Budget chief talks of entitlement overhaul
WASHINGTON — Mick Mulvaney, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget, told a conservative radio host Monday that he was looking for ways to overhaul Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, working around President Donald Trump’s campaign- trail promise to leave the programs untouched.
“I’ve already started to socialize the discussion around here in the West Wing about how important the mandatory spending is to the drivers of our debt,” Mulvaney told Hugh Hewitt on Monday morning. “I think people are starting to grab it. There are ways that we can not only allow the president to keep his promise, but to help him keep his promise by fixing some of these mandatory programs.”
Mulvaney, a South Carolina Republican elected to Congress in 2010, entered the Office of Management and Budget with ideas about entitlement spending that diverged from Trump’s. At his January confirmation hearing, he told senators that he still favored raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 and supported means- testing to reduce Medicare spending. As a congressman, he was the main driver behind the unsuccessful Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, which would have raised the debt limit only if it came with the passage of a balanced- budget amendment.
At the confirmation hearing, Mulvaney acknowledged that he disagreed with Trump on an entitlement overhaul.
“I have no reason to believe the president has changed his mind,” Mulvaney said. “My job is to be completely and brutally honest with him.”
In the interview with Hewitt, Mulvaney suggested that he hoped to convince Trump of the importance of changing mandatory spending programs.
“As soon as the 2018 spending budget is done at the end of next week, I’m hoping to put together something for the president to look at on the other pieces of entitlement spending, or mandatory spending,” Mulvaney said.
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly bucked the conservative consensus on an overhaul of entitlement spending. “It is my intention to leave Social Security as it is,” Trump said at a March 2016 Republican debate.
In the past two months, members of the Democratic caucus, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I- Vt., have thrown Trump’s quotes back at Republicans, arguing that any overhauls that reduce payouts will break the president’s promise.
“Trump said, ‘ I will save Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, without cuts. We have to do it,’” said Sanders last month at an event commemorating Social Security’s anniversary, quoting Trump’s June 2015 campaign launch speech. “I think Trump was as clear as he can be, and if he goes back on that, he was lying to the American people.”
But Republicans, who generally favor cuts to entitlements, have increasingly argued that Trump could make good on his promises by signing onto an overhaul.
“He did talk about saving Medicare and Social Security, and as someone who was on the campaign trail with him in November, it was really about making sure that people who were getting benefits, or about to get benefits, are protected,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R- N. C., the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, in a roundtable with reporters last month. “That is consistent with where we are; that’s consistent with where the president not only has been but is. If we do nothing, we will not save Medicare and Social Security.”
Mulvaney, too, has said that any Republican overhaul would be consistent with Trump’s promise, by defining the act of “saving” Social Security and Medicare as anything that allows them to meet obligations — even and especially if those obligations are reduced. On Monday, pushed for details by Hewitt, Mulvaney suggested that the replacement of sections of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act supported by former President Barack Obama could begin the process of unwinding entitlement spending.
“Clearly, you can help fix and solve Medicaid as part of this larger Obamacare replacement, right, that the two things are tied together. So if we get Obamacare replacement right, it might also allow us to fix Medicaid,” Mulvaney said. “I don’t think you’re going to see this president have any interest in raising the retirement age anytime soon. But we need to address things like Social Security Disability, which you and I both know is one of the fastestgrowing and probably one of the most abused mandatory programs in the country.”