“We need to have new deficits… We need to have the growth. If we simply look at this as being deficit-neutral, you’re never going to get the type of tax reform and tax reductions that you need to get to sustain 3 percent economic growth.”
— White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, quoted by Bloomberg.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney admits to Politico that no one in this administration “is more of a right-wing conservative than I am.”
Mulvaney has an amusing way of announcing his extremism. His first words to Trump’s top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, were: “Hi, I’m a right-wing nutjob!” (Cohn’s deadpan reply: “Hi, I’m Gary.”) At a meeting with budget analysts, Mulvaney wryly described himself as a crazy reactionary. But he bristles a bit at stereotypes of Southern conservatives as knuckle-dragging backwoods Neanderthals, because he’s not that kind of reactionary. He comes off more like a 50-year-old Rotary Club suburbanite with triplets, a standing desk, and an eight handicap, which he is. He studied abroad in Madrid. He drives a Miata.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said that “yes,” it’s official White House policy that the Senate shouldn’t hold a vote on another issue — not even an imminent crisis like raising the debt ceiling— until the Senate votes again on health care, Politico reports.
Said Mulvaney: “You can’t promise folks you’re going to do something for seven years, and then not do it.”
“The only way to get truly universal care is to throw people in jail if they don’t have it. And we are not going to do that.”
— OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, quoted by The Hill.
Trump budget chief Mick Mulvaney told CNN that the Obama administration was “manipulating” jobs data.
Saiod Mulvaney: “What you should really look at is the number of jobs created. We’ve thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate — that percentage rate — look smaller than it actually was.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) announced that he will not support Rep. Mick Mulvaney’s (R-SC) nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget, The Hill reports.
Stan Collender says that OMB Director Mick Mulvaney will be either the most important member of the Trump cabinet or the first one out the door.
“Mulvaney’s positions on a variety of critical spending, tax and budget process issues are so different from Trump’s and so likely to get in the way of White House and congressional Republican plans that he could quickly find himself opposing what both Trump and the GOP majorities in Congress want to do. That’s why it’s not hard to imagine Mulvaney quitting or Trump demanding his resignation shortly after he joins the administration.”
Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), who has been tapped by Donald Trump to run the Office of Management and Budget, “recently accepted a speaking invitation from the notorious John Birch Society, an extreme right-wing group known for peddling outlandish conspiracy theories for more than half a century,” Mother Jones reports.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) on Facebook: “There was an attempt to oust John Boehner as Speaker of the House today. I didn’t participate in it. That may make some people back home angry. I understand that, but I’ve got some experience with coup attempts against the Speaker, and what I learned two years ago factored heavily in my decision today not to join the mutiny.”
“First, I learned two years ago that people lie about how they are going to vote. And you cannot go into this kind of fight with people you do not trust. We walked onto the floor two years ago with signed pledges – handwritten promises – from more than enough people to deny Boehner his job. But when it came time to vote, almost half of those people changed their minds – including some of those who voted against Boehner today. Fool me once, shame on you… I also learned that the Floor of the House is the wrong place to have this battle.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
More about Taegan Goddard →