Focused Read in 3-4 minutes
Mick the Knife
Meet Mick Mulvaney, who
proudly calls himself a “right-wing nutjob” and is quietly—and
radically—trying to dismantle the federal bureaucracy...
… Still, Trump’s 2018
budget proposal is a very Mulvaney document, proposing radical
rollbacks of popular programs, including more than $1 trillion in
cuts to Medicaid, another entitlement Trump pledged to protect. So
this fall’s budget negotiations could end up producing some very
Mulvaney surgery to federal spending. Or they could produce a very
Mulvaney stalemate that forces the government to shut down or even
default on its obligations.
… His background is not
backwoods. John Michael (Mick) Mulvaney was born inside the Beltway,
in Alexandria, Virginia, then grew up around Charlotte, where his
father became a prominent home builder. He attended a Catholic high
school and Georgetown University, where he became president of the
student body and, after a tip from his dad, an avid fan of a new
talk-radio host named Rush Limbaugh. “I was one of the original
Rush Babies!” he gushed recently on Limbaugh’s show.
… Mulvaney was a star
economics student in college—he earned an academic scholarship to
law school—and during an interview he mentioned he still keeps Ayn
Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in his office. But he suggests his worldview
came less from books than from his parents, who were middle-class
Roman Catholics, children of children of the Depression.
… Mulvaney never
compiled much of a legislative record in the House. But he was an
effective agitator. In 2011, he helped lead a group of Tea Party
insurgents who threatened to block any increase in the debt limit
unless Obama agreed to deep spending cuts, even though experts warned
that failing to raise the limit would force the Treasury into default
and trigger a global economic meltdown. The crisis Mulvaney helped
create eventually did produce significant cuts through the so-called
sequester. But it also produced a damaging downgrade of the U.S.
credit rating, as well as a lasting rift between Republican
firebrands and party leaders who didn’t want to pick apocalyptic
fights they couldn’t win.
… in his testimony,
Mulvaney also noted that representing the president would be
different from representing 700,000 voters, and “that change could
result in dramatically different action on my part.” His friend
Gowdy (Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican), a longtime trial lawyer, says it’s like having a new client.
Cole (Rep. Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican) puts it more archly: When you take the king’s shilling, you
become the king’s man.
… More concretely, he is
pushing to roll back funding for foreign aid, research, health care,
transportation and almost everything else that doesn’t involve
Trump’s priorities of defense and the border.
… Several Freedom Caucus
members told me they’re worried that “New York”—their
shorthand for Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and Cohn, the advisers they
associate with cosmopolitan liberalism—will end up marginalizing
Mulvaney on fiscal issues. But he has assured them the White House
will not let Congress dictate another status-quo result this fall,
even it takes a government shutdown to get Trump’s priorities..."
(Note:) "… In the end,
every Senate Democrat voted against Mulvaney, but McCain was the only
Republican to break ranks, so he was confirmed by a 51-49 margin. ..."
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