Romney compares Boeing lawsuit to healthcare law

Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney compared the National Labor Relations Board's lawsuit to stop Boeing from building a new plant in South Carolina to the federal healthcare reform law.
 
While delivering a widely watched speech in Michigan Thursday, the former Massachusetts governor called the NLRB’s lawsuit "a power grab from states, with the federal government saying we know better than the state."
 
"That was the most recent [example]," Romney said during his remarks at the University of Michigan. "The most egregious example was the healthcare plan itself."

Romney has not yet formally announced his candidacy for the presidency. Michigan is considered a probable swing state for the 2012 presidential contest.
 
The NLRB has brought a lawsuit against Boeing, which has been building 787 airplanes at its unionized plant near Seattle, Wash., claiming that the aircraft manufacturer is retaliating against strikes in its Washington state-based union by opening a plant in South Carolina.
 
South Carolina is a "right-to-work" state, with laws on the books that generally prohibit mandatory union membership.
 
Romney said the NLRB's lawsuit was another example of the Obama administration’s distrust of states to make decisions for themselves as, he said, the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended.
 
While citing Obama’s healthcare reform law as an intrusion upon the states, as he said the NLRB lawsuit was, Romney also sought in the speech to differentiate between the law he signed as Massachusetts governor and the law Obama signed, which is anathema to many Republicans.
 
Romney did not apologize for signing the Massachusetts healthcare law.
 
Romney is the second GOP presidential hopeful to criticize the NLRB lawsuit. A likely Romney rival for the 2012 GOP nomination, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, said in an op-ed recently that the NLRB lawsuit shows the Obama administration is too cozy with unions.
 
The lawsuit was also a topic in the recent first GOP presidential debate, where Pawlenty called it "preposterous." Romney did not participate.