Last week, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, (R-SC) was announced as the nominee for Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump Administration. While much of the rhetoric in the campaign raised questions about the fiscal implications of proposed Trump administration policies, Mulvaney has made fiscal discipline and concern about the national debt a centerpiece of his three terms in Congress.
Mulvaney is not a household name, but he has made a name for himself in Washington as someone committed to reining in wasteful and unaccountable spending. Vehemently anti-deficit, Mulvaney
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| Ryan Alexander is the president of TCS |
has voted for lower federal spending, and even against programs popular with Republicans. He has been concerned about the impact the federal debt has on the nation’s credit rating. Opposed to default, he has questioned the debt ceiling mechanism and been willing to shut down government to extract concessions in federal spending. While I am concerned some of these positions could be destabilizing, OMB director is a much different position with greater responsibilities than that of a House member.
On Pentagon spending in particular, Mulvaney has walked the deficit-cutting walk. Ordinarily, South Carolina Republicans vote reflexively for more military spending. But Mulvaney goes his own way. He has sponsored amendments to bring some discipline to the Pentagon’s war budget – the so-called Overseas Contingency Operations fund. Two years in a row he offered amendments to strike the overseas military construction programs from the war-related portion of the Pentagon budget. My organization supported those amendments, and we argued that long-term military construction projects are the antithesis of a contingency – even if they are overseas. Unfortunately, those amendments failed.
Another positive indication is that Mulvaney is willing to work across the political aisle where he finds agreement with his Democratic colleagues. He proudly defies political pigeonholing. In 2012 – his first term in Congress – Mulvaney partnered with then-Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to pass an amendment that would hold fiscal year 2013 Pentagon funding levels at the fiscal year 2012 amounts – saving $1 billion dollars. He also co-sponsored an amendment with Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., to get Congress out of the business of telling the Pentagon how many aircraft carriers it should have. And those military construction amendments were co-sponsored by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the same bipartisan pair that offered a successful amendment to require the Pentagon to report on how overseas war funds have been spent.
Mulvaney also doesn’t shy away from opposing bad spending in his own backyard. He’s consistently opposed federal support for the Export-Import Bank, one of the crown jewels of crony capitalism. Through the Export-Import Bank, federal taxpayers provide low cost loans and loan guarantees for exporters and foreign buyers of U.S. products. While supporters claim the bank supports mom and pop operations, the overwhelming majority of funds benefit large companies like General Electric, John Deere and Boeing while making taxpayers liable for potentially billions in losses if deals fall through. Mulvaney has supported pulling taxpayers out of this racket despite the fact that Boeing and General Electric have facilities in South Carolina.
Fiscal discipline, the strength to buck local pressures, and a willingness to work with Democrats all add up to Mulvaney being a net positive, perhaps groundbreaking, director of the Office of Management and Budget. We’ll see where he lands on the greater fiscal issues facing the country. It’s a daunting task and all eyes will be on him as the new Trump administration takes the reins of the federal budget.
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