Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) on Monday accused Barack Obama of overstepping his authority as President of the United States through the misuse of executive orders.

“These are frustrating times for the president,” he said in a video uploaded to YouTube. “Having been swept into office with a seemingly strong mandate, he enjoyed a Congress controlled by members of his own party for the first two years of his term. However, midterm elections brought gridlock and a close division of power between the two parties.”

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Paul, a 2012 presidential candidate, said the government of the United States was designed to work slowly and through consensus so that politicians would not amass power.

“The drafters of the Constitution intended the default action of government to be inaction,” he explained.

“But the Obama administration, like so many administrations in the 20th century, chooses to ignore the Constitution entirely,” Paul continued. “The increasingly broad use and scope of the executive orders is a prime example.

“Executive orders are meant to be a way for the president to direct executive agencies on the implementation of congressionally approved legislation. It has become increasingly common for them to be misused in ways that are contradictory to congressional intent, or to bypass Congress altogether in enacting political agendas.”

Facing gridlock in Congress, Obama has used the executive powers of the presidency in a campaign entitled “We Can’t Wait” to enact a mortgage relief program and student loan debt program. He also used an executive order to strengthen the Federal Drug Administration’s power to address potential shortages of prescription drugs.

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“Obama explicitly threatens to bypass Congress, thus aggregating the power to make and enforce laws in the executive,” Paul said. “This clearly erodes the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. It brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.”

He added that the Obama administration was not the first to “overstep its bounds” but was building upon a precedent set by previous administrations.

Listen to Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk statement, uploaded to YouTube, below: