Mick Mulvaney Created Trump’s Budget
I was going to avoid the loud press coverage of the day on Trump’s “tapping, tapping at my chamber door” (sorry, Edgar Allan Poe), and the real DNC tapping. But I was going to focus on the apparent absence of advise and consent on the Trump budget. Mick Mulvaney, Director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, said on a public TV program that Mick was told to make up the skinny budget based on Trump’s campaign speeches. I think that was the biggest leak of all. It said that even Trump-Bannon had not made up a real budget.
Most importantly, it shows that the skinny budget had no real input for the exacting size of the non-defense budget cuts. It has no explanation for why the NIH cuts are almost twice the 10.5% of the non-defense cuts. Except that Trump once disparaged the NIH, as he has disparaged everything. Other than the small, highly politicized and very busy Trump campaign team, led by Lewandowski, and then Manafort, both since dismissed, there was not a real budget advisory group, except for leaning it toward the Heritage Foundation budget. Trump’s economist, Prof. Peter Navarro, had never met Trump personally. We don’t know whether RNC Chairman Reince Priebus had any input, especially since he had to remain neutral between 18 competing candidates. Congress seems to have had no input. The Trump team had not grown until after he was elected. None of the exact figures in the budget were given during the campaign.
Since Trump’s election and swearing in, only heads of Departments have been given inputs to seek budget cuts, which remained secret, except for DOE and the EPA leaks. Based on the lack of Congressional response, they were not included in the budget formulation.
How much respect should there be given to such a film-flam skinny budget?
