Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) praised President Trump’s conservative budget director, Mick Mulvaney, as a “very bright, highly principled individual,” and said he actually recommended the former Freedom Caucus leader for the White House job.
“Mick and I are good friends. Mick’s a very very bright, highly principled individual. I actually recommended him for the job, which he said he would never tell anybody but I freely admit,” Yarmuth, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee said during an appearance Friday morning on HillTV’s “Rising.”
“And we both love golf,” Yarmuth added.
When the Kentucky Democrat was asked if he and Mulvaney share a love of bourbon, Yarmuth replied: “I don’t know if he’s a bourbon drinker.”
Yarmuth and Mulvaney are on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Yarmuth is a liberal from Louisville who’s called for Trump’s impeachment; Mulvaney is a co-founder of the conservative Freedom Caucus that’s been a thorn in the side of GOP leadership and is aligned with Trump.
In the interview Friday, Yarmuth knocked what he saw as hypocrisy in the Republicans’ budget and economic plan. House Republicans rolled out their fiscal year 2019 budget this week that cuts mandatory spending by $5.4 trillion over a decade, including $537 billion in cuts to Medicare and $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and other health programs.
“This is part of the Republican strategy and it always has been: Deep tax cuts that benefit mostly the wealthiest Americans and corporations, then scream about the deficits that they created,” Yarmuth said. “And then go after Medicare and Medicaid and programs that help struggling Americans.
“And that’s exactly what this budget does.”
— Scott Wong
hilltv copyright