Trump budget chief nominee Mick Mulvaney a huge advocate of spending cuts

“We are going to do great things for the American people with Mick Mulvaney,” Trump said Saturday in an e-mailed statement. “Right now we are nearly $20 trillion in debt, but Mick is a very high-energy leader with deep convictions for how to responsibly manage our nation’s finances and save our country from drowning in red ink.” Since arriving in Congress as part of the Republican Tea Party wave elected in 2010, Mulvaney has been one of the most pugilistic advocates for cutting government spending. “The Trump administration will restore budgetary and fiscal sanity back in Washington after eight years of an out-of-control, tax-and-spend financial agenda, ” Mulvaney, 49, of South Carolina said in the statement. “Each day, families across our nation make disciplined choices about how to spend their hard-earned money, and the federal government should exercise the same discretion that hardworking Americans do every day.” In 2011 he co-authored a measure passed by the House that would have slashed spending while conditioning a $2.4 trillion debt-ceiling increase on passage of a constitutional amendment to balance the budget and make it harder to raise taxes.

He also helped lead an effort to defund or delay Obamacare that resulted in a 16-day government shutdown in 2013. As OMB chief, he would run the office responsible for implementing future shutdowns should they occur. Expect to hear lots of media jabbering about "shutdowns," but all of this misses one very important detail: Shutting down the government was only an issue because the Republican Congress wanted to cut spending and the Democrat president refused. Obama engaged in brinkmanship in order to get his way, which was continued runaway spending, knowing full well that the GOP had to either endure the shutdown battle or cave - because the media was on Obama's side and there was no reason for Obama to ever give in.

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