Tea party Rep. Mick Mulvaney confirmed as budget director
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday confirmed President Donald Trump’s choice to run the White House budget office, giving the Republicans’ tea party wing a voice in the Cabinet.
R e p . M i c k Mu l v a n e y, R-S.C., squeaked through on an all-but party line 51-49 vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, who is emerging as perhaps the most vocal GOP critic of the Trump administration, opposed Mulvaney for the nominee’s past House votes supporting cuts to Pentagon spending.
“Mulvaney has spent his last six years in the House of Representatives pitting the national debt against our military,” said McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Senators then gave a tenta- tive 54-46 procedural green light to Trump’s choice to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. It was a signal that Pruitt should sail through on a final vote scheduled for today, despite being opposed by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a GOP moderate.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, two of the party’s more moderate members, backed Pruitt.
Trump has tapped some of the wealthiest Americans to serve in his Cabinet and ethics reviews have slowed the confirmation process. So have Senate Democrats who have mostly opposed all the nominees and forced hours of debate.
At his news conference, Trump lashed out.
“I’ve also worked to install a Cabinet over the delays and obstruction of Senate Demo- crats,” he said. “You’ve seen what they’ve done over the last long number of years.”
In fact, Democrats pushed to secure confirmation of President Barack Obama’s picks the past eight years.
Mulvaney’s vote means that 13 out of 22 Trump Cabinet or Cabinet-level picks have been confirmed. Nominees to key Cabinet departments such as Interior, Housing and Urban Development, and Energy remain unconfirmed.
Mulvaney’s confirmation promises to accelerate work on Trump’s upcoming budget plan, which is overdue. That’s typical at the beginning of an administration. But there is also the need to complete more than $1 trillion in unfinished spending bills for the current budget year, as well as transmit Trump’s request for a quick start on his oft-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall and tens of billions of dol- lars in emergency cash for the military.
In the House, Mulvaney has routinely opposed catcha l l a pp r o p r i a t i o n s b i l l s , which required Republicans to compromise with the Obama White House. The upcoming measure will also require deals with Democrats.
Mulvaney brings strong conservative credentials to the job, and he’s likely to seek big cuts to longtime GOP targets such as the EPA. The House Freedom Caucus, a group of the most conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, issued a statement saying that the president’s pick of Mulvaney “sends a strong message that the Trump administration i s serious about tackling our national debt.”
Trump has indicated, however, that he is not interested in cuts to highly popular benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare.