Washington Post: Mulvaney says GOP has been inconsistent on deficit concerns under Trump
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that the Republican Party views federal deficits as “the worst thing” when Democrats are in power but are “a lot less interested” when their own party is in the White House, The Washington Post reported.
The country’s deficit has continued to balloon under President Donald Trump due in part to tax cuts and a two-year budget deal that has boosted federal spending.
“My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House. The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party,” Mulvaney, who previously served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, said at an event in England, according to the newspaper.
The Post, citing an audio recording of the event, said Mulvaney told attendees he found the US deficit, which surpassed $1 trillion last year, “extraordinarily disturbing,” but that both Democrats and Republicans were unconcerned with the growing debt.
The deficit swelled to $984 billion at the end of the last fiscal year, up from $665 billion during his first year in office in 2017. The number reached $1.02 trillion for the calendar year ending in December, according to data released by the Treasury Department last month. That number marked the first time the country has crossed the $1 trillion threshold in a calendar year since 2012.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
Traditionally, Republicans have been outspoken about the country’s debt, arguing that federal spending should be curtailed to prevent the number from increasing. But during the last three years, the party has mostly been silent on the issue, a change that is indicative of the President’s influence over the GOP and its areas of focus.
During the event on Wednesday, Mulvaney also “robustly defended the president’s actions regarding Ukraine,” the Post said.
Earlier this month, Trump was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate on two articles of impeachment that the House passed last year after investigating his actions in Ukraine.
Mulvaney argued that Trump withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine for two reasons: because he was concerned about how much other countries were giving Ukraine and because “they’re corrupt as hell, which is true,” according to the Post.
The aide said Trump “‘legally, had almost total control of the money’ going to Ukraine until the end of the 2019 fiscal year — when there was a legal issue as to whether the money, appropriated by Congress, had to be sent,” the Post reported.
Democrats, citing a 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s president, have argued that the President withheld the aid in exchange for the country announcing investigations into his political rivals.
