Much of Congress is calling out President Obama for his excessive use of executive power in a string of recess appointments this week. To some lawmakers, this isn’t the first time the commander-in-chief has stepped on the toes of his constituents.

To Ron Paul, in fact, Obama has transcended America into a practical dictatorship.

The commander-in-chief overstepped the Congress and appointed Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection, much to the chagrin of the US Senate, who were on recess at the time. Although the president has the power to make such appointments during Senate recess sessions, lawmakers have since become outraged that Obama could not have waited for them to give Cordray the go-ahead.

Now the new CFP chief will sit pretty in a paid federal position and await a decision from Congress to either approve or disapprove Obama’s appointment — a decision which could be months in the making. In the meanwhile, Cordray lacks any official authority to rule the CFP, essentially allowing him to vacate a ghost opening and be compensated for simply sitting pretty.

But why would the president do such a thing?

“It is disappointing that a former constitutional law professor does not understand that the President is not a dictator or a king who can simply ignore the Constitution whenever he feels frustrated by the system of checks and balances wisely put in place by our Founders,” Texas congressman and GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul says in an official statement.

His move, says the legendary libertarian politicians, shows a “clear disregard of the Constitution” and a “flagrant contempt for the rules.”

According to Paul, this isn’t first time that the current commander-in-chief has overstepped the Constitution either. Throughout the administration, says Paul, the president has bypassed the rules in order to make decisions favored by few but always to his liking. Most recently, the congressman attacked President Obama over his warning to Capitol Hill that he would get his jobs act through one way or another.

“The current administration has unabashedly stated that Congress's unwillingness to pass the president's jobs bill means that the president will act unilaterally to enact provisions of it piecemeal through Executive Order,” Paul said in an open letter last November. “Obama explicitly threatens to bypass Congress, thus aggregating the power to make and enforce laws in the executive. This clearly erodes the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. It brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.”

Elsewhere in Congress, Senator John McCain called the appointment of Cordray an “absolute abuse of power,” and Congressman Dan Burton said the president was acting in “direct dereliction of his oath to the American people to protect and defend the American Constitution.”

Ron Paul adds that the president “must be called to account for his actions.” Paul is currently challenging Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum for the GOP party’s nomination in hopes of running against Obama later in 2012.