Mick Mulvaney

Early life

Mulvaney was born in Alexandria, Virginia and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, before moving to Indian Land, South Carolina. He attended Charlotte Catholic High School and then Georgetown University, where he majored in international economics, commerce and finance. At Georgetown, he was an Honors Scholar, the highest level of academic achievement awarded to members of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and ultimately graduated with honors in 1989.

Mulvaney attended law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned a full scholarship to attend law school, where his focus was on anti-trust law. He graduated with his J.D. degree in 1992.

Early legal work

From 1992 to 1997, Mulvaney practiced law with the firm James, McElroy & Diehl. Mulvaney joined his family's homebuilding and real estate business. He participated in the Owners and Presidents Management Program at Harvard Business School. He was a minority shareholder and owner-operator in Salsarita's Fresh Cantina, a privately held regional restaurant chain.

State House

Mulvaney was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2006.

State Senate

In 2008 an unexpected retirement created a vacancy in the South Carolina Senate and he campaigned for and won that office in what was widely regarded to be the hardest fought legislative race in South Carolina that year.

While in the State Senate, Mulvaney served on the Judiciary, Labor/Commerce/Industry, Medical Affairs, Agriculture/Natural Resources, and Corrections Committees. The Palmetto Family Council identified him as the Freshman Legislator of the Year in 2006 for his work on the South Carolina ultrasound bill.

In 2010 he was named Legislator of the Year for his work in support of the State's Emergency Medical Services (EMS). He has received one of the few A+ ratings in the entire legislature from the South Carolina Club for Growth.

2010

Mulvaney, a GOP Young Gun, ran against Democratic incumbent John Spratt for South Carolina's 5th congressional district. The race was highlighted by Mitt Romney's Free and Strong America PAC's "Take Congress Back: 10 in '10" initiative as one of the top 10 House challenger races. Mulvaney's involvement in the now defunct Edenmoor real estate development in Lancaster County, South Carolina became a campaign issue, with Mulvaney's opponents alleging that he misled the Lancaster County council and taxpayers to provide $30 million in public funding for the real estate development and that once the public funds had been approved, Mulvaney sold his interest in the development to a third party at a $7 million profit. Mulvaney denied the allegations and said that the project's failure was due to Democratic economic policies. He defeated Spratt, who had held the seat since 1983, with 55% of the vote.

Mulvaney's campaign against Spratt was aided by a 501(c)(4) organization named the Commission on Hope, Growth, and Opportunity. The group, which was established by anonymous donors and run by lobbyist Scott W. Reed, has been accused by the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington of violating federal campaign finance laws and disclosing false information to the Internal Revenue Service.

2012

He won re-election to a second term by defeating Democrat Joyce Knott 56%–44%.

2014

He won re-election to a third term by defeating Democrat Tom Adams, a Fort Mill Town Council member, 59%–41%.

Mulvaney cofounded the bipartisan Blockchain Caucus, "meant to help congressmen stay up to speed on cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies", and develop policies that advance them.

2016

Mulvaney faced Ray Craig in the Republican primary and defeated him 78–22%. Mulvaney was re-elected to a fourth term, winning over 59% of the vote.

Tenure

During his time in the U.S. House, Mulvaney aligned himself with the Tea Party movement. He was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus.

He opposed gun control initiatives and the Affordable Care Act.

Government shutdown

According to the New York Times, Mulvaney took "a hard line on spending during President Obama’s term, vowing not to raise the nation’s debt limit and embracing the term 'Shutdown Caucus' because of his willingness to shut the government down instead." In 2015, Mulvaney voted against a government-funding resolution, which would have prevented a government shutdown, in part because it included funding for Planned Parenthood. Explaining his vote, Mulvaney said, "This is not about women's health. It’s about trafficking in pieces of dead children." After his appointment as head of the OMB in 2017, he reiterated his conditional position of support for a shutdown.

Regulations

Mulvaney supported the Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015, which would have "[created] a commission tasked with eliminating and revising outdated and redundant federal regulations."

Fiscal year 2014 budget

On December 10, 2013, Republican Representative Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray announced that they had negotiated the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, a proposed two-year budget deal. The budget deal capped the federal government's spending for Fiscal Year 2014 at $1.012 trillion and for Fiscal Year 2015 at $1.014.

The proposed deal eliminated some of the spending cuts required by the sequester by $45 billion of the cuts scheduled to happen in January and $18 billion of the cuts scheduled to happen in 2015. This did not decrease federal spending; instead, by reducing the amount of spending cuts the government was going to be forced to make by the sequester, it actually increased government spending by $45 billion and $18 billion over what would have been spent had the sequester remained in place. Some Republicans wanted Speaker John Boehner to pursue a temporary measure that would cover the rest of Fiscal Year 2014 at the level set by the sequester – $967 billion, rather than pass this budget deal, which would have $45 billion in additional spending.

The deal was designed to make up for this increase in spending by raising airline fees and changing the pension contribution requirements of new federal workers. According to The Hill, Mulvaney spearheaded opposition to the bill. He did not blame Ryan for the budget deal, instead saying that the problem was that too few conservatives had been elected to Congress to pass a budget with a greater focus on debt reduction. Mulvaney said that he expected the budget deal to pass because "it was designed to get the support of defense hawks and appropriators and Democrats", not conservatives.

On April 9, 2014, Mulvaney offered a proposal based on the Obama proposal as a substitute amendment in order to force a vote on the President's budget request. The President's proposal failed in a vote of 2–413, although Democrats were urged by their leadership to vote against this "political stunt."

Presidential endorsements

In September 2015, Mulvaney endorsed Kentucky Senator Rand Paul in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries.

Committee assignments

Caucus memberships

Nomination

On December 16, 2016, Mulvaney was announced as President-elect Donald Trump's choice to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Mulvaney's nomination as Director-designate was reviewed in hearings held by the members of the United States Senate Committee on the Budget and the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs then presented to the full Senate for a vote.

In his statement to the Senate Budget Committee, Mulvaney admitted that he had failed to pay $15,000 in payroll taxes from 2000-04 for a nanny he had hired to care for his triplets. Mulvaney said he did not pay the taxes because he viewed the woman as a babysitter rather than as a household employee. After filling out a questionnaire from the Trump transition team, he realized the lapse and began the process of paying back taxes and fees. Senate Democrats noted that Republicans had previously insisted that past Democratic nominees' failure to pay taxes for their household employees was disqualifying, including former Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle in 2009.

On February 16, 2017, the Senate confirmed Mulvaney, 51–49.

Manipulated unemployment numbers claim

In March 2017, Mulvaney stated that he believed that "the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate — that percentage rate — look smaller than it actually was," and that "[w]hat you should really look at is the number of jobs created." There is no evidence that jobs numbers under the Obama administration were manipulated. FiveThirtyEight's Ben Casselman noted that "manipulating the jobs figures... would mean not just messing with one number but rather interfering with an entire ecosystem of statistics" and "would require a conspiracy theory of massive proportions, involving hundreds if not thousands of people."

Criticism of the Congressional Budget Office

In March 2017, Mulvaney stated that the Congressional Budget Office was not capable of assessing the American Health Care Act, stating that "[i]f the CBO was right about Obamacare to begin with, there'd be 8 million more people on Obamacare today than there actually are." According to FactCheck.Org, which stated that "[t]he CBO actually nailed the overall impact of the law on the uninsured pretty closely...It’s true (as Trump administration officials have repeatedly pointed out) that CBO greatly overestimated the number who would get government-subsidized coverage through the new insurance exchanges. But at the same time, CBO underestimated the number who would get coverage through expanding Medicaid. And whatever the failings of CBO’s predictions, they were closer to the mark than those of the Obama administration and some other prominent forecasters." PolitiFact noted that "the initial CBO analysis of the Affordable Care Act did forecast that more people would participate in health care exchanges than actually did, but the CBO has revised those estimates. Moreover, independent analyses, as well as experts agree that the CBO offers some of the best estimates given the information available at the time."

In May 2017, Mulvaney was critical of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) after it estimated the version of the American Health Care Act passed by the house in May 2017 would result in 23 million fewer people with health insurance. Mulvaney said that the CBO's assessment was "absurd" and that "the days of relying on some nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to do that work for us has probably come and gone."

Trump administration's budget proposal

While promoting the Trump administration's budget proposal in March 2017, Mulvaney stated that, as to taxpayers, the government was "not gonna ask you for your hard-earned money, anymore… unless we can guarantee to you that that money is actually being used in a proper function." For instance, Mulvaney justified cuts to block grants that go towards spending on Meals on Wheels because it was "just not showing any results." Others disagreed with Mulvaney's statement, citing research that has "found home-delivered meal programs to significantly improve diet quality, increase nutrient intakes, and reduce food insecurity and nutritional risk among participants. Other beneficial outcomes include increased socialization opportunities, improvement in dietary adherence, and higher quality of life."

On May 22, 2017, Mulvaney presented President Trump's $4.1 trillion budget. The budget includes cuts to the United States Department of State, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the social safety net and increases in funding for defense spending and paid family leave. The "America First" budget included a 10.6% decrease in domestic program spending and a 10% increase in military spending, in addition to $1.6 billion for a border wall. The budget would remove $272 billion from welfare programs, including $272 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps. The budget would also remove $800 billion from Medicaid, and $72 billion from Social Security disability benefits, while removing nothing from Social Security retirement or Medicare benefits. Mulvany projected the budget will not add to the federal deficit because future tax cuts will lead to 3% GDP growth. He described the budget as "the first time in a long time that an administration has written a budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the taxes."

Ethics waivers

On April 28, 2017, Walter Shaub, the Director of the United States Office of Government Ethics issued a data request to see the ethics waivers given to ex-lobbyists in the executive branch, which Mulvaney then refused. On May 22, Shaub sent Mulvaney, in addition to every federal ethics officer, every inspector general, and the six members of Congress responsible for government oversight, a ten-page response reasserting his legal authority to see the ethics waivers.

Government shutdown

In a press briefing on May 2, 2017, Mulvaney said that a "good shutdown" of the federal government might be necessary in September. He defined such a situation as one "that fixes Washington, D.C. permanently."

Personal life

Mulvaney is a Roman Catholic.