White House helping companies evade its own laws

The Obama administration is setting up middle-men organizations to help bailed-out companies evade the restrictions that Congress has placed on them! From The Washington Post:

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

Although some experts are questioning the legality of this strategy, the officials said it gives them latitude to determine whether firms should be subject to the congressional restrictions, which would require recipients to turn over ownership stakes to the government, as well as curb executive pay.

So the legality of this strategy doesn’t matter. The officials want to be the ones to decide whom the laws will be enforced against and who doesn’t have to obey. As our own FWS keeps insisting, the most critical factor in any kind of government is the rule of law. The Obama administration evidently sees itself as above the law–even in administering the laws it insisted that Congress enact!

Can anyone defend this? Please give me something better than “Bush did it too.”