted his constitutional duty to enforce the law, and follows in a long line of abuses.

It was Obama who pretended congressional recesses into existence to make radical appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

It was his Federal Housing Finance Administration that arbitrarily allowed Fannie and Freddie mortgages that are 25 percent higher than market value to be refinanced when the law placing the GSEs in conservatorship never allowed it. The law explicitly stated that the refi’s shall “not exceed 90 percent of the appraised value of the property to which such mortgage relates.”

It was Obama who ordered an attack on Libya without so much as consulting with Congress.

His Justice Department has taken on the role of a court and declared the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional when its role is to defend the law whether it agrees with it or not.

His Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation to force religious-based institutions to pay for contraception against their teachings in violation of the First Amendment.

His EPA arbitrarily declared carbon dioxide, a gas essential to life itself, to be a “harmful pollutant” covered under the Clean Air Act.

However one feels about these issues, everyone should agree that no president is above the law. The only question remaining is will congressional appropriators like Chairman Rogers hold him accountable by refusing to pay the bills.

Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government.

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