Dems hit Mulvaney for raising his budget amid broader cuts

Democrats on the House Appropriations Financial Services subcommittee tore into White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney on Wednesday for requesting an 8 percent increase for his Offices of Management and Budget, even as the administration proposes slashing other agencies funds by as much as 30 percent.

“Director Mulvaney, I’ll be frank. You boost your department at the expense of hardworking, taxpaying families,” charged Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the Appropriations panel.

President Trump’s budget proposal – a non-binding spending blueprint – gives the OMB $103 million, an increase of $8 million from fiscal 2017 funding levels.

{mosads}That, Lowey, noted, would be the highest levels in the nation’s history.  

“When you were here, you voted for cuts in OMB funding,” said Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), referencing Mulvaney’s previous role as a member of the House.

Quigley said it’s inconsistent of Mulvaney to ask other departments to tighten their belts without tightening his own.

Mulvaney countered that Trump’s budget blueprint does not suggest uniform cuts, noting it would add funds to priorities such as military spending and law enforcement. 

The president’s budget proposal cut $54 billion in non-defense discretionary spending, which funds most government agencies, and transferred that to defense spending. 

The Executive Office of the President, the larger agency that houses OMB, would take a 3 percent cut, he said. 

Large parts of the funding would go toward hiring staff that would be used to work on the administration’s deregulatory proposal. 

“Most folks know us for the B in OMB, the budget function. They also know the M, the management,” Mulvaney said. “They’re missing the R,” the regulatory oversight function not included in the office’s name but that is a significant part of its mission.

That part of the organization, he said, is responsible for implementing President Trump’s “two-for-one” regulation rule, by which a dollar of regulatory cost would have to be cut for every dollar of newly imposed regulation.