Santorum Rips Obama for Richard Cordray Recess Appointment

Rick Santorum, fresh from his Iowa Caucus victory, accused President Obama for thinking he's above the law Thursday for making Richard Cordray the head of the Consumer Financial Protection through a recess appointment.

While speaking to a Rotary club breakfast meeting in New Hampshire, Santorum urged the Senate to go to the ramparts on this one a day after Obama used a legal but unusual method to sidestep Congress and make Cordray chief of the nation's consumer watchdog agency.

I hope the Senate has the backbone to shut the Senate down and say you will repeal these nominees or we are doing nothing, he said, according to The New York Times. Someone needs to stand up and say, 'Enough Mr. President. You are not the emperor.

Obama had nominated Cordray, a former Ohio Attorney General, to lead the bureau in July, about a year after the Dodd-Frank financial reform law paved the way for an agency to keep an eye on mortgage companies, banks, debt collectors and other financial companies.

Congress Republicans refused to approve the appointment because of disagreements over the agency's structure and funding -- House Speaker John Boehner called it job-crushing bureaucracy. In a recess appointment, presidents are allowed to appoint senior federal officials while the U.S. Senate is in recess.

Santorum joins a chorus of Republicans criticizing the president's appointment. House Speaker John Boehner called it an extraordinary and entirely unprecedented power grab that is illegal because Congress had not been in recess for more than three days. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called the move crazy and unreal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Obama has arrogantly circumvented the American people.

One of Obama's major election pitches is to prove himself a fighter for the middle class amid a bickering Congress. While speaking at Shaker Heights High School in Ohio, he touched on the we can't wait theme he pushed at the end of last year.

When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them, Obama said in a speech in Shaker Heights, Ohia, according to Cleveland.com.