MICK MULV 2 o m b

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mickmulv919

tag mikm

see MICK mulv 2 capt 419

PENSION? 2026 MAGIC THINK

Mick Mulvaney (R)

capt 914 1219

Koch Industries , met w/ opus dei (his only religion is gop and $)

kid killer on perchlorate? ryan jackson Wheeler CoS TCE perchloride

note OMB trump election fuckery mulvaney

Rao is clarence clerk mafia OIRA

...

Everywhere you turn in Trumpland, you’ll find a slew of Thomas’ former clerks in high places. They are serving in the White House counsel’s office (Greg Katsas, John Eisenberg, David Morrell); awaiting appointment to the federal judiciary (Allison H. Eid, David Stras); leading the departments of the Treasury (Heath P. Tarbert, Sigal Mandelker) and Transportation (Steven G. Bradbury); defending the travel ban in court (Jeffrey Wall); and heading the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (Neomi Rao). Thomas clerks are also working with dark money groups to execute Trump’s agenda (Carrie Severino) and boosting him in the far-right media (Laura Ingraham).

[Jeffrey Wall

Former Thomas clerk Jeffrey Wall is now Trump’s acting solicitor general. Department of Justice

In an era in which former clerks seem, on balance, to be drifting away from Washington jobs, a whole lot of members of the old Thomas crew are moving back home. It’s near impossible to count every former Supreme Court clerk who is now playing a role in the sprawling executive branch, but it’s easy to see that an enormous number of Thomas protégés are stepping into positions of immense power. Every expert we spoke to, among them the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin, agreed the Trump administration has brought on a striking number of Thomas clerks.

To be sure, a number of clerks who trained under Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and other conservative justices have taken jobs with the government. But Stephen Vladeck, who teaches law at the University of Texas and serves as a Supreme Court analyst for CNN, says it’s instructive to compare the career paths of clerks who worked for Thomas and those who served under Scalia. The latter, Vladeck says, have gravitated more toward the conservative establishment—institutions like law schools and legal foundations. The Thomas clerks, who have “a bit more of a libertarian or populist streak,” are a more logical fit for the key legal jobs serving the Trump White House. It is the Thomas alums that have risen to prominence in the past six months, and they are working zealously to put their mentor’s ideas into action.

Consider Wall, Trump’s acting solicitor general, who left his law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, to join the administration. Wall is the attorney who, back in May, so adroitly argued the travel ban case before the lower federal appeals courts and aggressively litigated the case in pleadings this summer at the Supreme Court. It was Wall who insisted on the “presumption of regularity” in the litigation, cautioning the judges to focus on the long tradition of deference to executive authority—especially in the realm of national security—and to ignore Trump’s incendiary tweets and campaign statements.

Wall has said that the judges for whom he has clerked are still his “close friends.” Perhaps most significantly, at an event last year celebrating Thomas’ 25th anniversary on the court, Wall defended the justice’s singular relevance and influence, rejecting any criticism that Thomas hasn’t had a profound impact on the court as “pernicious and wrongheaded.” (He’s quite right about that; liberals consistently underestimate Thomas’ influence.) Describing his former boss as an “intellectual catalyst,” Wall said that Thomas “is content to sow ideas that result later in changes in the law.”

That’s precisely the influence we are now seeing at work across the federal government. In arguing the travel ban cases, Wall insisted that limiting Muslim immigrants’ access to the United States does not amount to unlawful animus, that the president must have near-total authority to control the nation’s borders, and that his decisions must not be second-guessed by the courts. These are classic Thomas principles, and the justice himself embraced them in a partial dissent when the court allowed only part of the ban to take effect.

Thomas’ influence can also be seen in the work of Neomi Rao,whom the Senate recently confirmed to lead theOffice of Information and Regulatory Affairs.Until her appointment as Trump’s regulatory czar,Rao served as a professor at George Mason University’s law school—an institution that, at Rao’s urging, was recently renamed in honor of Antonin Scalia.Rao has devoted her academic career to criticizing the administrative state—the web of agencies and committees that promulgate federal regulations. Her attacks on the government sit at the intersection of two quintessential Thomas principles: an aversion to regulations (especially labor and environmental rules) and a hostility toward limits on executive authority.

[Neomi Rao

Former Thomas clerk Neomi Rao is set to lead the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Screenshot via YouTube

Rao believes, for instance, that independent agencies are unconstitutional. These commissions—which include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Communications Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Reserve—flourish in part because they are removed from political pressures. Rao would like to change that. She believes that since these agencies are part of the executive branch, the president must be empowered to fire and replace their leaders.

Thomas sees his clerks as trainees in a very specific ideological program.

It seems extremely likely that Rao has been placed in her perch at OIRA not only to bust traditional agency regulations but also to bring independent agency rules under her purview. While her office does not currently review rules by independent agencies, she has argued that it should. Thomas has strongly suggested that all agencies within the executive branch, independent or not, must ultimately be accountable to the president. If Rao gives herself veto power over these agencies’ rules, she will bring Thomas’ vision a step closer to the reality. In the process, she could nullify whatever vestiges of liberalism are still lingering from the Obama era. For example, the EEOC recently took the position that federal law protects gay employees, directly contradicting Trump’s Justice Department. If Rao’s view wins out, Trump could fire as many EEOC commissioners as he needs to in order to reverse the agency’s position. Thomas, who takes a dim view of nondiscrimination law and gay rights, would be doubly proud.

The justice must already be delighted at the work of his former clerk Allison Eid, whom Trump has nominated to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Eid currently serves on the Colorado Supreme Court, where she established her conservative bona fides by dissenting from a ruling that prohibited the state from sending public funds to private religious schools. The court’s decision was compelled by the Colorado Constitution, which bars the government from spending “any public fund or moneys … to help support or sustain any school … controlled by any church or sectarian denomination.”But according to Eid, this constitutional bar on public funding of parochial schools was likely motivated by unconstitutional animus toward religion—even though its plain text indicates nothing more than a desire to observe the separation of church and state.

Eid’s dissent, which she wrote in 2015, maps neatly onto Thomas’ own concurrence in 2017’s Trinity Lutheran v. Comer. In Trinity, the court ruled that Missouri could not deny a grant to a Christian school solely on account of its “religious character.” (A day after the court decided Trinity, it vacated the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision on parochial schools, effectively vindicating Eid’s dissent.) Thomas asserted that the court had not gone far enough in Trinity: He wrote that the government may never “discriminate against religion” by refusing to subsidize houses of worship and sectarian programs. Thomas, like Eid, appears to believe that when a state declines to fund religious activity—even out of respect for the Establishment Clause—it engages in unconstitutional discrimination. When Eid is confirmed, he will gain a critical ally in his fight for ever-more entanglement between church and state. And she will be the first of many Trump picks who are as immutable in their views as their former bosses. This is a movement and a cause, not just constitutional theory.

[Allison H. Eid

Trump has nominated former Thomas clerk Allison H. Eid to the 10th Circuit. Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images]

Thomas, who has described his clerks as his “little family,” sees them as trainees in a very specific ideological program.He famously invites them to watch The Fountainhead at his home each yearand has taken them on annual trips to Gettysburg to reflect on what he views as the conservative lessons of the Civil War. He also tutors his clerks on his judicial philosophy, instilling in them a profound reverence for his own vision of the rule of law.

It’s no surprise that so many of Thomas’ clerks share a belief system with their former boss, and with each other. Thomas is known to be ideologically rigid when it comes to hiring (and in everything else). Prior to 2013, every clerk he’d brought on during his Supreme Court tenure had first served under an appellate-level judge who’d been appointed by a Republican president.* Even Scalia occasionally hired “counter-clerks,” liberal-leaning men and women who had clerked for Democratic appointees on lower courts. Thomas has expressed no interest in this kind of ideological diversity. (To his credit, he does value educational diversity, intentionally hiring clerks from lower-ranked schools. Compare that with Scalia, who was openly biased against schools outside the T14.)

[Trump’s reactionary view of conservatism is causing a schism at the Supreme Court.

Like all justices, Thomas tends to get his clerks from a handful of feeder judges. Thomas’ chief feeders are J. Michael Luttig and J. Harvie Wilkinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, Laurence Silberman and David Sentelle of the D.C. Circuit, Edith Jones of the 5th Circuit, and William Pryor of the 11th Circuit—all rock-ribbed conservatives except for Wilkinson, who has recently drifted to the center. By drawing from this pool, Thomas ensures he won’t hear many progressive counterpoints to his conservative instincts. And that’s OK with him. Thomas has said that picking clerks is like “selecting mates in a foxhole,”explaining: “I won’t hire clerks who have profound disagreements with me. It’s like trying to train a pig. It wastes your time, and it aggravates the pig.”

-=-=-

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AN 10 26

President Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff Mick Mulveney was ready on Monday with a list of excuses to explain away the fact that Trump fabricates the existence of inter-global ceasefires — even when raging wars are still clearly destroying global supply chains.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of striking a Ukrainian power plant just hours after Trump claimed Russia and Ukraine had agreed to pause attacks on each other’s power infrastructure.

The Times Radio podcast host Darryl Morris invited Mulvaney to explain the phenomenon of purported ceasefires that don’t actually exist in a show posted Monday.

“What’s going on, Mick? Help me understand this,” said Morris.

“This is Donald Trump trying to visualize his way to success,” insisted Mulvaney. “This is what Donald Trump does. It’s the power of positive thinking. If he says there’s a deal enough, he feels this will self-manifest itself.”

“So, the president is self-manifesting?” demanded Morris, looking doubtful.

“Yeah. He does this a lot,” insisted Mulvaney. “He sells optimism. He sells enthusiasm. He sells momentum, and if he thinks he has a deal, he thinks one of the ways to seal that is to say ‘he has a deal.’ He’s done this from the very beginning. How many times have we heard him say he thinks the war will be over in a day?”

Morris responded that it’s one thing “if you're 13 and you want to get a puppy, and you go around saying you've got a puppy and then manifest it.”

“That's relatively low stakes and fairly harmless,” said Morris. “But he is the president of the United States of America. He can't just make up stuff, can he?”

“Well, he’s not making stuff up,” countered Mulveney.

“Well, he appears to have made up the existence of a ceasefire, hasn’t he?” said Morris.

“But if there was the kernel of a ceasefire, this is him trying to get it over the last sort of over the Finish Line,” argued Mulveney. “I've had this conversation when I was in the White House many, many times, and he would always look at me and say, ‘Look, Mick, this always works for me.’

“Do you think that's wise?” demanded Morris.

“I don't get to make that call,” said Mulvaney. “… because I'm not the president

“But is it a wise way of running the most powerful office in the world?” Morris pressed.

“Look, we used to talk about the tax bill in 2017 when nobody thought he could get that done and he got it done. People didn't think he had a snowball's chance to get reelected, including me, by the way. I thought it would lose early in the Republican primaries but he said he was going to win. He said he was going to win, and it worked out for him so many times in his life, both in his business career and politics.”

From there, Morris veered into the dangerous waters of Trump’s comparable denial over upcoming midterm devastation as Democrats are poised to wipe Republicans off the maps. Trump’s fabricated ceasefire, Morris suggested, is the result of a “rattled” president needing “to do something so desperately that he will announce a ceasefire that doesn't exist.”

This, Mulvaney scoffed, suggests that Trump cares nothing about the midterms.

“Donald Trump actually said about 6 or 8 weeks ago that he didn't care about the midterms,” said Mulvaney. “I think he's just decided that his life doesn't change that much if the Democrats take the House or the Senate, and he's unwilling to change anything in the war because of the midterms.”

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https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=4000599380080578

xitter https://x.com/RBReich/status/2105343681754526008

Super important to support Prop 4 to allow public financing of campaigns, so regular people and their ideas are not drowned out by dark corporate and oligarch money. Zoran Mamdani was only possible because of public financing.

Check out the Robert Reich video above.

More info: https://www.cafairelections.org/

Ballotpedia: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_4,_Allow_Public_Financing_of_Election_Campaigns_Measure_(2026)

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NO LNX DCK 10 26 NEWS

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Mick_Mulvaney

Mick Mulvaney - Wikipedia

John Michael " Mick " Mulvaney (born July 21, 1967) is an American politician who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2017 to 2020 and as acting White House chief of staff from 2019 to 2020. [2][3][4] Prior to his appointments to the Trump administration, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the South ...

On January 7, 2021, Mulvaney reported that he resigned the day before as Special Envoy for Northern Ireland following the storming of the U.S. Capitol.^[15]^ In 2022, Mulvaney was hired as an on-air contributor for CBS News.^[16]^ His hiring stirred controversy within the company due to his history of promoting Trump's false claims and attacking the press.^[17]^ He has since joined NewsNation and CNBC as a contributor.^[18][19]^

TALK

I responded to you on your talk page, but copying my response here: For instance, adding "He has criticized funding of Planned Parenthood, claiming that the organization traffics pieces of dead children" to the lede. This is clearly cherry-picked and violative of WP:SAY and WP:LEAD, making it non-neutral. By making the changes piecemeal, I mean adding one bit of content at a time (and ideally gaining consensus for it first on the talk page, since this is a BLP of a high-profile figure, rather than adding lots of content and sourcing all in one edit, as you have been doing). Marquardtika (talk) 03:20, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Describing someone as a "budget hawk" and quoting that an organization "traffics pieces of dead children" is far from neutral and should not be included on the page. The content 50.195.72.217 is trying to add can easily be restored if trimmed down and neutralized. Meatsgains (talk) 03:32, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

50.195.72.217 (talk)OK fine, but realize that I was taking the info directly from the article. But I wont add it back. What about the addition below? 50.195.72.217 (talk) Ok, what about the following? How about I add it and you can edit it if you think I wrote something incorrectly? Most of it is direct quotes:

Criticism of Planned Parenthood

In 2015, Mulvaney voted against a resolution that would fund the government, in part because it included funding for Planned Parenthood. Mulvaney stated “This is not about women’s health; it’s about trafficking in pieces of dead children.”^[1]^

Criticism of gun control

Mulvaney has fought against gun control initiatives.^[2]^

Criticism of federal regulations

Mulvaney supported the Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015, which would “[create] a commission tasked with eliminating and revising outdated and redundant federal regulations.”^[3]^

Endorsement of Ron Paul

Per MOS:BODY, we shouldn't have so many short sub-sections. It is unnecessary and inhibits readability. The titling of sub-sections can also be more general, such as "Political views." Here's what I would do with the content you provided above. I would nest it in the "Tenure" section, since it covers votes he's made since being a member of Congress. Marquardtika (talk) 17:20, 27 January 2017 (UTC)Wasn't sure whether to respond here or below but I support your changes and adding the Tenure section you provided below to Mulvaney's page. This is much more neutral and encyclopedic. Meatsgains (talk) 02:58, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Harvard Magazine

https://www.harvardmagazine.com › 2023 › 11 › mick-mulvaney-harvard

Mick Mulvaney Changes His Mind - Harvard Magazine

On the morning of January 6, 2021, Mick Mulvaney met with new members of Congress in the Capitol. Mulvaney had served in the Trump administration since February 2017, first as director of the Office of Management and Budget, then as acting White House chief of staff from January 2019 to March 2020 ...

McLarty Associates

https://maglobal.com › team › mick-mulvaney

Mick Mulvaney - McLarty Associates - an Ankura Company

Mick Mulvaney is a Senior Advisor at McLarty Associates, bringing expertise and insight from his tenure as Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump and his four terms in the U.S. Congress. As the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and a Cabinet Member, he oversaw the broadest deregulatory initiative in 40 years and managed the longest government shutdown in history. He also served ...

POLITICO

https://www.politico.com › news › magazine › 2023 › 09 › 29 › mick-mulvaney-q-a-shutdown-00118934

Mick Mulvaney Dreamed of Shutting Down the Government. Then ... - POLITICO

Sep 29, 2023Former Trump budget chief and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney recounts his experience of signing the document that closed a wide swath of the federal government in 2018. He explains the politics and discretion behind the decision to keep some agencies open and others closed.

The Hill on MSN.com

Mick Mulvaney: Trump ad 'flat out' wrong

14 days agoFormer White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Monday said that a new taxpayer-funded TV advertisement from the White House promoting President Trump is "wrong, it flat out is." The 30-second ad features Trump saying in a voiceover that the U.

AlterNet on MSN.com

Cornered ex-Trump staffer gives bonkers answer to defend president's lies

38 minutes agoPresident Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff Mick Mulveney was ready on Monday with a list of excuses to explain away the fact that Trump fabricates the existence of inter-global ceasefires — even when raging wars are still clearly destroying global supply chains.

Idaho Learning News on MSN.com

Mick Mulvaney called a Trump ad 'flat out' wrong. The reason is nowhere to be found.

14 days agoMick Mulvaney reportedly called a Trump ad "flat out" wrong, but the available material does not identify the ad or its wording. What the reporting does — and d

News24 on MSN.com

Trump in the firing line over plans to purchase Russian diesel

16 hours agoFormer White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney examines how US President Donald Trump's plan to import diesel from Russia will impact the midterm elections.

News24 on MSN.com

Experts claim AI is more of an economic issue than it is a tech issue

15 hours agoFormer White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney declares that AI will prove to be an economic issue rather than a tech issue.

Yahoo

Former WH Chief Of Staff Contradicts Trump On Whether Prez's Name Is In The Epstein Files

1 year agoMick Mulvaney, who served as President Donald Trump's chief of staff towards the end of his first term, has a theory on why the president has started insisting theJeffrey Epstein case is"a hoax." He thinks it's because it isn't a hoax at all. "He's in ...

News24 on MSN.com

Americans 'willing to take the risks' as test dummies in AI expedition

16 hours agoFormer White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney claims "Americans are by nature risk takers", as US test grounds with AI.

Yahoo Finance

Probably Not Enough Money to Fix Paxton Campaign, Says Mulvaney

7 days agoMick Mulvaney, former acting chief of staff in the first Trump administration, said Ken Paxton, the Republican contender for the US Senate seat in Texas, is the 'weakest candidate' in this election and that there's 'probably not enough money to fix' him.

Yahoo

'What Are We Doing Here?' Trump's Former Chief of Staff Explains What He'd Tell Administration About Taking Greenland

266 days agoAdd Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Mick Mulvaney, who served as President Donald Trump's chief of staff in the first term, said Trump's obsession with taking Greenland is ill-advised for several reasons. The president has ...

Yahoo

Mick Mulvaney walked off after an exchange with YouTube star Brian Tyler Cohen.

1 year agoAdd Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. President Donald Trump's former budget office chief ended a television appearance early after being challenged by liberal commentator Brian Tyler Cohen.During a Tuesday night appearance ...

Yahoo Finance

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/mulvaney-trump-rip-documents-toilet/

trump liked him on TV (fired as CoS b/c? Meadows also Freedom Caucus [out of a job?)

Freedom Caucus, TP

trump coup: klukowski, neomi rao (Ginni groundswell] , russ vought

Gorsuch personally thanked Paoletta by name when he was sworn in.Paoletta left Pence’s office not long thereafter and joined the OMB at the beginning of 2018 at the invitation of Mick Mulvaney, who was heading the budget office at the time and is now acting White House chief of staff.

no lnx GUK

Robert Reich explores the compelling question of why CBS News hired Trump loyalists Mick Mulvaney

Meaghan Ellis April 19, 2022

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is offering insight on a controversial topic that many have questions about: Why on earth did CBS News hire former Trump White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney?

In an op-ed written for The Guardian, Reich tackled the issue of Mulvaney's hiring just days after he made his first CBS appearance on “MoneyWatch."

During that segment, Mulvaney, who is now an on-air contributor for the network, was asked to break down President Joe Biden's plan to increase taxation on America's ultra-wealthy. He also noted that the anchor, Anne-Marie Green, introduced Mulvaney as a former White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director and that she failed to mention the chaotic presidential administration he worked for. While he did serve in that capacity, he was also a partisan Trumpist.

Then she asked him if "regular working-class Americans" should be concerned about Biden's tax initiative. Reich highlighted Mulvaney’s answer: “It’s easy to look at it and say, ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to pay this,’but regular working Americans would have to 'prove that they don’t have to pay it,' a burden that 'could be troublesome: every single year proving that you’re not worth a hundred million dollars.'”

Mulvaney's response is what Reich suggested is most problematic and also an example of the reason for concern about his hiring.

"This is as misleading as it gets in broadcast media (except for Fox News)," he wrote. "Nothing in Biden’s proposal to tax the super-rich requires that people prove they’re not super-rich. Mulvaney’s claim was pure demagoguery."

He added, "That’s what we should expect from Mulvaney. In 2019 Mulvaney threatened to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine to fight Russian aggression unless President Zelenskiy came up with dirt on Hunter Biden.(This was the call in which Zelenskiy’s plea 'we need more Javelins' – anti-tank missiles that have proved crucial in Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion – was met with Trump’s 'I would like you to do us a favor though.'”

Reich went on to offer a number of times Mulvaney has dropped the ball for the sake of politicization. From his 2019 threats toward Ukraine demanding dirt on Hunter Biden to his conspiracy theory stance on the COVID-19 pandemic he described as a "media hoax," Reich highlighted the unfavorable moments in his career that should raise questions about his credibility.

He also criticized CBS News noting the stark difference in the network now compared to what it once was. "When I was growing up, CBS News was the home of news legends like Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite – pioneers who set the standards for broadcast news," he wrote. "So why is CBS News now reaching into the cesspool of Trump conspirators and enablers to hire Mulvaney?"

Reich went on to push back against the explanation for Mulvaney's hiring which was provided by CBS News' Neeraj Khemlani. When asked about Mulvaney, Khemlani claimed "when it comes to contributor hires, 'getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms.'”

For that statement, Reich raised questions. “Getting access” to what? To the big lie about the 2020 election? To lies about Covid? To bonkers economics?" he wrote.

Reich concluded by saying, "CBS News, like every news outlet, has a cardinal responsibility to protect American democracy from this growing menace," he wrote. "To fulfill this responsibility, it must report accurately what is occurring. It should not pander to the menace by hiring a person who has had a hand in it and will further obscure the truth."

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/mick-mulvaney/

NBC hire??

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/mulvaney/

resign insurrection

1/21 grio insurr 2.7$m from campaign maggie mulvaney 138K niece of mick; megan powers, caroline wren, ron holden,

https://www.justice-integrity.org/1814-trump-insurrection-evidence-hill-death-total-impeachment-anger-grow

Bloomberg,:{**Organizers of Trump Rally Had Been on Campaign’s Payroll**:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:,Bill Allison, Jan. 22, 2021. Former President Donald Trump’s campaign paid more than $2.7 million over two years to individuals and firms that organized the Jan. 6 rally that led to rioters storming the U.S. Capitol, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The payments, which span Trump’s re-election campaign, show an ongoing financial relationship between the rally’s organizers and Trump’s political operation. They were all made through Nov. 23, the most recent date covered by Federal Election Commission filings, which is before the rally was publicly announced.

Eight paid Trump campaign officials were named on the permit issued on by the National Park Service for the rally, including Maggie Mulvaney, the niece of Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former chief of staff who resigned his position as special envoy to Northern Ireland after the riot.Maggie Mulvaney was paid $138,000 by the campaign through Nov. 23.

After the rally, in which the president encouraged them to march on the Capitol, Trump supporters stormed the building, disrupting the count of Electoral College votes in an event that ultimately killed five people. Lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over what is normally a ceremonial event, were forced to flee.

[President Joe Biden was blamed for firing the White House chief usher on his first day on the job, but his predecessor actually did the deed -- apparently to spite the incoming first family.

Donald and Melania Trump sent White House ushers home early on Inauguration Day in one of their last acts in a tense presidential transition, a well-placed official not associated with the Biden team told the National Journal.

"The Trumps sent the butlers home when they left so there would be no one to help the Bidens when they arrived," the official said. "So petty."

Other knowledgable sources confirmed to the Journal that chief usher Timothy Harleth, a former executive of Trump Hotels hired by Melania Trump, was summarily fired by the outgoing president and first lady -- and not by the Bidens, as was widely reported afterward.

Harleth was already gone by the time Joe and Jill Biden arrived at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, leaving no one in place to open the doors for their inaugural entry and leading to an awkward pause.

"It's a big protocol breach for the president to ever stand in front of a closed door at the White House," said a veteran White House social expert. "That may be why there was nobody to open the doors to the Bidens. You couldn't expect the Biden staff to know to do that. Doors are opened and closed by ushers. There are rules about all these things and everyone has their job."

The rest of the usher staff was back on the job Thursday, but Harleth -- considered to be a Trump loyalist -- was not expected to be retained by the Bidens for long.]

A Trump campaign adviser said the campaign had no role in organizing, operating or paying for the rally. No campaign staff worked on it, said the adviser, who asked not to be named. He added that any employees or contractors who worked on the event did not do so at the campaign’s direction.

Megan Powers, listed as one of two operations managers on the permit, was paid $290,000 by the Trump campaign from February 2019 through the most recent filing period. She served as director of operations for Trump’s campaign.

Caroline Wren, a top GOP fundraiser who was listed on the permit as an adviser to the rally and Ronald Holden, the backstage manager, were also paid by the campaign.

The biggest recipient of campaign funds according to the report, was Event Strategies Inc., which was paid more than $1.7 million by Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee. The firm’s owners, Justin Caporale and Tim Unes, served as rally production manager and stage manager, respectively.

Women for America First,the nonprofit organization thatrequested the permit on Nov. 24, originally for an event to be held on Jan. 23,had a financial relationship withAmerica First Policies, the pro-Trump nonprofit formed to advance his agenda shortly after he took office,according to the report. America First Policies made a $25,000 grant to Women for America First in 2019, its most recent tax return shows.

Washington Post,:{To fight impeachment, Trump turns to ‘Butch’ Bowers, :{a S.C. lawyer:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:at a small firm who has defended state Republicans:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:, Michael Kranish and Josh Dawsey, Jan. 22, 2021.When Republican politicians in South Carolina have faced possible impeachment, ethics charges or other serious accusations, they have often turned to Karl S. “Butch” Bowers Jr., a lawyer with a military background, taciturn demeanor and a small office near the State House in Columbia.

Now Bowers is taking on his biggest case yet: defending former president Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, this time against a charge that he incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol.

The longtime GOP attorney is little known outside of South Carolina and has no powerhouse law firm behind him. Colleagues say he is better known for behind-the-scenes negotiations than courtroom oratory.

In Bowers, Trump is getting a seasoned lawyer at a time when prominent Washington litigators have little interest in working for the former president — and a measured figure who offers a sharp contrast to attorneys Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who spent the past several months unspooling wild conspiracy theories that the election was rigged.

“When I was threatened with the specter of impeachment, he was able and professional,” said former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, recalling how Bowers successfully fought off efforts to remove him from office. “From his vantage point, it is a good business decision. It substantially raises your profile on a national and international basis.”

In addition to his work for Sanford, Bowers defended then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley during an ethics investigation, and he played a key role in the campaigns of some of the state’s most prominent Republican politicians. His law office is in a small white building that also houses the firm of current Gov. Henry McMaster.

“He is the first call that every Republican campaign makes for a legal team,” said South Carolina political consultant Tim Pearson, who has worked alongside Bowers on gubernatorial campaigns and shares office space with him. “It doesn’t surprise me he is willing to do the work. He is a lawyer’s lawyer in the sense that I think he believes that everybody deserves representation.”

Bowers did not respond to a request for comment.

Bowers, 55, a graduate of Tulane Law School, was recommended to Trump by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, the South Carolina Republican, who said that he expects that Trump might bring on other lawyers.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/mick-mulvaney

former?

former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney criticized Rudy Giuliani's handling of President Donald Trump's post-election legal challenges as he claimed the effort to overturn the election result "is not a television program."

On Wednesday, Mulvaney appeared on "Fox Business" where he discussed the current legal battle over the election. He expressed concern about Giuliani's involvement in the legal proceedings. Mulvaney, who now serves as the Office of Management and Budget Director, admitted he does not understand why the president's campaign team would incorporate Giuliani instead of hiring the nation's most experienced election attorneys.

"I'm still a little concerned about the use of Rudy Giuliani. It strikes me that this is the most important lawsuit in the history of the country,and they're not using the most well-noted election lawyers," Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney went on to stress that the legal battle is a real despite what Guliani's rants may indicate.

"There are folks who do this all of the time. This is a specialty. This is not a television program. This is the real thing," Mulvaney said. "And I was struck by a couple things that Rudy said in court yesterday. So on one hand, I think it needs to go forward. It absolutely does. I wish that it was being prosecuted a little more efficiently."

So far, the vast majority of Trump's lawsuits have led to unfavorable outcomes. While Trump may be out of the public eye at the moment, he has not refrained from circulating misinformation. Despite having no evidence of widespread voter fraud, the president is still tweeting falsehoods and claiming he won the election.

His administration is still refusing to cooperate with the incoming Biden administration.

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trump mofo, reg capture:

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/12/cfpb-coronavirus-predatory-payday-loans

ON JULY 30, Chair Maxine Waters opened the House Committee on Financial Services hearing with a frustrate and ominous message: “I would like to welcome Director Kraninger to what I hope will be her last appearance before this committee as CFPB director.”

Kathy Kraninger was being called to account for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s failure to protect consumers during the coronavirus pandemic. In separate House and Senate hearings, committee members levied their sharpest criticisms against the agency’s plan to deregulate small-dollar lending by repealing key consumer protections on predatory products like payday and auto title loans. The final rule decided on by the agency tore out the heart of the policy by rescinding provisions that required lenders to assess a borrower’s ability to repay their loan.

small-dollar lenders, such as Speedy Cash and TitleMax, intentionally design high-cost, low-quality products to make it almost impossible for borrowers to repay their loans under the original terms. Finance fees and average annual interest rates of 400 percent prevent most borrowers from repaying payday loans in full, with borrowers ending up in debtfive monthsout of the year for what was deceptively marketed as a two-week loan. Other loans within this industry are just as harmful. Ninety percent of auto title loans arere-borrowed, and 20 percent of borrowers have their vehicles repossessed. This rule makes it easier for lenders to trap borrowers in cycles of debt.

Payday lenders are well known for taking advantage of the precarious conditions experienced by working-class and poor people — and which disproportionately affect Black and brown people. The average loan amount borrowed from a storefront payday lender is about $1,000. Contradicting the assumption that these lenders profit primarily from unpredictable crises such as a pay cut or medical emergency, a majority of borrowers — 69 percent — rely on payday loans to cover recurring expenses. People use these higher-cost loans to live day-to-day: buying groceries, paying bills, and making their rent or mortgage payments.

The CFPB’s rule makes this form of racial capitalism even more punishing by paving the way for predatory lenders to prey on marginalized borrowers and extract lucrative profits.The economic stimulus payments that Congress approved under the CARES Act appeared to help people make it through the early months of the pandemic, and new applications for small-dollar loans declined during March and April. Now, with Congress’s failure to extend benefits, loan applications are rising steadily along with eviction fears, job losses, and coronavirus infection and death rates. In one survey, 36 percent of lower-income households applied for some type of small-dollar loan in June and July. Black and brown households applied for these loans at a rate three times higher than did white households.

Near the end of the House Committee on Financial Services hearing, Illinois Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García described CFPB’s final rule as a scary example of how the agency is working on behalf of predatory lenders instead of consumers. “I represent a working-class, immigrant district. There are a lot of payday lenders in my district,” said García. “My community was hit hard by the last crisis and many people never recovered. … That’s why the CFPB was established during the last crisis to give ordinary people, like my neighbors in Chicago, their own voice. … But that’s not what we see from watching the bureau today.”

THE CFPB first revealed its proposed rule to regulate the small-dollar lending industry at a 2016 field hearing in Kansas City, Missouri. Up to that point, regulators had allowed the industry to escape federal oversight. Then-Director Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee, had led the agency in conducting extensive research on the industry’s harms to borrowers.

The CFPB’s decision to reveal its proposed rule in Kansas City was far from random. Kansas City and its white, wealthy suburbs were swimming with payday and other small-dollar lenders hungry for people’s money. Lenders sold payday loans with 1,000-percent interest rates nationwide out of their call center based in Overland Park, and local investors helped bankroll these lenders.

A multibillion-dollar payday lending enterprise overseen by a man named Scott Tucker was located just a few miles away in Leawood, with businesses that had names like Cash Advance and OneClickCash. Tucker put together the seed funding for his payday lending business in the 1990s, about the same time as the industry’s rapid nationwide expansion. By his early 30s, he had already developed several financial schemes and defrauded investors out of $100,000 — credentials he used to pitch investors.

Tucker grew his payday lending business into a nationwide enterprise over the next few decades. He worked hard to keep his illegal enterprise under the radar, including paying off local officials through campaign donations, creating a near-impenetrable multistate maze of shell companies, using the internet to expand his business, and exploiting Native tribes for sovereign immunity. His relationships with payday lenders were hard to pin down. Tucker had succeeded in keeping his name out of states’ earlier lawsuits against the payday lenders from which he was profiting, including in Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Washington.

https://theintercept.com/2018/07/19/cfpb-director-nominee-kathy-kraninger/

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Trump Nominee for CFPB Admits in Hearing She Has No Background in Consumer Protection or Financial Regulation

A2011 investigative report revealed the sources of Tucker’s wealth, publicly chaining him to the payday lenders whose affiliations he had worked so hard to suppress. The Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Tucker in 2012, and Tucker and his attorney were arrested on racketeering and other charges in 2016. Tucker was sentenced to 16 years in prison, and the FTC won their largest penalty at the time with a judgment for $1.3 billion in 2018. The FTC returned $505 million to the people Tucker had defrauded. The judge presiding over the decision estimated that Tucker had victimized 1 percent of the U.S. population through predatory loans and fraudulent activity.

Tucker wasn’t even the only person from Kansas City running a payday loan enterprise. Numerous Kansas City-area moguls have been sued in recent years, including Timothy Coppinger, Frampton T. Rowland, Richard Moseley Sr., Richard Moseley Jr., and Josh Landy. The initial rule stopped them from abusive practices, such as charging unaffordable payments that forced repeat borrowing and created debt traps.

trump was elected to the presidency a few months after the Kansas City field hearing. Since that time, his appointees, Interim Director Mick Mulvaney and current Director Kathy Kraninger, have hacked away at rule-making and used bureaucratic malaise to whittle away at the agency’s commitments to oversight and enforcement. One of Mulvaney’s first actions as interim director was to announce that the agency would reconsider the small-dollar lending rule. The Trump appointees even manipulated the agency’s research to make payday lenders appear less harmful. When the CFPB announced its final rule in July of this year, it hammered a nail into the coffin of the Cordray-era rule-making that steadfastly sought justice for borrowers defrauded by lenders like Tucker.

The CFPB announced the rule’s final fate as eviction moratoriums and expanded unemployment benefitswere expiring— along with any remaining hope that America could rally the collective spirit needed to fight the coronavirus. Other federal regulators followed in lock step with the CFPB. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation subsequently announced proposed rules that would allow payday lenders to circumvent state interest rate caps. Moreover, Trump’s executive orders on payroll taxes and student loans defer payments instead of canceling them. By extending these payments into the future, Trump’s executive orders actually operate a lot like payday loans: taking advantage of people’s precarious conditions by offering immediate relief while their debts accumulate with no way of repaying them. Mutually reinforcing policy decisions effectively deploy predatory lenders and their 400-percent interest rates as first responders to the pandemic. Not willing to throw out life vests, Trump’s government encourages people to drown in debt.

Congress must act with urgency to protect borrowers from predatory lenders and to stave the flow of Black and brown income into white pockets, like Tucker’s. The Democrats’ HEROES Act, if passed, would initiate another round of economic stimulus payments that would likely reduce reliance on payday loans by giving people the money they need to live. Some states are stepping up in the CFPB’s absence. Policymakers in Virginia recently passed legislation to cap interest rates at 36 percent and ensure that borrowers can repay their loans. Wisconsin issued emergency guidance warning payday lenders not to raise interest rates and threatening to revoke licenses.

The House and Senate hearings provided a necessary public accounting of the CPFB. However, without federal intervention, people will have little choice but to rely on predatory lenders and their high-cost debt for surviving the pandemic. And they’ll have fewer protections, thanks to the CFPB’s final rule that promises to widen racial economic inequality during a pandemic instead of narrowing it.

https://www.**politico**.com/story/2019/03/27/frank-luntz-trump-white-house-1238283

no lnx

How Frank Luntz went from Trump enemy to White House insider

The famous GOP pollster clashed with Trump during the 2016 election but has helped shape his message thanks to a friendship with chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

By NANCY COOK 03/27/2019

Frank Luntz had long been a loyal Republican insider — until Donald Trump came along. During the 2016 campaign, Luntz openly criticized Trump, who attacked the storied pollster as a “low class snob” and called for Fox News to dump him from its airwaves.

After Trump’s election, Luntz seemed likely to be shut out of the White House — a painful fate for a lover of the presidency who built replicas of the Oval Office and Lincoln Bedroom in his Los Angeles home.

But Luntz has now found a key way into the Trump White House. Thanks to his longtime friend and Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Luntz has provided advice of late about the political messaging of major issues like immigration and the budget.

Luntz made his name by advising Republicans to repackage their policies with language designed to play more to emotion than intellect. He convinced conservatives to say they oppose a “death tax” rather than an “estate tax” on the inheritances of the wealthy, and urged the Bush administration to call global warming “climate change.” Critics said such tactics only obscure and muddy the truth.

Since Mulvaney’s December arrival in the West Wing, Luntz has applied his signature rebranding tactics. Heading into the 35-day government shutdown, Luntz urged Mulvaney to move away from the dry phrase “funding the border wall” for the more evocative theme of “border security” — a language tweak the White House adopted.

Luntz has also given Mulvaney advice on Trump’s most recent budget proposal, and even turned up at an exclusive White House party with the president who once called for him to be fired.

Luntz’s surprising infiltration of the White House is a story about the way access works in Washington — and the way one valuable personal relationship in the West Wing can overcome even the enmity of a president. This account of the quiet influence Luntz has exerted at the Trump White House is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior administration officials and close White House allies.

Luntz and Mulvaney have known one another since 2007 when Mulvaney served in the South Carolina General Assembly as a lawmaker. The two continued to see each other at annual Republican lawmaker retreats once Mulvaney was elected to Congress in 2010 and struck up a friendship.

When Mulvaney joined the Trump administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget in early 2017, Luntz visited the office three times over a nine-month period — including for a one-on-one lunch, according to agency visitor logs. The two men also spoke regularly by phone, with Luntz offering Mulvaney messaging advice on the president’s annual budget proposals to Congress.

Once Mulvaney landed his long-coveted gig as White House acting chief, he was in a position to give his friend even more entrée into Trump’s White House. Days after accepting the job, Mulvaney added Luntz’s name to the invitation list for one of the White House’s most exclusive Christmas balls.

More substantively, as Mulvaney helped to draw up Trump’s most recent budget proposal, Luntz counseled him to illustrate Trump’s idea of referring of a five percent reduction on domestic spending with a picture of a five-cent coin. Trump himself had wanted to refer to it as the “nickel plan.”

The White House press secretary did not respond to a request for comment.

Mulvaney allies stress that Luntz plays no formal or advisory role in the Trump administration, and over the past year,Luntz has also met with Jared Kushner and talked with Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, meetings that pre-dated Mulvaney’s arrival in the West Wing.

[Trump-Russia Superfans Contemplate Life After Mueller

By BEN SCHRECKINGER]

But there’s no disputing his rapport with Mulvaney. People who have seen Mulvaney and Luntz interact say they admire one another’s blunt personalities.

Luntz, in an email to POLITICO, described Mulvaney as a genuine friend, which is “tough to find in Washington.” He said he offered zero advice on the government shutdown and did not have any relationship with President Trump.

He did not respond to a later query about advice he’d given to Mulvaney as acting chief of staff. A person familiar with the White House’s budget planning said Luntz provided advice to Mulvaney several times in recent months.

Luntz’s entry into the Trump fold squares with his reputation among some detractors as a showman who craves the spotlight almost as much as the president — and whose primary concern is remaining relevant.

“For at least two decades, he has been trying to provide guidance to the GOP on how to communicate and simplify stories. Trump came in and immediately related to the American people and brushed Luntz aside,” said one Republican strategist.

But he retains legions of GOP admirers. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is close to Trump and worked with Luntz in the 1990s, says Luntz has played a huge role in the party’s politics.

“Frank had a remarkable way with words and on a number of occasions, he was able to shape language so that it had a big impact,” Gingrich said, adding that Luntz helped Republicans understand “the importance of building messages around small business rather than big corporations.”

It’s unclear whether Trump himself has come around on Luntz, or if he’s even aware that he has spoken words influenced by the message man.

Frnk Luntz and Donald Trump

Republican strategist Frank Luntz interviews then-candidate Donald Trump in 2015. | Scott Olson/Getty Images]

The bitter history between the two men dates to a July 2015 Iowa summit sponsored by the Koch brothers, at which Luntz interviewed Trump onstage.

“Don’t you feel that you went too far in what you called Mexicans coming across the border?” Luntz said moments after they took the stage.

“Oh no, not at all,” Trump said.

Later at the same event, Trump made his infamous declaration that Senator John McCain wasn’t a true hero “because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured.”

In the ensuing weeks, Trump urged Fox News via Twitter to fire Luntz, who conducted post-debate focus groups for the network that the candidate deemed “anti-Trump.”

Luntz is “a low class slob who came to my office looking for consulting work and I had zero interest. Now he picks anti-Trump panels!” Trump tweeted that August. (Trump told POLITICO that Luntz was angry at him because Trump had declined to hire his polling firm.)

Luntz told POLITICO at the time that Trump’s f--- you attitude resonated with voters but did not ultimately solve anything. “‘F—- you’ doesn’t make life any better. ‘F—- you’ makes you feel good, but it doesn’t get you where you need to go. ‘F—- you’ doesn’t make America strong,” he said.

Privately, some Mulvaney aides are aware that his friendship with Luntz comes with a potential risk of annoying the president, and many of the acting chief of staff’s allies downplay the relationship.

But since the 2016 election and Trump’s success in bending the GOP to his will, Luntz has launched something of an apology tour.

Following the 2018 State of the Union address, Luntz wrote on Twitter that he owed the president an apology. “Tonight, I was moved and inspired. Tonight, I have hope and faith in America again. It may go away tomorrow. But tonight, America is great again,” he wrote.

He added in a later tweet that “this speech represents the presidential performance that Trump observers have been waiting for — brilliant mix of numbers and stories, humility and aggressiveness, traditional conservatism and political populism. Only one word qualifies: Wow.”

Luntz’s rehabilitation tour seems to have worked to some extent. Luntz showed up at an election night watch party in November 2018 in Trump’s private residence as a guest of Mulvaney’s, schmoozing and watching the results alongside other close Trump allies including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Corey Lewandowski, and Vice President Mike Pence.

When Trump announced Mulvaney’s promotion to chief-of-staff in a late afternoon tweet one Friday in mid-December, Luntz quickly responded to extol the hire’s brilliance on Twitter.

“No one understands how government works better than Mick,” Luntz wrote. “He is respected on Capitol Hill and in all the agencies – very smart choice.”

This article tagged under:

Newt Gingrich Mike Pence Donald Trump Donald Trump 2020 Frank Luntz Mick Mulvaney Koch Brothers Corey Lewandowski Jared Kushner Steven Mnuchin

5/20 kid killer

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trumps-epa-moves-jettison-any-regulation-of-a-chemical-linked-to-child-brain-damage-report/

no lnx

trump’s EPA moves jettison any regulation of a chemical linked to child brain damage: report

[ June 3, 2019: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler speaks at the National Press Club.

Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams May 15, 2020

Environmental campaigners vowed to fight President DonaldTrump’s EPA Thursday after the agency said it would propose that the rocket-fuel chemicalperchloratedoes not need to be regulated, despite its links to cognitive damage in fetal and child development.

According to the New York Times, theEPA plans to tell the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that it is “not in the public interest” to regulate the chemical at all,a year after the agency recommended the allowable amount in drinking water be limited to 56 parts per billion (ppb).

The 2019 proposal was already 10 to 50 times higher than what water safety experts recommend, the Times reported.

The new recommendation defies a court order, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said, which was issued in 2018 after the group sued over the Obama administration’s inaction on regulating perchlorate....

pow hypocrisy

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/mulvaney-and-other-trump-confidant-got-tested-even-as-the-publicly-downplayed-coronavirus/

PO'd at him for a while (get over it") --> mark meadows needs a job b/c fixed gerry?!

320 an

:{trump announces Mick Mulvaney is out as chief of staff:(style="background-color:#ff9900ff"):}:— to be replaced by a congressional ally

blockbuster new book reveals Mick Mulvaney thought it was a good thing Donald Trump is mentally ill

Ousted White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney suggested it…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/mick-mulvaney-accuses-media-of-hyping-coronavirus-to-bring-down-trump

no lnx

Mick Mulvaney accuses media of hyping coronavirus to bring down Trump

Written by Brad Reed / Raw Story February 28, 2020

White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday that the media is only covering the spread of coronavirus because it’s out to get President Donald Trump.

According to the New York Times’ Annie Karni, Mulvaney accused the American media of using coronavirus as a political weapon, despite the fact that concerns about the virus led Japan to shut down its schools for at least a month.

“They think this will bring down the president,” Mulvaney said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

He then downplayed the health risks to Americans who contract the virus by arguing that the virus won’t kill everyone who contracts it.

“It’s not a death sentence,” he said. “It’s not the same as the Ebola crisis.”

In fact, it’s estimated that the mortality rate from contracting coronavirus is two percent, which is why several governments across the world are taking significant measures to protect their people from getting infected.

Mulvaney is saying that the press is now covering Coronavirus because “they think this will bring down the president. That’s what it’s all about.”

— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) February 28, 2020

:{Midnight revelation::(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{The OMB has been withholding emails that explicitly show Trump’s motives on Ukraine:(style="background-color:#ff9900ff"):}:

Mark Sumner / Daily KosFebruary 2, 2020

A midnight court filing on Friday night revealed that the White House is refusing to release at least two dozen emails directly related to Donald Trump’s withholding of military assistance from…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/key-trump-aide-gets-massive-promotion-after-refusing-to-testify-in-impeachment-probe/

no lnx

Key Trump aide gets massive promotion after refusing to testify in impeachment probe

White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney speaks with reporters Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Written by Matthew Rozsa / Salon December 25, 2019

President Donald Trump gave a promotion to Robert Blair, a top aide to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, just weeks after Blair refused to testify before the House of Representatives in its impeachment inquiry.

Trump appointed Blair as the special representative for international telecommunications policy, an office that will give him the responsibility to “promote a secure and reliable global telecommunications system,” according to Politico. According to a White House statement, Blair “will support the Administration’s 5G efforts led by the Assistant to the President for Economy Policy, Larry Kudlow. Mr. Blair will continue to serve as Assistant to the President and the Senior Advisor to the Chief of Staff.”

Blair refused to appear at a Nov. 4 deposition intended to explore what he may have known Trump’s order to withhold military aid from Ukraine, which was apparently linked to Trump’s effort to force the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. House Democrats had subpoenaed Blair on Nov. 3.

In a closed door meeting, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said that “some of that evidence has revealed that Mr. Blair was a percipient witness to the President’s misconduct. We can only infer, therefore, that the White House’s effort to block Mr. Blair from testifying is to prevent the committees from learning additional evidence of Presidential misconduct and that Mr. BIair’s testimony would corroborate and confirm other witnesses’ accounts of such misconduct, including Mr. Mulvaney’s admission from the White House Briefing Room that the Ukraine military aid was frozen by the President in order to pressure Ukraine into initiating investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 election.”

Blair is one of the Trump aides whose potential testimony has been at the center of negotiations between House Democrats and Senate Republicans over the breadth and rules of a potential impeachment trial.

“In the trial of President Clinton [in 1999], the House Managers were permitted to call witnesses, and it is clear that the Senate should hear testimony of witnesses in this trial as well,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last week. “I propose, pursuant to our rules, that the Chief Justice on behalf of the Senate issue subpoenas for testimony by the following witnesses with direct knowledge of Administration decisions regarding the delay in security assistance funds to the government of Ukraine and the requests for certain investigations to be announced by the government of Ukraine.”

Blair was listed among the witnesses along with Mulvaney, former national security adviser John Bolton and Office of Management and Budget associate director Michael Duffey.

The underlying scandal behind Trump’s impeachment is the apparent connection between the administration’s decision to withhold $391 million in military aid to Ukraine and its simultaneous request that the country announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and the hacking of Democratic Party computers in 2016. There is no evidence that Biden committed any crime in Ukraine, even though Trump has repeatedly promoted right-wing allegations that Biden had a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect his son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian natural gas company at the time. The claims that Ukraine was involved in 2016 election interference stem from a baseless conspiracy theory.

bad code!

one of President Donald Trump’s top cabinet officials has met with a long list of lobbyists, corporate executives and wealthy people with business interests before the government, according to calendars the Trump administration fought to keep secret.

The calendars for Mick Mulvaney, the former South Carolina congressman who now runs the White House Office of Management and Budget, offer a glimpse of who has access to the highest levels of the Trump administration.

Among those visiting Mulvaney: Trump friend and casino magnate Steve Wynn; a flurry of officials from the conservative Heritage Foundation; a string of health care and Wall Street CEOs; lobbyists for Koch Industries; a cryptocurrency evangelist; and a prominent member of the Catholic group Opus Dei.

The Trump administration fought in court to block public records requests by Property of the People, a Washington-based nonprofit transparency group, to release the calendars as well as visitor logs from several other White House offices.Lawyers for the group ultimately prevailed and provided the documents to ProPublica, which we are posting in a searchable format.

As OMB director, Mulvaney is the driving force behind the president’s budget and influences regulations and government procurement. It’s been widely reported that he will become the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also has the ear of the president, who is reportedly a fan of Mulvaney’s performances on the Sunday political shows. The calendars, which cover February to September, typically don’t include details on what was discussed at the meetings. In some cases, the timing of contact with Mulvaney line up with OMB business.

“The OMB director is a member of the cabinet and also a senior adviser to the president — because of that, the director often spends a ton of time in the West Wing,” said Kenneth Baer, who was senior adviser and associate director at the agency for several years of the Obama administration.

The quickest way to get access to Mulvaney appears to be to hire his former congressional chief of staff, Al Simpson, who joined the lobbying firm Mercury in February.

Simpson had seven meetings and a phone call with Mulvaney in a four-month period, between April and August. He appears on Mulvaney’s calendars more frequently than anyone who is not a current government official. Often, Simpson brought lobbying clients with him, including representatives from building materials giant Cemex; pharma firm AmerisourceBergen; and BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina. Those three firms paid Mercury $360,000 in the first nine months of the year, disclosure filings show.

A Mercury spokesman said: “The firm fully complies with all registration and disclosure requirements when representing clients.” The OMB press office did not respond to requests for comment.

In July, Simpson and Koch Industries lobbyists Brian Henneberry and Raymond Paul met with Mulvaney.

In other cases, billionaires themselves came in to meet with Mulvaney. They include Charles Schwab, medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong and Wynn, the casino magnate whose relationship with Trump goes back decades. Wynn met with Mulvaney in April. Wynn’s firm has lobbied on tax issues on Capitol Hill. Wynn himself, who has large holdings in Macau, has reportedly been involved in pressing the Trump administration on China issues. Wynn was also named finance chairman of the Republican National Committee in January. Wynn’s spokesman declined to comment.

In late February, Mulvaney had a call with Eugene Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court justice and a prominent lawyer at Gibson Dunn. At the time, Scalia was representing business groups that wanted OMB to delay the implementation of a regulation known as the fiduciary rule. Scalia didn’t respond to a request for comment. Many of his meetings with health care executives came as Republicans in Congress tried to repeal Obamacare.

Mulvaney’s schedule is, to a large extent, a reflection of his politics. A former member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus, he recently told Politico, “I don’t think anyone in this administration is more of a right-wing conservative than I am.” (The same profile quoted Simpson, Mulvaney’s former chief of staff turned lobbyist, praising him.)

Mulvaney met with few, if any, consumer groups. That’s in contrast to President Barack Obama’s first OMB director, Peter Orszag, whose visitor logs show meetings with both a long string of corporate executives as well as philanthropic and consumer representatives.

Among the more surprising visitors to Mulvaney was Jeff Bell, a former Reagan aide who is marked on the calendar as being with the Catholic group Opus Dei. Bell told ProPublica that his March meeting with Mulvaney, a Catholic, covered “religious and political matters” but declined to comment further.

Another was Valery Vavilov, CEO of Bitfury, a tech company focused on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. When Mulvaney was still in Congress last year, he co-founded a “blockchain caucus” to promote the technology behind Bitcoin

At the May meeting, “Mulvaney expressed his desire to encourage government use of blockchain and he asked our group for suggestions of simple use cases that could be a first step for government adoption,” a Bitfury spokesman told ProPublica.

Do you have information about Mick Mulvaney or the Office of Management and Budget? Contact Justin at justin@propublica.org or via Signal at 774-826-6240.

https://www.salon.com/2017/12/04/koch-lobbyists-and-opus-dei-who-is-dropping-in-on-trump-budget-czar-mick-mulvaney_partner/

pro pub:

One of President Donald Trump’s top cabinet officials has met with a long list of lobbyists, corporate executives and wealthy people with business interests before the government, according to calendars the Trump administration fought to keep secret.

Among those visiting Mulvaney: Trump friend and casino magnate Steve Wynn; a flurry of officials from the conservative Heritage Foundation; a string of health care and Wall Street CEOs; lobbyists for Koch Industries; a cryptocurrency evangelist; and aprominent member of the Catholic group Opus Dei.

The Trump administration fought in court to block public records requests by Property of the People, a Washington-based nonprofit transparency group, to release the calendars as well as visitor logs from several other White House offices. Lawyers for the group ultimately prevailed and provided the documents to ProPublica, which we are posting in a searchable format.

00:00/00:00

:{-

-}:

The quickest way to get access to Mulvaney appears to be to hire his former congressional chief of staff, Al Simpson, who joined the lobbying firm Mercury in February.

A Mercury spokesman said: “The firm fully complies with all registration and disclosure requirements when representing clients.” The OMB press office did not respond to requests for comment.

In July, Simpson and Koch Industries lobbyists Brian Henneberry and Raymond Paul met with Mulvaney.

In other cases, billionaires themselves came in to meet with Mulvaney. They include Charles Schwab, medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong and Wynn, the casino magnate whose relationship with Trump goes back decades. Wynn met with Mulvaney in April. Wynn’s firm has lobbied on tax issues on Capitol Hill. Wynn himself, who has large holdings in Macau, has reportedly been involved in pressing the Trump administration on China issues. Wynn was also named finance chairman of the Republican National Committee in January. Wynn’s spokesman declined to comment.

In late February, Mulvaney had a call with Eugene Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court justice and a prominent lawyer at Gibson Dunn. At the time, Scalia was representing business groups that wanted OMB to delay the implementation of a regulation known as the fiduciary rule. Scalia didn’t respond to a request for comment. Many of his meetings with health care executives came as Republicans in Congress tried to repeal Obamacare.

Mulvaney’s schedule is, to a large extent, a reflection of his politics. A former member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus, he recently told Politico, “I don’t think anyone in this administration is more of a right-wing conservative than I am.” (The same profile quoted Simpson, Mulvaney’s former chief of staff turned lobbyist, praising him.)

Mulvaney met with few, if any, consumer groups. That’s in contrast to President Barack Obama’s first OMB director, Peter Orszag, whose visitor logs show meetings with both a long string of corporate executives as well as philanthropic and consumer representatives.

Another was Valery Vavilov, CEO of Bitfury, a tech company focused on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. When Mulvaney was still in Congress last year, he co-founded a “blockchain caucus” to promote the technology behind Bitcoin

Do you have information about Mick Mulvaney or the Office of Management and Budget? Contact Justin at justin@propublica.org or via Signal at 774-826-6240.

timing bizzaRE unles smash and grab window?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-trump-administration-just-declared-war-on-social-security/

no lnx

The Trump Administration just declared war on social security

Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul, Image via Screengrab CSPAN.

Written by Alex Lawson / Independent Media Institute December 18, 2019

American workers contribute to Social Security with every paycheck. When they do, they are earning comprehensive insurance protections. Social Security insures against the loss of wages due to old age, disability, or (for the surviving family of a worker) death. While Social Security is best known as a retirement program, disability and survivor’s benefits are equally essential.

An attack on any part of Social Security is an attack on the entire system and all current and future beneficiaries. The latest proposal from Donald Trump’s administration, which is designed to rip benefits away from hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities, amounts to a declaration of war on Social Security.

The Trump administration proposal would require millions of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries to re-prove their eligibility for benefits as often as every six months—far more frequently than is currently the case.There is no justification for this policy. The United States already has some of the strictest eligibility criteria for disability benefits in the world. More than half of all claims are denied.

We should be making it easier for workers to claim the Social Security benefits they’ve earned with every paycheck, not harder. And ripping benefits away from current beneficiaries, who rely on them to survive, is even worse.

We know what the effects of the Trump proposal would be, because Ronald Reagan implemented a very similar benefit cut back in the 1980s. Reagan’s policy ripped away the benefits of 200,000 Americans with disabilities. The New York Times reported that “people with obvious physical and mental disabilities” lost their benefits “without having been interviewed.”

Ultimately, Reagan was forced to reverse his attack on Social Security after massive public outcry, and bipartisan condemnation from Congress—but not before 21,176 people died, including several who died by suicide, “because their benefits were cut off.”

Donald Trump himself might not be a diligent student of history, but his advisers—men like Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s chief of staff and a longtime enemy of Social Security—know exactly what they are doing. They want to resurrect Reagan’s Social Security cut knowing full well that it killed people.

This could impact any of us, even those of us who are currently healthy. Imagine that you are hit by a car tomorrow, and suffer life-altering injuries that prevent you from working. You’re faced with crushing medical bills, and you’ve lost your income. In such situations, SSDI benefits are a crucial lifeline. Donald Trump wants to rip that lifeline away.

Trump and Mulvaney are targeting people with disabilities first, because they perceive them as politically vulnerable. But if they are allowed to get away with this attack, it will be only the beginning. They want to destroy every part of Social Security, including retirement benefits, and turn it over to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

We must stop Trump’s plan. The Social Security Administration is collecting comments on the proposal until the end of January. You can comment opposing the plan here. Everyone must also call their elected officials. Congressional condemnation played a huge role in forcing Ronald Reagan to reverse his version of the attack, and it can stop Trump in his tracks.

If we let the politicians in Washington, D.C., take away some people’s earned benefits, it means they can take away all of our earned benefits.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Alex Lawson is the executive director of Social Security Works, a non-profit advocacy group that supports expanding benefits to address America’s growing retirement security crisis. Lawson has appeared on numerous TV and radio outlets and is a frequent guest host of The Thom Hartmann Program, one of the top progressive radio shows in the country.

pow --> mo fo

kinda ironic that omb (or at least its evil spawn oira?) tool of rt becomes its undoingI

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/mick-mulvaney-makes-bogus-claim-to-avoid-testifying-while-witnesses-point-to-his-central-role-in-trumps-quid-pro-quo/

no lnx

Mick Mulvaney makes bogus claim to avoid testifying as witnesses point to his central role in Trump’s quid pro quo

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams November 8, 2019

Hours after Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney claimed “absolute immunity” from cooperating with the House impeachment probe into President Donald Trump, Democrats leading the inquiry released sworn testimony from two key witnesses who placed the chief of staff at the center of President Donald Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser, told House impeachment investigators last month about a July 10 meeting in which U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland “blurted out” Mulvaney’s role in arranging a White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Mulvaney personally ordered the hold on Ukraine aid. His refusal to come forward and tell Congress why he did that is utterly damning.”

—Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.)

“Well, we have an agreement with the chief of staff for a meeting if these investigations in the energy sector start,” Sondland said, according to Hill. Sondland was apparently referring to Burisma, a natural gas company that used to employ Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son.

Then-national security adviser John Bolton “immediately stiffened and ended the meeting” after Sondland’s remarks, Hill told House Committees.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who listened to Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky, corroborated Hill’s account of the White House meeting, which was attended by Ukrainian officials and Trump advisers.

“Sondland relatively quickly went into outlining how the—you know, these investigations need to—on the deliverable for these investigations in order to secure this meeting [between Trump and Zelensky],” Vindman said. “I heard him say that this had been coordinated with White House Chief of Staff Mr. Mick Mulvaney.”

Erin Banco, national security reporter for The Daily Beast, reported that Hill and Vindman’s testimonies “mark the most direct link between the scandal now imperiling the presidency and the president’s chief of staff.”

The depositions were made public just hours after Mulvaney refused to comply with a subpoena to testify as part of House Democrats’ impeachment probe.

The acting chief of staff reportedly informed House committees “one minute before” his deposition was scheduled to begin that he would not show up and asserted “absolute immunity.”

Legal analysts on Friday swiftly called into question the legal basis for Mulvaney’s “absolute immunity claim”:

Katie Phang

@KatiePhang

“Absolute immunity”?!

What LEGAL fresh hell is this??

*There is no law that says that absolute immunity is conferred to Presidential advisers to block them from appearing pursuant to a Congressional subpoena.* https://twitter.com/natashabertrand/status/1192834617251905538 …

Natasha Bertrand

@NatashaBertrand

Via an official working on the impeachment inquiry: "This morning, one minute before his scheduled deposition was to start, Mr. Mulvaney’s outside counsel informed us that his client had been directed by the White House not to comply ...and asserted 'absolute immunity'"

Asha Rangappa

@AshaRangappa_

Ooooooh we’ve moved from executive privilege to “absolute immunity.” Fantasy Law looks fun, maybe I’ll teach it next semester https://twitter.com/natashabertrand/status/1192834617251905538 …

Natasha Bertrand

@NatashaBertrand

Mulvaney, who previously ran the Office of Management and Budget, became a focus of House Democrats’ investigation after the Washington Post reported in September that he put a hold on $400 million of appropriated Ukraine aid on instructions from Trump. During a press briefing last month, Mulvaney admitted the aid was withheld to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations on behalf of Trump.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) tweeted Friday that it is “hard to imagine something more suspicious and damaging than the White House’s own chief of staff afraid to tell the truth under oath.”

“Mulvaney personally ordered the hold on Ukraine aid,” said Beyer. “His refusal to come forward and tell Congress why he did that is utterly damning.”

1119 defied subpoena?!

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/impeachment-probe-looking-into-mulvaney-involvement-with-ukraine-before-trump-phone-call-report/

according to a report at the Daily Beast, Democrats are asking questions about acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s curious decision to hold up a weapons shipment to Ukraine before Donald Trump’s phone call with President Zelensky.

The report notes that Mulvaney, in his other job as head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), held up the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine even after the Trump administration had approved the sale...

judged ruled impeach valid thus subpoena, omb refuse testify 10/28/19?

Trump barked at ‘weak’ Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney in a room full of aides ⁠— and insisted he’s ⁠’in charge of the Hatch Act’

The Wall Street Journal has published an exposé about the Trump 2020…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/state-department-official-tells-congress-that-mick-mulvaney-helped-organize-controversial-ukraine-meeting-report

no lnx

State Department official tells Congress that Mick Mulvaney helped organize controversial Ukraine meeting: report

Official White House Photo by Evan Walker

Written by Alex Henderson October 16, 2019

109

The Ukraine debacle has been a scandal not only for President Donald Trump, but also, for Trump allies such as his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And another Trump ally who is receiving some Ukraine-related scrutiny from House Democrats, according to a Washington Post report, is Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.

In the Post, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Greg Jaffe note that in late May, Mulvaney “put an unlikely trio in charge of managing the U.S./Ukraine account amid worrisome signs of a new priority, congressional officials said Tuesday: pressuring the fledgling government in Kiev to deliver material that would be politically valuable to President Trump.” That “trio,” according to the Post, consisted of two diplomats (Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker) as well as Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

The role that Mulvaney played in recruiting Sondland, Volker and Perry to take over relations with Ukraine was revealed on Tuesday when George Kent (Ukraine expert for the U.S. State Department) testified before Congress at a closed-door hearing held by three Democrat-lead committees: the House Intelligence Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Oversight Committee.

Giuliani, however, is insisting that Mulvaney didn’t play a significant role in U.S. dealings with Ukraine. The Post quotes the former New York City mayor as saying, “I don’t remember any substantive conversation with Mick. I don’t remember him approving, disapproving, getting involved, having an interest. Mulvaney was not a big player in this. I dealt with Volker and Sondland.”

Others, however, have indicated that Mulvaney’s role in the Ukraine fiasco was substantial. When Fiona Hill (formerly Trump’s top adviser on Russia-related matters) testified before Congress, she noted that former National Security Adviser John Bolton was troubled by the Trump Administration’s Ukraine-related activities — and according to Hill, Bolton asserted that he refused to be “part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”

The Ukraine scandal came about after a whistleblower in the U.S. intelligence community made a complaint about a July 25 phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to a rough transcript of that conversation, Trump tried to pressure Zelensky into digging up dirt on a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. The whistleblower’s complaint led to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, previously the Democratic Party’s most prominent impeachment skeptic, coming out in favor of an impeachment inquiry.

Trump supporters have denied that there was a “quid pro quo” during that July 25 conversation, but House Democrats have been asserting that there was: military aid to Ukraine in exchange for political dirt on the Bidens. And according to the Post’s report, Mulvaney put a hold on $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in the weeks before the July 25 conversation.

A former U.S. official, quoted anonymously, told the Post that Sondland “was talking to Mulvaney all the time” about Ukraine earlier this year. And Chris Wipple, author of “The Gatekeepers,” a book about previous White House chiefs of staff, told the Post, “Mulvaney has really abdicated the most important duty of any White House chief of staff, and that’s to tell the president hard truths. He really should have thrown his body in front of that phone call with Zelensky.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08102019/blm-move-western-states-federal-land-control-mining-sagebrush-rebel-interior

icn 1019mick m applauds 300 sci moved West--good way to get rid of

BLM Shuffles Staff

Shifting power to the states is also a longtime goal of some conservative groups. The Trump administration has moved in that direction with the Shared Stewardship forest program, for instance, and beefing up the presence of local government on the Bears Ears National Monument management council. Recent proposals in Congress would also put state and local government in charge of energy management and law enforcement on federal lands.

Martin Nie, director of the University of Montana's Bolle Center for People and Forests, said the BLM reorganization is the administration's latest nod to Sagebrush Rebels and states' rights conservatives.

"We have seen an unprecedented transfer of management authority from the federal government to the states," he said, counting the BLM reorganization as the latest example.

Could It Influence Western Voters?

Empowering states, reducing the role of the federal government, expanding public lands energy development—while those ideas resonate in western states, what might be even more important to conservatives is the role the BLM reorganization can play in shoring up the conservative vote in 2020.

Republicans stand to lose Senate seats in Colorado and Arizona if their voters don't turn out.In the U.S. House, the GOP sees winnable Democratic seats in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. Montana's sole House seat, held by a Republican now, is considered a tossup. Meanwhile, Nevada and Arizona are both considered swing states in 2020 presidential race.

With the reorganization shifting BLM headquarters and staff to their states, it could appear to conservative voters that the Trump administration is listening to their pleas to give states more influence over federal land.

bigger empire or just picking up slack?

...

A former outside advisor to the Commerce Department told Politico that Ross is “sort of seen as kind of irrelevant” and that “the morale is very low there because there’s not a lot of confidence in the secretary.” Ross, that source told Politico, is “not respected in the building.”

According to that source, “Because he tends to fall asleep in meetings, they try not to put him in a position where that could happen. So, they’re very careful and conscious about how they schedule certain meetings. There’s a small window where he’s able to focus and pay attention and not fall asleep.”

In March, Ross testified at a House Oversight Committee hearing on the U.S. Census, and according to a Politico source Lippman describes as “close to” the Commerce Department, “There’s a great deal of effort to shield him from testifying ever again.”

Nonstop “infighting,” a former Commerce Department official told Politico, has been terrible for the Department during the Trump era.

“It’s totally infighting among the politicals,” according to that source. “It’s just everybody fighting everybody.”

Some of that infighting, Politico’s sources say, involves Earl Comstock — who serves as policy director for the Commerce Department. And Lippman reports that the “disarray” within the Department is “drawing an intervention from” Acting White House Chief of Staff_{Mick Mulvaney,}_ who is “trying to figure out how to wrest control from Comstock.”

“Things come to a screeching halt because (Comstock) demands to be the final decision on everything, whether it’s an e-mail that goes out to (Capitol) Hill or a letter to respond to X, Y and Z,” a White House source familiar with the Commerce Department told Politico.

During the late 2016 lame duck session, then-President-Elect Trump announced that he would be nominating Ross (a veteran banker) for secretary of the Commerce Department. Ross was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate on February 27, 2017.

...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/tea-party-extremist-mick-mulvaney-is-using-the-trump-administration-to-build-an-empire-for-the-right-wing-report/

When Mick Mulvaney was representing South Carolina during his years in the U.S. House of Representatives, the far-right Republican had no interest in moderation: he was a member of the Tea Party and the House Freedom Caucus, and he was happy to talk to the John Birch Society.Mulvaney has since gone on to serve in the Trump administration, most recently as acting White House chief of staff —and an in-depth reportby Seung Min Kim, Lisa Rein, Josh Dawsey and Erica Werner for the Washington Post delves into the ways in which Mulvaney, now 51, has favored a take-no-prisoners approach when it comes to pushing President Donald Trump’s agenda and doing everything he can to erase former President Barack Obama’s achievements.[joy in am sez batman -joker obsesssion, ~)

For the report, the Post interviewed more than 30 people, including White House aides and former and current Trump Administration officials. And the Post journalists explain thatMulvaney has “made enemies on both sides of the aisle”: while “Democrats openly disdain” Mulvaney “as a saboteur,” some GOP Republican senators “freely signal they would rather deal with any other administration official than him."

Mulvaney, according to the report, “has helped install more than a dozen ideologically aligned advisers in the West Wing” —and members of Trump’s cabinet “are pressed weekly on what regulations they can strip from the books and have been told their performance will be judged on how many they remove.” One of the White House officials interviewed told the Post that Mulvaney has been “building an empire for the right wing.”

The Post reports that because Mulvaney doesn’t consider foreign policy his strong point, he has “installed” Rob Blair as a national security deputy — and Blair “regularly battles with” National Security Adviser John Bolton. According to the Post, Bolton and Mulvaney “are barely on speaking terms.”

Immigration and health care, the Post reports, are two of Mulvaney’s top issues,and Mulvaney isn’t shy about putting enormous pressure on members of Trump’scabinet where those issues are concerned. And while Reince Priebus and John Kelly (both of whom previously served as White House chief of staff in the Trump Administration) were, according to the Post, “more deferential to cabinet members,” Mulvaney has told them they are “being judged on how much they can deregulate, with the policy council monitoring them daily."

Mulvaney was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the 2010 red wave of 2010 (prior to that, he served in South Carolina’s state legislature). And he was reelected in 2012, 2014 and 2016. But despite being elected to four terms in the House, Mulvaney made his share of enemies in Congress — including fellow Republicans.

The Post reports that in 2019, “GOP aides routinely trash Mulvaney in private and say he has done little to improve his image from his House days, when he was a leading antagonist in forcing government shutdowns and other hardball tactics.” And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to the Post, “has told others on Capitol Hill that he would prefer to deal with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.”

The Post concludes its report by stressing that Mulvaney has a strong rapport with Trump, quoting Republican Jonathan Slemrod (formerly of the Office of Management and Budget) as saying that the acting White House chief of staff “thinks Trump is a political genius and doesn’t second-guess a lot of his decisions.” And Mulvaney is quoted as saying he plans to remain in Trump’s administration “as long as I feel like he values my opinion and I like working for him — and both those things are happening right now.”

ref

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/his-own-fiefdom-mulvaney-builds-an-empire-for-the-right-wing-as-trumps-chief-of-staff/2019/07/14/85c5ebdc-942b-11e9-b570-6416efdc0803_story.html

Mick Mulvaney’s battles with Alexander Acosta began almost immediately.

Weeks after he was named acting White House chief of staff, Mulvaney summoned the labor secretary for a tense January encounter that became known inside the West Wing as “the woodshed meeting.”

Mulvaney told Acosta in blunt terms that the White House believed he was dragging his feet on regulation rollbacks desired by business interests and that he was on thin ice as a result, according to advisers and a person close to the White House. Soon after, Acosta proposed a spate of business-friendly rules on overtime pay and other policies.

But it wasn’t enough to save Acosta from Mulvaney’s ire — and helps explain why the former federal prosecutor had such tepid administration support last week as he resigned over his handling of a high-profile sex-crimes case more than a decade ago.

[vid acosta quit?]

The episode illustrates the growing influence wielded by Mulvaney, a former tea party lawmaker who has built what one senior administration official called “his own fiefdom” centered on pushing conservative policies — while mostly steering clear of the Trump-related pitfalls that tripped up his predecessors by employing a “Let Trump be Trump” ethos.

This account of Mulvaney’s rising power is based on interviews with 32 White House aides, current and former administration officials, lawmakers and legislative staffers, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. Mulvaney and the White House declined to make him available for an interview.

Mulvaney — who is technically on leave from his first administration job as budget director — spends considerably less time with Trump than his two previous chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and John F. Kelly. And the president has sometimes kept him out of the loop when making contentious foreign policy decisions, advisers say. At a recent donor retreat in Chicago, Mulvaney told attendees that he does not seek to control the president’s tweeting, time or family, one attendee said. Priebus and Kelly had clashed with the president over his Twitter statements and the influence of his eldest daughter and her husband, who are senior advisers.

Instead, Mulvaney has focused much of his energy on creating a new White House power center revolving around the long-dormant Domestic Policy Council and encompassing broad swaths of the administration. One White House official described Mulvaney as “building an empire for the right wing."

He has helped install more than a dozen ideologically aligned advisers in the West Wing since his December hiring. Cabinet members are pressed weekly on what regulations they can strip from the books and have been told their performance will be judged on how many they remove. Policy and spending decisions are now made by the White House and dictated to Cabinet agencies, instead of vice versa. When Mulvaney cannot be in the Oval Office for a policy meeting, one of his allies is usually there.

“You have a chief of staff with a professional commitment to ensuring that a real policy agenda gets enacted,” said Charmaine Yoest, who served in senior roles in the Trump White House and at Health and Human Services before moving to the Heritage Foundation. “You’ve got to dig in, chart a path forward and stay committed to it, and we welcome his serious approach to policymaking.”

But Mulvaney also faces significant obstacles on Capitol Hill, where he made enemies on both sides of the aisle during his three terms as a bomb-throwing House conservative. Democrats openly disdain him as a saboteur, while many key Republicans distrust his willingness to compromise[?], particularly on fiscal policy. Some GOP senators freely signal they would rather deal with any other administration official than him.

Mulvaney spends more time in his office than his predecessors, feeling no need to sit in on all of Trump’s meetings. He regularly huddles with Joe Grogan, a hard-liner who now leads the Domestic Policy Council, and Russell T. Vought, a conservative ally who runs the Office of Management and Budget in Mulvaney’s absence.

Advisers say a whiteboard in Mulvaney’s office has two items with stars beside them: immigration and health care. Immigration, however, is largely left to top White House adviser Stephen Miller and, to a lesser extent, presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, with dim prospects for significant legislation on Capitol Hill. Passing any kind of health-care bill before the 2020 election is also unlikely, aides say, while budget cuts sought by Vought have died quickly in Congress.

[pixFrom left, Eric Trump, White House adviser Jared Kushner, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Vice President Pence talk before President Trump presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tiger Woods in the Rose Garden at the White House on May 6. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Mulvaney’s biggest successes so far have come in deregulation efforts, where he prods agencies to move faster in case Trump loses or Democrats win the Senate in 2020, advisers say.

Aside from the domestic policy shop, Mulvaney has also tapped allies to fill roles in the White House’s legislative affairs operation, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and his old haunts at the OMB. He regularly suggests ideas to all of them.

"What I am seeing is that Mulvaney cares about the domestic agencies much more than the prior chiefs of staff did,” said Tammy McCutchen, a former Labor Department official in the George W. Bush administration who is now a partner at the Littler Mendelson law firm. “They’re holding the agencies accountable to move forward on regulations.”

In the past two months, he has forced out the chiefs of staff at Health and Human Services, White House aides said, and the Labor Department amid policy disputes with them and their respective secretaries.

Caitlin Oakley, an HHS spokeswoman, disputed the White House account. She said Peter Urbanowicz "left on his own accord and any statements to the contrary are 100 percent false." Late Sunday, Urbanowicz also said that he was not forced out, providing evidence from February and March of his intent to leave in June.

Mulvaney and Grogan have repeatedly clashed with HHS Secretary Alex Azar, overruling him, for example, on ending the funding of medical research by government scientists using fetal tissue.

Emma Doyle, Mulvaney’s deputy, has sought to control all presidential events and the president’s schedule — asking officials to submit formal proposals for why they should be in the room and controlling who is usually in the room. She also leads a weekly meeting on presidential events. Doyle was recently in charge of a review of the president’s immigration agencies and led a months-long hunt earlier this year for who was leaking the president’s internal schedules.

“Everything is controlled. The only people not under his thumb are Kudlow and Bolton,” said one senior administration official, referring to economic adviser Larry Kudlow and national security adviser John Bolton.

Where Priebus and Kelly were more deferential to Cabinet members, Mulvaney has told them they are being judged on how much they can deregulate, with the policy council monitoring them daily. He is pushing for faster rollbacks of rules enacted by former president Barack Obama before Trump’s first term ends, such as restricting what falls under the Clean Water Act and halting implementation of higher fuel-economy standards, according to administration officials.

The president has blessed Mulvaney’s operation, White House aides said, and Trump considers his chief of staff an emissary to movement conservatives who have been vital to his presidency. But some Trump advisers say the president has no idea what Mulvaney and his aides do all day.

[pixWhite House senior adviser Ivanka Trump and Mulvaney walk from the Marine One helicopter as they depart Washington with the president for the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 26. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Mulvaney and Vought, among others, have sought to convince Trump to care more about cutting spending and the deficit. But Trump has rebuffed many of their proposed cuts as deficits soar.

Trump recently told West Wing aides that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told him no politician had ever lost office for spending more money. Two people with direct knowledge confirmed that McConnell delivered that message in a June phone call about budget sequestration.

Although pleasing to businesses, Mulvaney’s efforts are also heartening to social conservatives, who say they are finding a more open reception than before.

For instance, a new rule released in May gives health-care providers, insurers and employers greater latitude to refuse coverage for medical services they say violate their religious or moral beliefs. That policy is facing legal challenges. The same month, the White House proposed a rollback of Obama-era rules that banned discrimination against transgender medical patients. Another rule, also being challenged in the courts, bans taxpayer-funded clinics from making abortion referrals.

“We’re just taking the president’s challenge seriously to look everywhere and come up with options for deregulation that spurs economic growth,” Vought said in an interview. “You have an administration that’s in sync and everyone is talking to each other.”

Mulvaney — who has acknowledged to other advisers he knows little about foreign policy — has installed a deputy for national security, Rob Blair, who regularly battles with Bolton and his allies. Mulvaney and Bolton are barely on speaking terms, and Blair has regularly challenged Bolton’s subordinates, according to people familiar with the relationship.

[pixTrump, left, then-economic adviser Gary Cohn, and Mulvaney sit for a radio interview in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in October 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Mulvaney has also been a key backer internally of Halil Suleyman Ozerden, whom Trump nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit last month despite misgivings from conservatives, according to people familiar with the matter. Ozerden and Mulvaney have known each other for years and Mulvaney was a groomsman in Ozerden’s wedding. Mulvaney vouched for him in a private conversation with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who chairs the committee that will take up Ozerden’s nomination.

The former House Freedom Caucus member’s sway in Congress is clearly limited, however. GOP aides routinely trash Mulvaney in private and say he has done little to improve his image from his House days, when he was a leading antagonist in forcing government shutdowns and other hardball tactics. McConnell has told others on Capitol Hill that he would prefer to deal with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

[Mulvaney, left, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, center, and Russell T. Vought leave the Capitol after a budget meeting with congressional leaders on May 21. (Erik S. Lesser/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

In a recent interview, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) paused for 10 seconds when asked whether Mulvaney was a productive force, particularly during a meeting with key principals in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in June.

Shelby finally responded that Mulvaney was “engaged” before pointing out that Mnuchin was the lead negotiator on behalf of the administration in the fiscal talks.

The bad blood between Mulvaney and Democrats is even more obvious.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) recalled being pleasantly surprised when the White House contacted a half-dozen deal-minded Democratic senators in April, wanting to discuss the influx of migrant children at the border.

But he said there was no follow-up from the White House. Later, Tester saw Mulvaney on television complaining that the administration had met with Democrats on the border problems but that they weren’t working to address them.

“I think it was about Mulvaney being able to get on national TV and say, ‘We met with the Democrats,’ ” Tester said. “It was apparent to me that that was the political agenda behind it. It wasn’t about getting anything done. It was about laying blame.”

Mulvaney appears fully aware of his shortcomings with lawmakers, joking to others in the White House about his unpopularity on Capitol Hill. “I know they’d rather deal with Mnuchin,” Mulvaney has said, according to two White House officials.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who served in the House with Mulvaney, praised his performance but noted that senators are also able to talk to the president directly about any concerns.

[pixThen budget director, Mulvaney explains the administration’s 2018 budget to the House Budget Committee in May 2017. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

“He’s not there to be a clerk. He’s there to lead,” Cramer said. “But I think it’s also clear that when the president says this is the position, that Mick’s more than capable of carrying out the president’s position. And I suspect in some cases they’re far apart — but in most cases, they’re pretty well in line.”

Mulvaney’s relationship with Trump has had its rocky moments. During a recent ABC News interview, the president berated Mulvaney on camera for coughing.

But the two men are unlikely to part ways, advisers say, partially because Mulvaney knows when to leave Trump alone — and is a good golfer.

“He takes the phrase chief of staff in the literal way. He’s the chief of the staff. He’s not chief of the president,” said Jonathan Slemrod, who led congressional outreach for Mulvaney at OMB until November. “He thinks Trump is a political genius and doesn’t second-guess a lot of his decisions.”

For his part, Mulvaney has joked about being an acting chief of staff, arguing there is no practical difference.

“You could make me the permanent chief of staff tomorrow, and he could fire me on Thursday,” Mulvaney said of Trump at a June 11 fiscal summit sponsored by the Peterson Foundation. “Or you could leave me as the acting chief of staff, and I could stay to the second term. It doesn’t make any difference.”

He added, “I’ll stay as long as I feel like he values my opinion and I like working for him, and both those things are happening right now.”

Robert Costa contributed to this report.

WHY MICK AT CPP SIGNING?

https://www.vox.com/2019/6/19/18684054/climate-change-clean-power-plan-repeal-affordable-emissions

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday killed President Obama’s signature climate change policy, theClean Power Plan(CPP).It’s one of the few definitive wins in the Trump administration’s full-court press to undo and weaken environmental regulations.

Speaking before an audience that included coal miners wearing reflective shirts and hard hats, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler criticized the Obama policy, which required states to meet targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and aimed to reduce US power sector emissions 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

“The CPP would have asked low- and middle-income Americans to bear the costs of the previous administration’s climate plan,” Wheeler said. “One analysis predicted double-digit electricity price increases in 40 states under the CPP.”

The EPA is still required to regulate greenhouse gases, but the CPP’s new replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, is drastically weaker. The ACE rule would lower power sector emissions by 11 million tons by 2030, or between 0.7 percent and 1.5 percent. The EPA noted that long-term industry trends are expected to still push emissions down 35 percent, but that’s largely independent of the ACE rule.

Speaking at the announcement, White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that US emissions are “flat or down.” That is wrong. In fact, US greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise after years of decline.

So the new ACE rule is likely to do little to slow the US power sector’s impact on the global climate. According to some researchers, the new policy itself could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions, even compared to business as usual. And according to the EPA’s own assessments last year, the proposal will lead to thousands more deaths from air pollution.

However, environmental groups are gearing up to file legal challenges to the ACE rule. And despite its intentions, the new regulation would do little to slow the decline of the US coal industry.

The EPA is required to regulate greenhouse gases, but the law doesn’t say it has to be enthusiastic about it

As much as the Trump administration doesn’t want to do it, the EPA must regulate greenhouse gases. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in *Massachusetts v. EPA* that the agency has to limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act if they’re a threat to public health. The EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding for carbon dioxide determined just that.

So the Trump administration couldn’t just repeal the CPP; it needed a plausible replacement to fight climate change. The ACE rule is an attempt at that.

“I believe this is the first rule in EPA’s history that acknowledges the existential threat of climate change but by the agency’s own admission does absolutely nothing to stop it,” said former ObamaEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a statement.

The critical detail here is how the ACE rule intends to lower emissions compared to the CPP. The EPA is required to lay out a standard known as “best system of emission reduction.” Under the Obama administration, this included pricing carbon dioxide, switching to cleaner power generation fuels, or capturing carbon dioxide emissions.

The new ACE rule leans on one method: efficiency. The technical term is “heat rate improvement,” and it means is that fossil fuel-burning power plants would be pushed to draw more energy from the same amount of fuel. This would lower the carbon intensity of the energy generated.

However, generating more energy from the same amount of fuel makes the fuel more cost-effective. That in turn could lead to a rebound effect where utilities end up burning more fuels like coal and natural gas. According to a study published in April in Environmental Research Letters, the ACE rule would lead to 28 percent of the power plants modeled in the study to emit more carbon dioxide by 2030 compared to a scenario with no policy at all.

This rebound effect can also lead to an increase of other air pollutants like particulates, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides. In the EPA’s own regulatory impact assessment for the ACE rule published last year, the agency noted that these extra pollutants could cause between 460 and 1,400 additional deaths per year by 2030, in addition to exacerbating other ailments like asthma.

The ACE rule is part of a concerted, and largely futile, strategy across the Trump administration to boost coal

President Trump has made no secret of his love of fossil fuels in general and coal in particular. His Administration has gone to extreme lengths to boost the sector, from opening up unprecedented amounts of public land to mining to trying to use emergency powers to bail out money-losing coal plants.

The EPA is also working to relax Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that limit hazardous pollution from existing coal-fired power plants. For new coal-fired generators, the EPA is working to relax New Source Performance Standards that govern how much carbon dioxide new power plants are allowed to emit.

The EPA is justifying these changes by arguing that the costs of implementing new environmental controls like scrubbers for flue gases is too high. The agency is also changing how it calculates the benefits of limiting emissions, proposing a shift to a model that yields far fewer saved lives and health benefits.

Scientists on EPA advisory boards who received research grants from the agency have also been forced out of their positions. EPA officials said this was a move to prevent conflicts of interest, but the agency has allowed scientists from industries regulated by the EPA as well as researchers from states that have sued the EPA to continue advising it.

Trump’s EPA has also taken steps to restrict the scientific research it uses to form regulations, arguing that all research that informs rulemaking should be reproducible and make underlying data public. Health advocates say that this would exclude important research on one-off events like chemical leaks, and patient privacy concerns prevent some researchers from releasing their underlying work.

The net result of these changes is a suite of policies that make it easier to keep existing coal power plants online and clear the path for any new plants.

But it’s not regulations that are driving out the coal industry in the United States; it’s competition, especially from natural gas.

[tweet]

So it’s unlikely that these new rules would move the needle for the coal industry, and morecoal-fired power plantsare slated to be closed this year.

The Affordable Clean Energy rule obviates one legal headache for the EPA, but is creating another one

Trump’s EPA has argued that the Obama plan exceeded the agency’s authority and that the new proposal fits within the confines of the law. When the CPP was announced, 27 states sued to block it. Then, in an unusual move, the Supreme Court in 2016 ruled 5-4 to stay the Clean Power Plan to allow state lawsuits to proceed, preventing it from ever going into effect.

With the Affordable Clean Energy rule finalized, those lawsuits are now moot.

The latest repeal is at the intersection of two Trump Administration priorities outlined in executive orders: to roll back regulations and to promote US energy development, particularly fossil fuels. And unlike other environmental rollbacks at the EPA that have been delayed, bogged down in bureaucratic muck, or stalled by lawsuits, the ACE rule, now that it has been finalized, might stick.

But New York Attorney General Letitia James has already announced her intent to sue the Trump administration over the ACE rule and expects other states to join the litigation. Other state attorneys general have also come out to oppose the Trump administration’s new power plant rule. That means another wave of court cases could stall the EPA’s new rule.

A huge red flag’: Mick Mulvaney ramps up his effort to destroy the CFPB from within — fires the entire advisory board

Alex Henderson

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, in his role as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has fired all 25 members of the watchdog group’s…

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, in his role as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has fired all 25 members of the watchdog group’s advisory board. They will be replaced with new members in the fall, the Washington Post is reporting — and Mulvaney’s critics are arguing that he is determined to undermine the CFPB as much as possible.

Mulvaney’s decision comes after some board members publicly criticized his leadership of the agency. Last week, all 25 board members were notified that they had been fired and were told they would be barred from applying for positions on the new board that Mulvaney plans to assemble.

The CFPB was founded in 2011 under President Barack Obama in response to the financial meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession. Designed as a financial watchdog group, the CFPB has kept an eye on everything from banks to credit bureaus to debt collectors.

But some Democrats have been highly critical of the direction the CFPB has taken under the Trump Administration, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Warren, who played a key role in the agency’s formation eight years ago, has accused Mulvaney of going out of his way to undermine the CFPB; the Democratic presidential candidate officially stated, “Mick Mulvaney has no intention of putting consumers above financial firms that cheat them. This is what happens when you put someone in charge of an agency they think shouldn’t exist.”

Mulvaney, to be sure, has taken a dim view of the CFPB and has even dismissed it as a “joke.” And Brown has asserted that Mulvaney “has proven once again he would rather cozy up with payday lenders and industry insiders than listen to consumer advocates who want to make sure hard-working Americans are not cheated by financial scams.”

Chi Chi Wu, a National Consumer Law Center attorney, denounced Mulvaney’s firing of the entire CFPB board as “a huge red flag in this administration’s ongoing erosion of critical consumer financial protections that help average families.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/trump-continues-his-attack-on-working-people-by-moving-to-redefine-poverty-and-slash-social-programs-for-millions

Julia Conley / Common Dreams May 8, 2019

The Trump administration on Monday moved to change the definition of “poverty” in the United States in a proposal which combines the president’s attempts to portray the U.S. economy as…

The Trump administration on Monday moved to change the definition of “poverty” in the United States in a proposal which combines the president’s attempts to portray the U.S. economy as strong with his repeated attacks on the working poor and their access to government services.

In a regulatory filing, President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote that it may change how inflation is calculated in order to reduce the number of Americans who are living below the federally-recognized poverty line and are therefore eligible for certain government support services and social programs.

As Melissa Boteach, who oversees income security programs at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), wrote on Twitter, the change “seems technical, but it’s actually a big attack on working people.”

Melissa Boteach

@mboteach

May 6, 2019

Replying to @mboteach

Remember last year when the Trump admin declared that “our War on Poverty is largely over and a success”? https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Expanding-Work-Requirements-in-Non-Cash-Welfare-Programs.pdf ….

Now he’s acting on this bogus notion, trying to slowly define people out of poverty by decree. 2/

Melissa Boteach

@mboteach

Seems technical, but it’s actually a big attack on working people. In short, Trump wants to weaken how our poverty definition keeps pace with cost of living. So each year, as costs go up, many working people w/low pay would gradually be stripped of WIC, Medicaid & other basics 3/

5:27 PM - May 6, 2019 · Washington, DC

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Under the administration’s proposal, which was first reported by Bloomberg News, the government would shift to a system known as “Chained CPI,” which assumes consumers will change what they buy as items grow more expensive through inflation, suggesting that they are not struggling to afford necessities.

The definitional change would result in a slower inflation rate, which is used to determine how many Americans are eligible for programs like Medicaid, SNAP benefits, and other federal assistance.

As of 2018, a family of four making $25,900 per year was considered to be living in poverty, based on the necessities they could afford with the current inflation rate.

Under the new system, OMB officials wrote in the proposal, “changes to the poverty thresholds, including how they are updated for inflation over time, may affect eligibility for programs that use the poverty guidelines.”

Boteach wrote that the proposal demonstrates “how out of touch Trump is with lives of working-class people,” noting that even the current poverty line does little to reflect the amount of money an American family actually needs to live comfortably in the wealthiest country on the planet.

In fact, wrote Boteach, the new standards will make the government’s understanding of poverty and inequality even less accurate.

Melissa Boteach

@mboteach

May 6, 2019

Replying to @mboteach

Melissa Boteach

@mboteach

This proposal shows how out of touch Trump is with lives of working-class ppl. “Americans on average report that it would take more than $55,000 in annual income to be considered out of poverty.” That’s more than TWICE our current threshold https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/reports/2014/01/07/81702/50-years-after-lbjs-war-on-poverty/ …

5:29 PM - May 6, 2019 · Washington, DC

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50 Years After LBJ’s War on Poverty - Center for American Progress

A major new study of public attitudes about poverty, work, and economic opportunity reveals that many Americans remain in economic hardship and desire new efforts to provide low-income families with...

americanprogress.org

15 people are talking about this

Melissa Boteach

@mboteach

May 6, 2019

Replying to @mboteach

Sadly, even w/low unemployment, poverty & hardship are still a mainstay in American life. And guess what? Unilaterally redefining it doesn’t do a damn thing to help someone secure a better job, put food on the table, or pay critical health care bills.6/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/reports/2018/03/07/447412/ensuring-basic-living-standards/ …

View image on Twitter

Melissa Boteach

@mboteach

This is a cynical attempt to squeeze working-class people. Their incomes will STILL be too low to make ends meet, but Trump’s decree would make it harder for them to qualify for help. 7/

5:40 PM - May 6, 2019 · Washington, DC

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Some critics on social media denounced the proposal as Trump’s latest “cruel” measure aimed at weakening the systems meant to support the poorest Americans and struggling working class families.

David Roberts

@drvox

Trump is going to change how poverty is measured, with the intent of rendering a bunch of people ineligible for social assistance. His base will support this arbitrary cruelty b/c even though it hurts them, it also hurts brown people. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-06/trump-poverty-line-inflation …

133

12:15 PM - May 6, 2019

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Trump May Redefine Poverty, Cutting Americans From Welfare Rolls

The Trump administration may alter the way it determines the national poverty threshold, putting Americans living on the margins at risk of losing access to welfare programs.

bloomberg.com

79 people are talking about this

Democratic Coalition

@TheDemCoalition

This appears to be the latest cruel and incompetent effort by the Trump administration to make it harder to access welfare programs.#ShitholePresidenthttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-06/trump-poverty-line-inflation …

243

12:53 PM - May 6, 2019

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Trump May Redefine Poverty, Cutting Americans From Welfare Rolls

The Trump administration may alter the way it determines the national poverty threshold, putting Americans living on the margins at risk of losing access to welfare programs.

bloomberg.com

358 people are talking about this

Paul Krugman

@paulkrugman

For the moment, Republicans have mostly stopped pretending to care about deficits. But they're still eager to cut aid to the poor 1/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-06/trump-poverty-line-inflation …

1,691

5:32 AM - May 7, 2019

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Trump May Redefine Poverty, Cutting Americans From Welfare Rolls

The Trump administration may alter the way it determines the national poverty threshold, putting Americans living on the margins at risk of losing access to welfare programs.

bloomberg.com

862 people are talking about this

The OMB’s proposal follows multiple attacks on social welfare programs by the Trump administration as it attempts to keep families from accessing SNAP benefits, commonly known as food stamps, and Medicaid. The administration and the Republican Party have pushed in 2018 to require people who use food stamps to work at least 20 hours per week, a move which would push at least one million Americans out of the program.

The federal budget proposal unveiled in March also included more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, threatening the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans.

The administration has spent much of the last two years insisting that the American economy is thriving—frequently pointing to the GDP, the stock market, and low unemployment rates as evidence.

But studies have shown that low unemployment numbers offer a misleading picture of how American families are actually coping in the economy, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not count “600,000 ‘discouraged workers’ who say they are no longer looking because they don’t think they can find a job,” according to Quartz.

Critics have pointed out that 40 percent of families are unable to save enough money to pay for a $400 emergency; 137 million American households struggle to pay healthcare costs; and nearly 80 percent of workers live paycheck-to-paycheck—regardless of the GDP or the stock market.

The OMB’s proposal, wrote Georgetown University and public policy researcher Joan Alker, is “a novel way to take healthcare, etc., away from people AND make it look like there are fewer poor people.”...

NEW

https://www.responsiblelending.org/media/mick-mulvaney-under-attack-payday-lender-ties

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mick Mulvaney, who was unlawfully named as Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has been excoriated by news outlets for his disturbing ties to the exploitative payday lending industry. His cozy relationship is especially concerning as the CFPB will be charged with implementing its recently issued consumer protections against payday loan debt traps.

Headlines and Links

International Business Times: Would Trump’s CFPB Pick Mulvaney Back Consumers Or Payday Lenders?

New York Post: Payday lenders have new hope with Trump's CFPB

Washington Post: Trump’s swampiest move yet

The Intercept: White House Memo Justifying CFPB Takeover Was Written By Payday Lender Attorney

Credit Union Times: Mulvaney Pushed Plan to Kill CFPB, Now He Runs the Agency

Key Article Excerpts

International Business Times: Would Trump’s CFPB Pick Mulvaney Back Consumers Or Payday Lenders?

“One of industries the CFPB has sought to protect consumers from is the payday loan industry, whose members issue short term loans to consumers at exorbitant interest rates. Mulvaney’s record with the industry, including his comments at a 2014 Congressional hearing, shows a concern for lenders often described as predatory.

“As a Congressman, Mulvaney accepted $55,500 in contributions from payday lenders during his four successful runs for Congress, including $26,600 during the 2016 election cycle, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics….

“In a 2014 hearing,…. [p]refacing a question to Cordray on ‘payday loans’ and ‘certain types of installment loans,’ Mulvaney’s comments suggest a deference to payday lenders.

“‘I share your understanding that small-dollar lending serves an important function for many borrowers, especially those who may not utilize traditional banking services, and hope the Bureau will work to ensure the continued viability and availability of these products,’ Mulvaney said.

“The comments came just two months before a CFPB report found four out of five payday loans are rolled over or renewed after two weeks, and that the the majority of payday loans are renewed so many times that borrowers pay more in fees than the loan was originally worth.

“The South Carolina congressional district he represented from 2011 to 2017 is located just a 30-minute drive from the national headquarters of Advance America, the ‘largest non-bank provider of cash advance services in the United States’ according to SEC filings.”

Washington Post: Trump’s swampiest move yet

“Already, Mulvaney says he’s freezing new hiring, new rules and payouts to consumers from a penalty fund.

“Even for this phony populist president, who instead of draining the swamp stocked his White House and Treasury Department with Goldman Sachs executives and sprinkled billionaires and lobbyists across the government, the move on the CFPB is brazen. That’s because Trump’s legal justification for taking control of the CFPB was written by a lawyer who until just a few months ago was defending a foreign payday lender against the agency’s attempts to punish it for lending abuses.

“As the Intercept’s David Dayen reported, Steven Engel, the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the memo justifying Trump’s takeover, was a lead counsel for Canadian payday lender NDG Financial, which the CFPB cited for misleading and overcharging U.S. customers. The Intercept reported that Engel was active in the case, which remains in court, until August — after he was nominated to serve in the administration.

“It’s difficult to imagine something swampier than a corporate lawyer joining the government and then orchestrating the disarming of a federal agency in litigation with his former client. NDG — and the lenders who had to give back some $12 billion to consumers because of shady practices caught by the CFPB — can celebrate.”

New York Post: Payday lenders have new hope with Trump's CFPB [Full Text]

The loan sharks smell blood.

A payday lender selling loans derided as “debt traps” by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is going public — and it’s banking on the Trump administration going easy on it.

Curo Group, a company that charges nearly 1 percent interest a day for some of its loans, is looking to raise $123 million in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange — valuing the company at more than $700 million.

The IPO filing comes just days after Richard Cordray resigned from the CFPB, an agency that was hostile to the industry and just last month issued a rule to curb abusive loans.

The company, which does business under the Speedy Cash and Rapid Cash nameplates in the US, is betting that the next head of the consumer watchdog won’t go so hard on it.

“Even though the CFPB Rule has been approved as a final rule, it is possible that the CFPB Rule will not become effective in its current form,” the company wrote in its regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Payday loans, which are outlawed in 15 states, including New York, as well as in Washington DC, typically charge sky-high rates for short-term cash advances.

Last month, the CFPB issued a study that derided payday loans as “debt traps” that caused four out of five people to borrow higher amounts just to pay back what they originally owed.

The CFPB also recommended limits on the amounts that money lenders can extend to their cash-strapped borrowers.

The company, in its 215 US and 190 Canadian locations, offers unsecured installment loans and charges an average of 13.2 percent interest per month, it said in the filing.

On secured loans, the rate drops to an average of 10.6 percent a month.

Open-end loans, which act like lines of credit, carry interest rates of up to 0.99 percent per day, it said.

A fourth type of loan, which the company calls single-pay — usually for a small amount of cash after the borrower hands over a post-dated check — carries fees of up to 25 percent.

Single-pay loans made up 28 percent of Curo Group’s business in the nine months that ended on Sept. 30.

Despite the high interest rates and fees, Curo Group apparently has no trouble attracting business: Revenues increased 14.2 percent in the nine months ended Sept. 30 compared with the previous year.

Net income slipped 23.4 percent, to $42.7 million, in the period.

Whoever the next CFPB director is, Curo believes that its prospects are good under the current Congress.

The “CFPB Rule remains subject to potential override by disapproval under the Congressional Review Act,” the company said, noting that Congress had voted down an arbitration rule that was put forth by the CFPB.

“Moreover, the current CFPB Director announced his resignation, effective as of Nov. 24, 2017. His successor could suspend, delay, modify or withdraw the CFPB Rule.”

The Intercept: White House Memo Justifying CFPB Takeover Was Written By Payday Lender Attorney

“The lawyer who wrote the Office of Legal Counsel memo supporting the Trump administration’s viewpoint that the president can appoint Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau represented a payday lender in front of the CFPB last year.

“Steven A. Engel wrote the memo for OLC, which has been criticized by academics for seeking a conclusion and working backward to justify it….

“Engel was confirmed as an assistant attorney general earlier this month by a voice vote in the Senate.

“But in July 2015, Engel was one of two lead counsels for NDG Financial Corp., a Canadian payday lender that CFPB cited for running a nine-year scheme to use its foreign status to offer U.S. customers high-cost loans that were at odds with state and federal law. ‘We are taking action against the NDG Enterprise for collecting money it had no right to take from consumers,’ said CFPB Director Richard Cordray at the time. Engel was active in the case up until August of this year.

“The revelation underscores the extent of industry infiltration of the structure designed by Congress — a single permanent director who can only take office upon appointment by the president and confirmation by the Senate — to keep the consumer watchdog independent of the industry it is set up to regulate and buttresses the original intent of the lawmakers who established the agency.

“CFPB alleged that NDG, which issues and collects payday loans online, made ‘false threats’ to consumers that non-payment would result in wage garnishment, arrest, or imprisonment. The web of companies in the enterprise, situated in Canada and Malta, did not have the legal right to debit accounts to collect payday loans in the U.S., but they hid behind their foreign status to claim that they were exempt from various limitations and statutes. The case is still active in federal court in New York.

“Engel represented the defendants in the case against CFPB as recently as this August, when U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon asked judges in Canada to compel testimony from Canadian banks. At the time, Engel was a partner at the law firm Dechert. He was nominated to become an assistant attorney general for OLC in February of this year.

“Having a former adversary to CFPB weigh in on who is the legal acting director of the agency raises questions over Engel’s independence and potential conflict of interest….

“The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment about Engel and whether he should have recused himself from matters involving the CFPB.”

Credit Union Times: Mulvaney Pushed Plan to Kill CFPB, Now He Runs the Agency

“And as a candidate for Congress, Mulvaney accepted campaign contributions from groups with business before the CFPB, including credit union trade groups and the association representing payday lenders….

“During his tenure in the House, Mulvaney:

Sponsored legislation to repeal Title X of Dodd-Frank. That title created the CFPB.

Pushed legislation that would have repealed the agency’s power to take action in cases of Unfair, Deceptive or Abusive Acts or Practices. Agency critics have said that power gives the agency too much power.

Sponsored a bill that would have required the agency to verify consumer complaints before they were made public.

Pushed a plan that would have prohibited the CFPB from issuing rules on payday lending for two years. In addition, states and tribes could have opted out of the rule.

“As a member of Congress, Mulvaney also accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from companies and associations with business before the CFPB.

“For instance, Mulvaney accepted $12,000 from Wells Fargo during the past three election cycles, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which compiles campaign contribution reports.

“The agency has fined Wells Fargo $100 million for its widespread practice of opening bank accounts without customers’ knowledge.

“During the past three elections, Mulvaney also received $25,000 from CUNA and $2,000 from NAFCU.

“Both groups have complained that the CFPB, in its rulemaking, has failed to distinguish between large banks that caused the financial crisis and credit unions that have not.

“And he received $10,000 from the Community Financial Services Association, which represents the payday lending industry.

“That association has left open the possibility that it may file suit against the agency over final rules, which they say will unfairly inhibit their ability to make short-term rules….

“[Senator] Warren has raised questions about OMB staff serving on an interim basis at the CFPB and about other potential conflicts of interest.

“For instance, in a letter to Mulvaney and White House Counsel Don McGahn, Warren pointed out that CFPB rules prohibit employees from owning any security in any entity supervised by the bureau.

“The rules also require employees to confirm divestiture in writing within 30 days of employment, she said.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-trumps-top-aide-unleashed-predatory-lenders-and-betrayed-the-working-class/

At the Washington Monthly, and here at Political Animal, we’ve written from time to time about the Trump administration’s efforts to defang the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but none of us has done as comprehensive a job of it as Nicholas Confessore. His new piece in the New York Times Magazine focuses on Mick Mulvaney’s time as the CFPB’s acting director.

I often hear liberals wonder aloud how so many low-to-moderate income Americans can support the Republican Party when it is clearly not in their financial interests to do so, and nowhere is that more clear than on the issues surrounding the CFPB. Confessore demonstrates this very ably by doing a deep-dive into the payday lending/short-terms loans industry.

In the following excerpt, he explains how the payday loan industry rose in influence and power during the Bush administration by making loans to people who (they hoped) would not be able to pay back the money. The CFPB was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, who was convinced of its necessity by her research into consumer debt.

[Elizabeth] Warren and other consumer advocates argued that payday lenders built their industry on a similar sleight of hand. They marketed themselves as lenders of last resort, offering emergency loans for a broken-down car or an unexpected medical bill. But according to Nick Bourke, a former financial-services consultant who now directs consumer-finance research at the Pew Charitable Trusts, what fed the industry’s growth were not emergency expenses but the increasingly unstable incomes of the working poor. As their hourly wages fluctuated at the whims of workplace-optimization software, payday-loan customers — typically white women earning around $30,000, according to Pew’s research — borrowed to pay their rent or electric bills. The average customer paid $55 in fees to borrow $375, due on their next payday. But most found that they couldn’t afford to repay the loan after two weeks. They took out another loan to cover the first, and usually another.

Consumer advocates called this cycle a “debt trap” and argued that payday lenders, much like credit-card companies, disguised the true costs of their products. Store clerks emphasized the small-seeming fees and pushed customers to roll their old loans into new ones, so that the fees snowballed, eventually exceeding the cost of the original loan. While most banks made money by finding customers who could repay their debts on time, payday lenders made money by finding customers who couldn’t. “If borrowers repaid loans in just two weeks and walked away as advertised, lenders would go out of business,” Bourke says.

What really distinguishes the short-term loan industry from regular banks is precisely the focus on finding customers who will default. They’ve also historically been unregulated by the federal government and free to charge grossly usurious rates. Several states decided to regulate the industry at the end of the last decade, and some like North Carolina banned payday loans outright.

Naturally, there are some consumers who have good experiences taking out emergency loans, and it can work for someone with poor credit who genuinely needs to borrow money for a very short period of time. These feel-good stories are what the industry relies on to rationalize their predatory business model. The overall effect of the industry is ruinous, however, as it sucks up billions of dollars from the people least able to part with their money.

The CFPB didn’t initially think that the payday loan industry would be a high priority for them. But that quickly changed once they opened their doors under their first director, Richard Cordray:

As the human and financial costs of the subprime-mortgage crash mounted, the new bureau was inundated with whistle-blower tips and consumer complaints. Cordray and his leadership team initially planned to focus on the biggest consumer-finance players, like mortgage lenders and credit-card companies; payday lenders were a relatively small industry compared with Wall Street. But it was growing quickly: The crisis had been good for business, pulling more middle-class families into the payday-loan market. And unlike banks, payday lenders were unregulated by the federal government. “It was affecting a lot of people at the margins who could least afford to run into trouble,” Cordray told me recently.

In 2012, the C.F.P.B. began conducting supervisory exams of payday lenders, a process that required them to open up their offices and books, and sometimes yielded evidence of predatory lending for the bureau’s enforcement team to take up. A company called Ace Cash Express, investigators found, harassed overdue borrowers by using phony legal threats. The investigation yielded a potent illustration of the debt trap: Ace Cash’s training manual, which instructed employees to pressure borrowers into paying off overdue loans by taking out new ones, illustrated its customer-service doctrine with a graphic resembling a recycling symbol, with one “short-term” loan fueling the next in an endless loop of debt.

At first, the CFPB went after the most egregious examples of exploitative behavior they could find, and they also put an emphasis on online lenders. In 2015, they began developing a new rule to apply to the industry that they hoped would end the practice of making deliberately bad loans. Lenders would be scrutinized, and they would be expected to examine a borrower’s ability to repay a loan before granting them one. Systemic abuse of the system could lead to hefty fine and even criminal charges. Before the new rule could be implemented, however, Donald Trump surprisingly won the 2016 election.

He then jammed Mick Mulvaney in as the interim replacement for Richard Cordray, and Mulvaney set about not only saving the payday lenders from oversight and regulation but cutting the teeth out of the entire bureau. He was so effective at this job that Trump was convinced to make him the White House chief of staff.

All is not lost, and if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2020 the bureau may be salvageable as an advocate for working people. I imagine a President Elizabeth Warren would be especially invested in that outcome. It seems to me that if people grasped that the Republican Party is on the side of predatory lenders and against protecting people from fine-print scams and debt traps, that a lot of them would be less inclined to take their side because of cultural issues.

The problem is getting them to understand this when there is not much effort going on to keep them focused on NFL players and scary immigrants and the War on Christmas.

ref

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/magazine/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-trump.html

Mick Mulvaney’s Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy From Within

The C.F.P.B. was created to protect Americans from predatory lenders after the financial crisis. President Trump’s new chief of staff took it apart on his way to White House.

By Nicholas Confessore

April 16, 2019

One rainy afternoon early in February 2018, a procession of consumer experts and activists made their way to the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington to meet Mick Mulvaney, then the bureau’s acting director. The building — an aging Brutalist layer cake, selected by the bureau’s founders for the aspirational symbolism of its proximity to the White House, one block away — was under renovation, and so each visitor in turn trudged around to a side entrance. Inside the building, Mulvaney had begun another kind of reconstruction, one that would shift the balance of power between the politically influential industries that lend money and the hundreds of millions of Americans who borrow it.

Three months earlier, President Trump installed Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, as the C.F.P.B.’s acting director. Elizabeth Warren, who helped create the agency in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, envisioned it as a kind of economic equalizer for American consumers, a counter to the country’s rising structural inequality. Republicans had come to view her creation as a “rogue agency” with “dictatorial powers unique in the American republic,” as the party’s 2016 platform put it. In Congress, Mulvaney had established himself as an outspoken enemy of the bureau, describing it, memorably, as a “joke” in “a sick, sad kind of way” and sponsoring legislation to abolish it.

Some of those invited to the meeting in February had picketed outside the bureau’s headquarters on Mulvaney’s first day at work. Their unease had only grown as Mulvaney ordered a hiring freeze, put new enforcement cases on hold and sent the Federal Reserve, which funds the C.F.P.B., a budget request for zero dollars, saying the bureau could make do with the money it had on hand. Within weeks, Mulvaney announced that he would reconsider one of the bureau’s major long-term initiatives: rules to restrict payday loans, products that are marketed to the working poor as an emergency lifeline but frequently leave them buried in debt. “Anybody who thinks that a Trump-administration C.F.P.B. would be the same as an Obama-administration C.F.P.B. is simply being naïve,” Mulvaney told reporters. “Elections have consequences at every agency.”

Mulvaney was also aware that appearances have consequences. For agency heads, it is important to appear open to all points of view about their regulatory decisions, especially if they end up having to defend them in court. In February, he agreed to meet with his critics in person. Thirty or so people gathered around a conference table as rain lashed the windows. Mulvaney, who is 51, has close-cropped hair and a bulldog countenance that befits his manner. A founder of the House’s hard-line Freedom Caucus, he can be sarcastic, even withering, in hearings and speeches. But Mulvaney struck a placating tone with his guests. He kept his opening remarks brief, according to six people who attended the meeting. Important things at the bureau would not change, he reassured them. “I’m not here to burn the place down,” he insisted. Mulvaney said he did not intend to discuss his plans for the payday-loan rule with them but encouraged everyone to share their views.

Many of Mulvaney’s guests came from advocacy groups, like Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending, that often did battle with Washington’s powerful financial-industry lobby. But the meeting also included a dozen religious leaders, among them officials from national evangelical and Baptist organizations, whose members tend to be among Trump’s most loyal supporters. These leaders viewed payday lending as not only unfair but also sinful, and they had fought against it across Trump country — in deep-red South Dakota, on the same day Trump won the presidency, voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure effectively banning payday loans. The ministers had planned carefully for their moment with Mulvaney, and for 20 minutes they took turns detailing the harm that payday lending had inflicted on their neighborhoods and congregations. Eventually they gave the floor to the Rev. Amiri B. Hooker, who led an African-American church near Mulvaney’s old congressional district.

“I told him I was from Kershaw County,” Hooker told me recently, recalling his exchange with Mulvaney. “He smiled and asked how were the good folks from Kershaw.” When Hooker pastored in Lake City, an hour away from Kershaw, a quarter of his congregation either had taken out payday loans themselves or knew someone who had. He told Mulvaney about an 84-year-old congregant in Lake City whom, during a week that she was so sick that she missed services, he saw hobbling toward him down the street. “She said, ‘I had to go pay my bill,’?” Hooker recalled. The woman had taken out a $250 loan almost three years earlier to cover her granddaughter’s heating bill. She was still paying it off, Hooker told Mulvaney, at a cost of $75 a month, rolling over the loan into a new one each time.

[How cities make money by fining the poor.]

Despite his earlier reticence, Mulvaney seemed eager to offer his own view of how the bureau ought to operate. It wasn’t up to the federal government to stop people from taking the kind of credit that suited them, he suggested: “There’s no reason people should be taking these loans — but they do.” He pointed out that there wasn’t anyone in the room from North Carolina, where payday lending was illegal. They should plead their case to state officials. “You have a place to go to address payday loans, and it’s not me,” he said, according to multiple attendees.As the C.F.P.B.’s acting director, he wouldn’t stop enforcing the law as written. He only wanted a more efficient bureau, he explained, one steeped in evidence-based decision-making, one that educated consumers to make good decisions on their own. Mulvaney provided few details about how it would all look, but he promised the pastors he would follow up to let them know which way he decided to go on payday-loan regulation. “I’ve never heard from him,” Hooker says.

In the months that followed, Mulvaney’s vision for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would become clearer. This account of Mulvaney’s tenure is based on interviews with more than 60 current or former bureau employees, current and former Mulvaney aides, consumer advocates and financial-industry executives and lobbyists, as well as hundreds of pages of internal bureau documents obtained by The New York Times and others. When Mulvaney took over, the fledgling C.F.P.B. was perhaps Washington’s most feared financial regulator: It announced dozens of cases annually against abusive debt collectors, sloppy credit agencies and predatory lenders, and it was poised to force sweeping changes on the $30 billion payday-loan industry, one of the few corners of the financial world that operates free of federal regulation. What he left behind is an agency whose very mission is now a matter of bitter dispute. “The bureau was constructed really deliberately to protect ordinary people,” says Lisa Donner, the head of Americans for Financial Reform. “He’s taken it apart — dismantled it, piece by piece, brick by brick.”

Mulvaney’s careful campaign of deconstruction offers a case study in the Trump administration’s approach to transforming Washington, one in which strategic neglect and bureaucratic self-sabotage create versions of agencies that seem to run contrary to their basic premises. According to one person who speaks with Mulvaney often, his smooth subdual of the C.F.P.B. was part of his pitch to Trump for his promotion to White House chief of staff — long one of the most powerful jobs in Washington. Mulvaney’s slow-rolling attack on the bureau’s enforcement and regulatory powers wasn’t just one of the Trump era’s most emblematic assaults on the so-called administrative state. It was also, in part, an audition.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau emerged from a liberal concern that the American political economy was increasingly defined by inequality and consumer debt. As a young academic in the 1980s, Warren began studying how and why some Americans ended up taking on more debt than they could handle. The act of borrowing money, she learned, was growing increasingly risky and complex. As the consumer-credit industry grew, credit-card companies and mortgage lenders began to design their products to appear cheaper than they actually were. Unlike most things people buy, financial products became defined by their ever-lengthening terms and conditions: mandatory arbitration, reverse amortization, interest-rate calculations that can change at a whim, cross-default clauses and two-cycle billing, mysterious credit scores that emanate from Equifax and Experian as if from the temples of an obscurantist cult. “The real money was in the fine print,” Warren told me recently.

Warren, who is now a senator from Massachusetts and a Democratic candidate for president, spoke to me by phone as she was making her way to New Hampshire for a campaign swing. On the trail and off, Warren depicts the rise of the consumer financial industry as part of an elemental structural shift in American life. Wealthy people and big corporations were not just eating up a growing share of the pie; they had rigged the marketplace to help them do it. All that fine print didn’t just shift billions upon billions of dollars into the hands of lenders, Warren argued. It shifted power. Lenders could more safely harvest a few dollars in fees from the checking account of each customer, even when doing so broke the law, when mandatory arbitration clauses in the fine print prohibit customers from joining together in a class action to get their money back. Brokers could more easily push a family to a higher-cost mortgage, even when they qualified for a cheaper one, if the family believed they were getting the best possible deal. The increase in debt-financed consumption helped paper over the stagnating wages of the middle class and the growing gap between the rich and everyone else. But it was also driving an epidemic of social misery: bankruptcy and lost homes, anxiety and shame.

In her research, Warren found that people got in over their heads not because they were greedy or lacked self-discipline, but because they were being outmatched by a sophisticated and often predatory industry of lenders. Warren recalled being struck by “the number of people who said, in our interviews, ‘I never understood my payment would go up on that’ or ‘I didn’t understand I owed more on my house than I paid for it,’?” she told me. “Even after they had seen a lawyer and declared bankruptcy, they still didn’t understand what had happened.” In a 2007 article titled “Unsafe at Any Rate,” Warren proposed the creation of a new regulatory agency to oversee consumer-credit products. When she lobbied lawmakers on Capitol Hill after the financial crisis, Warren would take them a selection of credit-card agreements. “I’d lay three of them down on the table, and I’d say, ‘Tell me which one is the cheapest credit card.’?” None could.

Warren and other consumer advocates argued that payday lenders built their industry on a similar sleight of hand. They marketed themselves as lenders of last resort, offering emergency loans for a broken-down car or an unexpected medical bill. But according to Nick Bourke, a former financial-services consultant who now directs consumer-finance research at the Pew Charitable Trusts, what fed the industry’s growth were not emergency expenses but the increasingly unstable incomes of the working poor. As their hourly wages fluctuated at the whims of workplace-optimization software, payday-loan customers — typically white women earning around $30,000, according to Pew’s research — borrowed to pay their rent or electric bills. The average customer paid $55 in fees to borrow $375, due on their next payday. But most found that they couldn’t afford to repay the loan after two weeks. They took out another loan to cover the first, and usually another.

Consumer advocates called this cycle a “debt trap” and argued that payday lenders, much like credit-card companies, disguised the true costs of their products. Store clerks emphasized the small-seeming fees and pushed customers to roll their old loans into new ones, so that the fees snowballed, eventually exceeding the cost of the original loan. While most banks made money by finding customers who could repay their debts on time, payday lenders made money by finding customers who couldn’t. “If borrowers repaid loans in just two weeks and walked away as advertised, lenders would go out of business,” Bourke says.

Improbably, the payday-loan industry earned a fortune from the working poor. The short loan terms and frequent rollovers pumped out profits faster than conventional lending, requiring less capital and yielding bigger profits. Beginning in the 1990s, federal and state deregulation set off a payday-loan gold rush. In states like Utah, North Carolina and Missouri, the number of storefront lenders tripled or even quintupled practically overnight. Lenders clustered around big military bases throughout the South, where they could target service members, most of them young, low-paid and living the kind of peripatetic lives that made them ideal payday-loan customers. “Anybody with $50,000 can get into payday lending in some states,” one former payday-loan executive told me. “The model is designed to print money.”

Some of the largest payday lenders built national franchises and took their companies public during the frothy 2000s, fueling further expansion. Silicon Valley venture capitalists stepped in, building lead-generation databases and online platforms to compete against traditional storefront lenders. So did Wall Street. In recent years, leading private-equity firms, including Golden Gate Capital and the Fortress Investment Group, have acquired or bought stakes in almost two dozen short-term lenders. Payday lenders, which once operated on the fringes of the financial world, are now in unlikely alignment with the titans of high finance: Each has benefited enormously from Trump’s deregulatory policies, which Trump has cast as populist and his likely 2020 opponents have assailed as plutocratic.

“When you think about structures that perpetuate racial and economic inequality — this is it,” says Diane Standaert, the director of state policy at the Center for Responsible Lending, which advocates tighter regulation on lenders. “These are entities that suck up billions of dollars a year from people making $25,000 a year. And it’s going into the pockets of the wealthiest people in the world.”

Mulvaney began his political career in the heart of payday-loan country, just as the industry’s headlong expansion began running into serious resistance. In South Carolina, short-term lending is not only a significant industry but also a political force. Payday lenders dole out more campaign money than traditional banks do, most of it to committees controlled by the Legislature’s powerful Republican leaders. The country’s biggest payday-loan chain, Advance America, is based in Spartanburg, where a local business school is named for a company founder, George Dean Johnson Jr., and the company’s chief spokesman, Jamie Fulmer, serves part time as a city councilman.

Mulvaney, who worked as a lawyer, restaurateur and real estate developer before entering politics, ran for a seat in the State House in 2006, when South Carolina had around a thousand payday lenders, one of the highest densities in the country. Two years later, Mulvaney won election to the State Senate, in a district that stretched along South Carolina’s border with North Carolina, which had outlawed payday lenders in 2001. Mulvaney, a junior lawmaker, received only a sprinkle of checks from the payday-loan industry during his time in the Legislature. But payday lenders did a brisk business in and around Mulvaney’s district, throwing up billboards along Interstate 77 and advertising in the Charlotte phone book to draw customers from across the border. For some constituents, particularly in rural areas of the district, payday lending served as a de facto line of credit. Emma Doyle, a close aide since Mulvaney’s time in Congress, told me that his views of the payday-loan industry were shaped, in part, by hearing from lower-income constituents who relied on payday lenders when they had nowhere else to go. “It was something he had worked on, something he had heard from a lot of people about,” Doyle told me. “Not everybody ends up in a debt trap. Not everyone ends up saying, ‘I wish I hadn’t taken this out’ or ‘I wish it hadn’t been available to me.’?”

North Carolina’s expulsion of payday lenders was the first in a series of setbacks for the industry that unfolded through the decade. In 2005, federal officials began cracking down on “rent-a-bank” schemes, in which payday-loan companies formed partnerships with banks in states that had loose lending regulations to export high-interest loans to customers in states that banned them. A year later, with tens of thousands of American soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress passed the Military Lending Act, imposing a rate cap on payday loans and auto-title loans to service members. Over Mulvaney’s first two years in the Legislature, several other states passed new restrictions on lenders, and proposals to follow suit were among the most hotly debated legislation in the Capitol.

At first, payday-loan supporters successfully bottled up the bills in committee. But in 2008, as the subprime-mortgage implosion set off a global financial crisis, the politics of financial regulation abruptly shifted. Public anger against lenders spread around the country, and amid the wreckage of lost homes and destroyed savings, the wave engulfed payday lenders too. In the November elections, Democrats in Washington began drafting the Dodd-Frank reform act, adopting Warren’s idea for a new consumer financial regulator. Even in South Carolina, there were calls to ban payday lending altogether. “You had a lot of horror stories out there about people carrying multiple loans and taking out one loan to pay off another loan,” recalls Wes Hayes, a Republican who served with Mulvaney in the State Senate.

Hayes began working with Advance America and other lenders on a compromise that would limit South Carolinians to taking out one payday loan at a time. “We were trying to break the cycle,” he told me. For payday lenders, Hayes’s bill was also a kind of breakwater, intended to absorb the anger building against the industry in South Carolina and elsewhere. Advance America pushed lawmakers to support the compromise. Johnson, the company’s co-founder, personally lobbied the state’s governor at the time, Mark Sanford, according to a former Sanford aide. “It strengthened the consumer protections that were in our state, but also allowed consumers access to the credit they needed,” Fulmer says.

But not everyone was convinced. In the Senate, Mulvaney belonged to a small group of young conservatives who called themselves the William Wallace Caucus, after the Scottish freedom fighter portrayed in “Braveheart.” Like a growing number of conservatives around the country, they viewed the Republican Party of the Bush years as adrift from small-government principles. In the depths of the recession, Mulvaney sided with Sanford against their fellow Republicans when Sanford tried to reject federal stimulus money — funds that Mulvaney cast as an ominous expansion of big-government power. Hayes’s payday-loan bill came to the floor a few weeks later. Sanford, the aide told me, was skeptical that borrowers were being misled by payday lenders and made clear he would veto the bill. Republicans in the Legislature laid plans to override him. In May 2009, Hayes’s compromise passed overwhelmingly.

Only four members of the State Senate voted against the legislation. One of them was Mulvaney. A few months after the vote, he announced that he would run for Congress, joining the Tea Party wave that was building around the country.

The C.F.P.B. that opened its doors in 2011 had been carefully constructed to survive the fight ahead. Warren and her colleagues wanted a bureau that could resist the political pressures that, in their view, had cowed and co-opted other financial regulators leading up to the crisis. The C.F.P.B. was funded directly by the Federal Reserve, insulating it from congressional appropriators. The sole political appointee was its director, who would serve a five-year term and could be fired only for wrongdoing. Facing stiff Republican congressional resistance to the prospect of Warren taking the job, Obama ultimately picked Richard Cordray, a cerebral former Ohio attorney general.

The new agency had the feel of a start-up. Cordray, a Democrat, made an effort to recruit broadly, bringing in financial-industry veterans and former prosecutors, but Warren’s creation inevitably attracted Warren acolytes and veterans of consumer-advocacy groups, many of whom landed in the enforcement division. As the human and financial costs of the subprime-mortgage crash mounted, the new bureau was inundated with whistle-blower tips and consumer complaints. Cordray and his leadership team initially planned to focus on the biggest consumer-finance players, like mortgage lenders and credit-card companies; payday lenders were a relatively small industry compared with Wall Street. But it was growing quickly: The crisis had been good for business, pulling more middle-class families into the payday-loan market. And unlike banks, payday lenders were unregulated by the federal government. “It was affecting a lot of people at the margins who could least afford to run into trouble,” Cordray told me recently.

Other investigations underscored the contempt that some lenders had for their new regulator. When the bureau informed Cash America, a major firm based in Texas, that it planned to conduct an examination, employees there shredded internal records and deleted recordings of phone calls with customers. Managers at the firm instructed employees to mislead the bureau’s examiners about its sales practices and stripped its call center of posters exhorting the employees to collect on debts. (The bureau later found that Cash America had illegally overcharged hundreds of service members and their families and ordered the company to pay a $5 million fine.)

The exams also provided an insider’s view of the historically insular industry, data that in turn guided the bureau’s enforcement lawyers and regulation writers. A bureau study of 15 million loans found that customers who kept rolling their loans over — taking out 10 or more a year — were the cream of the payday-loan industry, generating three-quarters of all loan fees. Advance America and other lenders disputed these findings, arguing that the bureau had undercounted one-time borrowers. But Cordray and his team saw evidence of a major regulatory failure: State-level reform efforts had largely failed to rein in the industry’s most abusive features, like debt traps. And lenders were devising ever-more-sophisticated tools to evade state regulation altogether: Some incorporated on Indian reservations or in offshore financial havens, selling loans online and claiming to be immune from state laws entirely.

A faction in the bureau advocated a strategy of hyperaggressive enforcement lawsuits to bring the industry to heel. Instead, Cordray settled on a two-pronged strategy, according to current and former bureau employees. Enforcement lawyers would begin prosecuting the industry’s worst scofflaws, especially the growing online lenders. But at the same time, the bureau would develop a package of tough rules that would apply to everyone.

In 2015, the agency outlined its core proposal, one that would eliminate debt traps: an ability-to-repay rule. Under such a rule, payday lenders would have to check whether borrowers could afford to pay back a loan before making it in the first place — a short-term loan would have to actually be short-term, not just bait for a debt trap. The rule would have real teeth: If companies lent money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back, they could face prosecution and sizable fines. “We wanted to prompt reform in the industry,” Cordray says. “If they couldn’t reform their products, some of them would get out of the industry altogether.”

[Why jobs aren’t the solution to poverty.]

The backlash against the proposal was severe. Dennis Shaul, who leads the Community Financial Services Association of America, an industry trade group founded by Advance America and other payday lenders, told me that his group would have supported some limits on repeat borrowing. But the ability-to-repay rule, his members felt, was designed to shrink their industry. “We felt their solution was arbitrary,” Shaul says. The association worked with Jones Day, a powerhouse Washington law firm, to mount an all-fronts legal challenge. Advance America accused consumer-advocacy groups like the Center for Responsible Lending, whose alumni dotted the bureau and who had consulted closely with it on the proposed rules, of “infiltrating” the C.F.P.B. (The revolving door, of course, spun both ways: Shaul was recruited by the industry after working for Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who was an author of Dodd-Frank, and dozens of former bureau officials have gone on to work for the financial industry.) The industry mustered studies, including one by the bureau’s former assistant research director, finding that the bureau’s proposal would cut revenue so drastically as to put storefront companies out of business.

Not everyone in the industry agreed with this argument. The former payday-loan executive told me that most of his old industry would have survived under the ability-to-repay rule, but with a less lucrative business model. “You’d still make money,” the former executive says. “It would just be less money.” But payday lenders found a willing audience in Congress, where Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee — including Mulvaney, who joined the committee in 2013 — had worked aggressively to bring Washington’s new watchdog to heel. The committee was led by Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who regarded the bureau as a constitutional abomination and Cordray as a “benevolent financial-product dictator,” as he put it in one hearing. Hensarling hammered Cordray with subpoenas and accused the bureau of mismanagement and waste. Mulvaney regarded Hensarling as a mentor and held similar views about the bureau’s structure and powers. “Some of us would like to get rid of it,” Mulvaney told a reporter in 2014. At oversight hearings, Mulvaney questioned Cordray relentlessly about the bureau’s budget and his payday-loan proposal, even introducing a bill that would allow states to opt out from the ability-to-repay rule for five years. Payday lenders, seeing Mulvaney as an ally, donated tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.

But as the 2016 election approached, aggressive enforcement by the C.F.P.B. and other federal regulators had cast a pall over the industry. Its money machine began to slow. That year alone, storefront-payday-loan fees plummeted by more than a quarter, according to an internal industry presentation that I obtained. The C.F.P.B. was “biased against our industry, our product and our customers,” Fulmer, the Advance America spokesman, told me. “We were in a very perilous position coming to the fall of 2016.”

Like almost every industry in America, payday lenders weren’t prepared for a Trump victory. But it quickly became clear that his election presented an opportunity. While Trump ran as a populist, promising to tear down a “rigged system” — language that echoed Warren’s own rhetoric — his anti-Wall Street rhetoric fused with a pro-Wall Street platform. Advance America and others from the industry flooded Trump’s inauguration committee with more than a million dollars in contributions.

Trump stocked his cabinet with billionaires and Wall Street veterans, including Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs, who became his chief economic adviser. Trump, with Hensarling’s encouragement, tapped Mulvaney to run the Office of Management and Budget. The new administration immediately came under pressure to dismiss Cordray, who had almost 18 months left in his term as C.F.P.B. director. But Cohn and others in the White House were cautious, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The move would have plunged the administration into a risky legal battle against the bureau. They also believed — correctly, as it turned out — that Cordray would leave the bureau to run for governor of Ohio; a high-profile firing might actually help his campaign. Cohn persuaded Trump that the Cordray problem would soon take care of itself and began identifying candidates to replace him.

The list was short. To take over the agency immediately, without a time-consuming nomination fight, the White House needed someone who had already been confirmed by the Senate for another administration job. Trump settled on Mulvaney, asking him to continue as budget chief and also run the bureau until he could appoint a permanent successor there. Mulvaney, according to people close to him, did not campaign for the job but eagerly accepted it, drawn to the opportunity to remake the C.F.P.B. In November 2017, just weeks after finalizing the new ability-to-repay rule, Cordray announced his departure. Citing succession rules laid out in Dodd-Frank, Cordray tried to install a top aide, Leandra English, as the new acting director. The C.F.P.B.’s own general counsel sided with the White House, writing a memo backing Mulvaney’s appointment; English fought the appointment in court but ultimately quit. Mulvaney landed at the bureau just after Thanksgiving, bearing a bag full of doughnuts for his new colleagues.

Mulvaney had given some thought to taking control of a bureaucracy that didn’t necessarily want him there. He told reporters that he wanted his second agency to be more like his first, the Office of Management and Budget, where career employees are matched with appointees who serve at the president’s pleasure. “Maybe they didn’t think they needed to have any political people here because a lot of the people here were political anyway,” Mulvaney said. To become less political, Mulvaney decided, the bureau would first have to become more political. Each of the senior career officials in charge of the bureau’s divisions, who had the title of associate director, would get a Mulvaney-appointed twin, known as a policy associate director, or PAD. To lead the PADs, Mulvaney hired Brian Johnson, a senior Hensarling aide who had helped lead the inquisition of Cordray’s bureau. In his old job, Johnson helped draft a report — titled “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy” — alleging that the bureau used shoddy statistics and legally questionable tactics to prosecute auto lenders accused of having racially discriminated against car buyers. In his new job, Johnson quoted Adam Smith and attacked what he called “paternalistic” policies. According to two former staff members, Johnson, citing an overlooked subsection of Dodd-Frank, soon revised a boilerplate description of the bureau’s mission that was appended to the bottom of news releases. It would henceforth include a reference to eliminating “unduly burdensome regulations.”

Emma Doyle, who went on to serve with Mulvaney at the bureau, told me that the PADs were intended to make life easier for career employees. “It’s helpful to be able to translate what the director’s vision is back down to staff and have the staff have an intermediary interceding on their behalf,” she said. But the appointments drew outrage inside and outside the C.F.P.B. Older agencies were accustomed to the ebb and flow of administrations, each with its own priorities. But many at the bureau believed in Warren’s idea of a regulator that permanently represented the interest of consumers — at least, as they defined it. Each side argued that the other wanted to politicize an otherwise pristine bureaucracy. “I originally designed the agency to be as nonpolitical as possible,” Warren told me. “When Mulvaney came in and brought in his own team of political hacks and put them in the agency, I was shocked.”

Mulvaney’s appointments were particularly alarming to the bureau’s supervision and enforcement staff, led by a former line attorney named Chris D’Angelo. When Mulvaney first arrived, D’Angelo urged his staff not to assume the worst, people who worked with him told me. But D’Angelo grew alarmed when Mulvaney named hisPAD, a midlevel administration financial-services lawyer named Eric Blankenstein, who had little experience in consumer enforcement. D’Angelo took his case directly to Mulvaney. He argued that career enforcement officials at other financial regulatory agencies, like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, reported directly to the appointed head of the agency, in order to create a clear line of accountability for enforcement decisions.

Mulvaney did not budge. (D’Angelo, who left the bureau in February, declined to comment.) After Blankenstein arrived, lawyers in the enforcement office were ordered to prepare summaries justifying every active enforcement matter — more than 100 open cases, most of them not yet public. Two days later, without warning, the bureau filed a one-sentence notice in federal court in Kansas announcing that it was withdrawing a high-profile lawsuit against a quartet of payday lenders, a case known as Golden Valley.

The Golden Valley lawsuit was a product of Cordray’s enforcement strategy against scofflaw lenders. According to the bureau’s complaint, Golden Valley and three other lenders were technically owned by the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake, a California tribe, but were largely run out of a call center in Kansas. The lenders made payday loans over the internet, claiming that tribal ownership allowed the firm to ignore usury laws in states where its triple-digit interest rates were illegal. Using a legal theory the bureau had successfully employed in earlier cases — that trying to collect on illegal loans is itself a deceptive business practice under Dodd-Frank — the bureau filed suit against Golden Valley and the other lenders in the spring of 2017. The sudden withdrawal mystified and worried other lawyers in the division, who wondered what implications it held for their own cases.

As the grumbling spread throughout his division, Blankenstein convened a staff conference call. According to two people who were on the call, Blankenstein told them that in a previous meeting Mulvaney asked several questions about the Golden Valley case, including whether the defendants had fair notice that the bureau would view their conduct as illegal under Dodd-Frank. One person on the call later described this “fair notice” argument to me as one that could, in practice, justify throwing out many of the bureau’s other payday-loan cases, which advanced much the same theory as the Golden Valley lawsuit. But strikingly, according to the two people on the call, Blankenstein claimed that he himself didn’t know exactly why Mulvaney pulled the case.

Some career employees saw a kind of strategic ambiguity at work, designed to muddle decision-making and insulate Mulvaney as he neutered the agency’s enforcement work. The bureau’s enforcement lawyers typically spent months or years developing cases from the bureau’s complaint database or from information garnered from supervisory exams. In a memo to the staff, Mulvaney pledged to prioritize enforcement according to the volume of consumer complaints the bureau received, nearly a third of which related to debt collection and only 2 percent of which concerned payday lending. But bureau employees told me it was difficult to discern which particular cases and legal theories Mulvaney might allow to go forward, casting a chill over the work. Where Cordray had allowed lower-ranking enforcement lawyers to present cases to him directly, Mulvaney required lawyers to present their cases through Blankenstein, and bureau employees told me they had little sense of whether Blankenstein was arguing for them or against them when he took cases to Mulvaney. Craig Cowie, a former bureau enforcement lawyer who supervised several major payday-loan cases, including the one against Golden Valley, worked under Mulvaney for six months. “I never met him,” Cowie told me. “I was never even in the same room as him.” (Cowie declined to discuss any specific case, citing confidentiality rules.) “And I don’t recall him ever visiting enforcement,” he added.

By February, Mulvaney had spread a kind of bureaucratic fog across his new agency. He moved the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity from Blankenstein’s enforcement division to his own director’s office, frustrating coordination between the bureau’s experts on discriminatory lending and the lawyers who enforced the law. He took responsibility for coordinating the bureau’s oversight of the Military Lending Act away from the bureau’s service member affairs chief — a revered retired Army colonel — and gave it to a young aide with little experience. Cordray sometimes wouldn’t end a meeting until everyone in the room had weighed in on the matter at hand. Mulvaney, by contrast, began restricting more meetings to senior officials. The move was not atypical of federal agencies. But, employees told me, the effect was that information flowed up the chain of command and rarely back down. The practice also provided protection: Mulvaney’s team faced a torrent of leaks from within the bureau and intense scrutiny from without, as consumer groups demanded Mulvaney and Johnson’s calendars and email correspondence. One group, Allied Progress, filed more than 250 public-records requests during Mulvaney’s tenure.

If secrecy served to protect Mulvaney, it also made the C.F.P.B. even less efficient, worsening just the kind of management problems Mulvaney had, in theory, set out to combat. Junior staff members played endless games of telephone as they tried to suss out Mulvaney’s marching orders. “You had to have a meeting after the meeting so that people would know what was decided,” one former employee told me. (Mulvaney and Johnson ultimately compromised, allowing junior staff members to dial into more meetings.) Cordray had allowed enforcement lawyers to send out a civil investigative demand — a kind of noncriminal subpoena — with the approval of a midlevel supervisor. Bureau lawyers told me that the practice allowed them to make narrower, less burdensome requests of lenders, because they had to jump through fewer hoops to ask for more. But Mulvaney viewed the requests as an onerous demand of the lenders who received them — to be used only by bureau lawyers as a last resort. All civil demands had to go through Blankenstein. Over the coming months, the pace of investigations would slow drastically.

Mulvaney presented his decisions as part of an earnest effort to fulfill the bureau’s stated mission. He was not trying to undermine the bureau, he argued, but operate it within the plain black letter of Dodd-Frank.“I intend to execute the statutory mandate of the bureau to protect consumers,” he wrote to the staff in one memo. “But we will no longer go beyond that mandate.” To career employees, however, Mulvaney’s crusade against statutory deviation increasingly felt like an ideological publicity stunt, one that came at the expense of the agency’s ostensible mission. Mulvaney commenced a lengthy effort to change the bureau’s name, reasoning that Dodd-Frank had technically created something called the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, not the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “C.F.P.B. doesn’t exist,” he told bankers at a conference in April. “C.F.P.B. has never existed.” A new working group was convened to execute Mulvaney’s decision, while staff members were prodded to begin using the new name on internal documents. Mulvaney appeared not to consider the vast costs of rewritten paperwork and compliance procedures that a renaming might place on the banks and on other businesses the bureau regulates: $300 million, according to an internal agency analysis later obtained by The Hill. (The name change was abandoned in December.)

Nor was Mulvaney reluctant to ignore the statute when it suited him, former employees told me. In a memo that spring, he announced the creation of new bureau offices dedicated to “cost-benefit analysis” and “innovation.” Technically, neither office was prescribed by Dodd-Frank. Almost as an afterthought, Mulvaney effectively dissolved the student-loan ombudsman’s office — a position that was mandated by Dodd-Frank. A Mulvaney spokesman told reporters that the reorganization was a “very modest organizational chart change.” But on the same day, Mulvaney signaled that the bureau would scale back a long-awaited overhaul of student-lending rules. Last August, the ombudsman, a Cordray veteran named Seth Frotman, quit in protest, accusing Mulvaney of ignoring Dodd-Frank’s intent. “It felt like we were in some Ayn Rand debate club,” Frotman told me recently.

As Trump appointees elsewhere around the government were learning, it takes a bureaucracy to deconstruct one, and in all the speed and confusion, some of Mulvaney’s own priorities began to suffer. By the spring, months after he announced that the bureau would reconsider Cordray’s ability-to-repay rule, little apparent progress had been made. One problem, according to two former lawyers with the agency, was that Mulvaney and Johnson had more experience interrogating regulatory agencies than running them. Mulvaney had first asked the head of the research, markets and regulations division, a former financial-industry lawyer named David Silberman, if he could simply delay the new payday-loan rule. “They thought they could come in and snap their fingers,” a former lawyer there told me. But the law lays out a lengthy, nuanced procedure for writing or revising federal rules. In a joint memo with the legal division, according to a former staff member, Silberman’s team warned Mulvaney that he had little basis on which to delay Cordray’s rule and that he would most likely lose in court. Mulvaney had good reason to listen to them. As Trump officials at other agencies tried to roll back environmental and other regulations, they were losing in court at an embarrassingly high rate; in many cases, judges slapped down the administration for failing to follow proper rule-making procedures.

Next, a team in Silberman’s division was asked to devise arguments in favor of replacing the Cordray rule with a new rule, one that would challenge the underpinnings of Cordray’s regulation. The work was inherently awkward: There were no new studies or industry data that might provide a basis to replace the rule, meaning they would have to attack their own analysis of the payday-loan industry. Most of the original authors were recused from the work, leaving a bare-bones team of about a half-dozen people to finish the job. “You would be arguing against yourself,” a former employee in Silberman’s division told me. “You’d be saying, ‘Everything I argued last year, I’d have to say I was wrong about.’?” By the spring, Silberman’s division had begun generating timelines and option memos for the bureau’s senior staff members, including proposals to get rid of the rule’s central feature, requiring payday lenders to make sure people can repay their loans.

Yet Mulvaney and his deputies provided little feedback or direction on the proposals, according to former Silberman staff members I spoke with. “It was radio silence from them on what direction they wanted to take,” the former staff member told me. The process stalled. Payday lenders, who had expected quick action from Mulvaney, began to panic. Cordray’s ability-to-repay rule would go into full effect in August 2019, in a little more than a year. Mulvaney’s team might come up with a new rule before August, but it might not, and in the meantime payday lenders would have no choice but to reconfigure their businesses — or shut them down — to prepare for the old one. Shaul, the leader of the Community Financial Services Association, told me that he had difficulty getting any sense of where the bureau was headed. “I was not able to get to see Mulvaney,” Shaul told me. “I was hoping we could convince Mulvaney to repeal that rule and craft a new rule.” What they needed was certainty, or at minimum some kind of delay. As months passed without any word, Shaul told me, his members were increasingly set on suing the agency.

What happened next underscores some of the absurdity and complexity of turning an agency inside out. In early April, Johnson granted Shaul an introductory meeting at the agency’s headquarters. At the last second, Shaul emailed to say he would be bringing Chris Vergonis, one of the association’s lawyers at Jones Day — and one of the people who would prepare any lawsuit against the agency. His presence was potentially dangerous for Mulvaney’s team; it could raise questions about whether the bureau was improperly coordinating with the industry. According to notes of the meeting, taken by a career bureau employee and obtained by the consumer group Public Citizen, Shaul told Johnson that the association had in fact been preparing to sue the C.F.P.B. to stop Cordray’s rule but now believed that it would be better to work with the bureau to write a new one. With the Cordray rule looming, Shaul stressed, they would need to move quickly.

A person familiar with the meeting, who asked for anonymity because of the legal sensitivities involved, told me that Shaul and Vergonis kept pushing for details of the new rule and at one point asked outright what reaction the bureau would have to a lawsuit. According to the staff notes, Johnson replied carefully, as a good lawyer would; it would be inappropriate for him to discuss either the rule or the lawsuit, he told them. Shaul gave me a similar account. “I found them so cautious as to preclude our having any real discussion,” he told me. “We came away from the meeting thinking that we were not going to get many answers.” Four days later, the Community Financial Services Association and another industry group filed suit against the bureau.

The C.F.P.B.’s response was atypical of a regulatory agency. In mid-May, the bureau’s lawyers called Vergonis with a proposal: They now wanted to in effect join forces with the industry, by asking a judge to stay both the compliance date of Cordray’s rule and the lawsuit. In a kind of regulatory jujitsu, the bureau would cite Mulvaney’s own decision to reconsider the Cordray rule as an excuse to stop the clock on the August 2019 implementation. There was just too much fog. “The bureau’s decision to initiate rule making to reconsider the payday rule creates inherent uncertainty,” the bureau lawyers and Vergonis’s team wrote in court papers filed later that month. “There is no way to know whether plaintiffs’ members will ultimately need to comply with the payday rule, a modified payday rule or no rule at all.”

The bureau still had not explained what kind of rule it planned to propose, much less implement, and in June, a Texas judge rejected the request for a stay of the compliance date. But that October, the C.F.P.B. announced that its new rule would indeed target the ability-to-repay requirement. Not long after, the judge agreed to grant the stay, in effect delaying the core of Cordray’s old rule. Inside the bureau, according to two former employees and an industry lawyer I spoke with, the regulation-writing team lurched into high gear, rushing to deliver what the bureau had promised. The industry had won what it needed most: time.

Almost from the moment Mulvaney arrived at the C.F.P.B., rumors ricocheted around Washington that Trump was eyeing him as a future White House chief of staff. Mulvaney denied these rumors with the studied self-deprecation of a man whose star was on the rise. But by the time the White House had settled on a nominee to succeed Mulvaney at the C.F.P.B. — Kathleen Kraninger, his deputy in the budget office — in June, Mulvaney was going into the bureau’s offices only twice a week. C.F.P.B. staff members were just as likely to catch a glimpse of him on television: Mulvaney’s dual agency hats made him an in-demand guest on cable shows, where he capably defended Trump against the day’s mini-scandal. The president reportedly enjoyed watching him butt heads with cable hosts, and despite a packed schedule, Mulvaney found time to polish his skills. In April, after a contentious morning Senate hearing where he made headlines sparring with Warren, he boarded an evening flight to Los Angeles. There, he spent most of two days in media training with Frank Luntz, the famed Republican messaging guru and a friend dating back to Mulvaney’s time in the South Carolina Legislature. (A spokesman for Mulvaney told me that Luntz donated his services.)

Mulvaney continued to give speeches at financial-industry conferences, issuing sweeping pronouncements of bureau policy and often taking aim at Warren, a favorite target of his boss. When Warren sent Mulvaney letters demanding information about his conversations with payday lenders or his decision to freeze the bureau’s data-collection efforts, a former employee told me, Mulvaney’s team would take special relish in devising confrontational replies. Mulvaney and his staff members, for their part, viewed their tussles with Warren as a way to deliver the senator an unpleasant taste of her own medicine — an object lesson in the unaccountable bureaucracy that she had birthed and that he was remaking according to a different vision. “The bureau is not going anywhere,” Mulvaney told a conference of mortgage bankers in October. “There is no appetite on Capitol Hill for getting rid of the bureau. We are here.”

But within the walls Warren had so carefully constructed, the bricks began to loosen. Over the last year, Mulvaney’s temporary hiring freeze has turned into an indefinite one, slowly shrinking the C.F.P.B.’s staff by attrition. Bureau news releases, once packed with colorful details about abusive lending practices, have been toned down to dry legalese. According to a report by Christopher Peterson, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, enforcement at the bureau appears to have dwindled radically. In 2018, the bureau announced just 11 lawsuits or settlements, less than a third of the number during Cordray’s last year. In the months since Mulvaney reorganized the Office of Fair Lending, the bureau has not brought a single case alleging illegal discrimination. While Mulvaney pledged data-driven enforcement, his bureau brought only one case against debt collectors, who account for more complaints to the C.F.P.B. than almost any other industry. Where Mulvaney or his successor have allowed cases to go forward, lenders have often settled with lowered fines or none at all. When the bureau settled a three-year prosecution of a group of payday lenders called NDG Enterprise — which found that the group had falsely threatened American customers with arrest and imprisonment if they failed to repay loans — NDG walked away without paying a cent.

After Trump announced in December that he was promoting Mulvaney to the top staff job in his administration, senior White House officials told reporters that he was the president’s “original Plan B.” As Trump’s acting White House chief of staff, Mulvaney sits — however temporarily — at Washington’s bureaucratic apex, with influence far beyond the C.F.P.B. In the months leading up to the announcement, Mulvaney sometimes brushed off questions about his ambitions by joking that he was busy enough running two agencies. Now, in a sense, he runs them all.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 32 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Make America Pay Again. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-mick-mulvaney-became-the-most-dangerous-man-in-dc/

Trump has been even Trumpier since the 2018 election, more erratic, more extreme, more out of control. That’s in very large part because his new minder, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, is letting him run amok. At least that’s what The New York Times speculates, and they make a good case.

Mulvaney was the only other person in the room when Kirstjen Nielsen was fired Sunday, the Times reports. He helped write her resignation letter. When Trump decided that Randolph D. Alles, the director of the Secret Service, had to go, Mulvaney was the one who carried the axe. Mulvaney was the one to tell Trump to ignore all the lawyers in his administration and go ahead and tell the courts to burn down the Affordable Care Act. As the Times puts it, “Trump has a chief of staff who has made it his job to encourage rather than restrain the president’s conservative instincts—to let Trump be Trump, in effect.”

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy, one of Mulvaney’s Freedom Caucus friends from the House says “I don’t think that [Mulvaney] sees the role of the chief of staff to alter the personality of the person he works for. […] They have a good relationship, but the president’s the boss.” And Mulvaney is a nihilist—he went to government to destroy it from within and who better to do that than a mentally unstable megalomaniac in the White House? Apparently this is fine with everyone in the White House because Mulvaney has “learned how to keep the Trump train running,” said Scott Reed, the top political adviser to the United States Chamber of Commerce, told the Times. Apparently there’s less infighting among staff with no one trying to keep Trump under control.

The flip side of that was described by Sen. Chuck Schumer, leading Democrat in the Senate, who called out the “chaos” in the administration, and the “whimsical, erratic” behavior of Trump. “I hope that the president or some of the people around him will realize that his administration is far from a fine-tuned machine,” he said in a floor statement Tuesday. “It’s a slow-motion disaster machine that the American people see in action every day.” He’s not alone in the assessment. Republican old-timer, Sen. Richard Shelby, Appropriations Committee chairman, has complained bitterly of Mulvaney, calling him “the most dangerous man” in D.C.

He’s the perfect agent of destruction, using Trump for his own goal of burning the whole structure of government down. He golfs with Trump, flatters him and calls him “boss,” and winds him up and watches him wreak havoc. And Trump doesn’t even recognize that he’s not the one calling the shots.

ref

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/us/politics/mick-mulvaney-homeland-security.html

Mick Mulvaney Tries Letting Trump Be Trump

By Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman

April 9, 2019

WASHINGTON — When President Trump met with his embattled homeland security secretary on Sunday to force her out after months of stormy eruptions over immigration policy, the only other person in the room was Mick Mulvaney, who made no effort to head off the final confrontation and instead helped draft the letter of resignation.

When Mr. Trump decided to get rid of his Secret Service director, officials said, Mr. Mulvaney delivered the message rather than try to talk the president out of it. When Mr. Trump considered whether to ask a court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act despite opposition from his own top legal advisers, Mr. Mulvaney’s response: Follow your gut.

In his first 100 days as the president’s acting chief of staff, Mr. Mulvaney has assumed a central role in Mr. Trump’s circle but one markedly different than the previous two occupants of his corner office. For the first time since taking office, Mr. Trump has a chief of staff who has made it his job to encourage rather than restrain the president’s conservative instincts — to let Trump be Trump, in effect.

A former congressman from South Carolina and a leader of the Tea Party movement, Mr. Mulvaney is not a product of the Republican establishment like Reince Priebus, the first chief of staff, or the military hierarchy, like John F. Kelly, the second. Instead, he arrived at the White House from the revolutionary wing of the conservative movement, whose goal even before Mr. Trump entered politics was to blow up what it considered a corrupt and liberal Washington.

“I don’t think that he sees the role of the chief of staff to alter the personality of the person he works for,” said former Representative Trey Gowdy, a friend and fellow South Carolina Republican who golfed with the president and Mr. Mulvaney last month. “They have a good relationship, but the president’s the boss.”

Some outsiders see the cascade of hard-line policy ventures, unorthodox appointments and high-level purges of recent days as a sign of Mr. Mulvaney’s expanding influence, assuming that he is pushing Mr. Trump to the right. But insiders call that a misconception, insisting that Mr. Mulvaney at most is pushing on an open door and otherwise is merely liberating Mr. Trump to pursue the courses he prefers.

The lesson Mr. Mulvaney took from the unhappy experiences of Mr. Priebus and Mr. Kelly — both of whom were cast out unceremoniously via Twitter or comments to reporters — was that Mr. Trump is not interested in being managed by aides who think they know better, and so he has tried to build a process that he thinks better serves the president.

To some Republicans who had become resigned to an ungovernable White House, Mr. Mulvaney has been a welcome presence, one who has tamped down some of the tribal rivalries that played out in vicious form through clandestine disclosures to the news media.

“I think he’s become an asset because he’s learned how to keep the Trump train running,” said Scott Reed, the top political adviser to the United States Chamber of Commerce. “A combination of managing the staff, raising the morale and limiting the leaking has made him a successful Trump chief of staff.”

But to his critics, including some Republicans, Mr. Mulvaney’s approach has unleashed the president in dangerous ways. After forcing a five-week government shutdown at the start of the year, Mr. Trump in recent days threatened to close the nation’s southern border, selected unconventional nominees for the Federal Reserve despite significant vetting issues and began clearing out the top ranks of the Department of Homeland Security.

In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, lamented the “chaos” in the White House stemming from the president’s “whimsical, erratic” behavior.

“I hope that the president or some of the people around him will realize that his administration is far from a fine-tuned machine,” he said. “It’s a slow-motion disaster machine that the American people see in action every day.”

Even some Republicans on Capitol Hill hold Mr. Mulvaney in low regard, particularly senators who view him as a former congressman with little deal-making experience and scant inclination to learn. In recent days, some criticized the expanding homeland security purge while others complained that Mr. Mulvaney does not meet with them enough.

During tense negotiations amid the government shutdown earlier this year, Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican and Appropriations Committee chairman, complained bitterly about Mr. Mulvaney’s penchant for undoing weeks of bipartisan work with a quick comment to Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. Mr. Shelby told Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s top Democrat, that Mr. Mulvaney was “the most dangerous man” in Washington, according to three people familiar with the exchange.

Mr. Shelby has not repeated that in public, but when a reporter on Capitol Hill asked him about Mr. Mulvaney last week, the senator tartly interrupted to offer a correction.

“You mean the acting chief of staff?” he said before walking away.

Mr. Trump has yet to formally remove the “acting” before the title, but after more than three months Mr. Mulvaney shrugs that off, telling others that everyone who works for the president serves at his pleasure and therefore is acting.

Indeed, Mr. Mulvaney is operating not as a temporary caretaker, but as someone who expects to stay for a while, bringing to the West Wing a clutch of aides from the Office of Management and Budget, where he served as director. He has engaged in team-building exercises like retreats at Camp David, most recently last week to discuss efforts to create a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.

He is generally liked by the staff, which recoiled at Mr. Kelly’s military style. Mr. Kelly made clear that he hated the job, muttering out loud when he left on many evenings that he might not return the next day. By contrast, Mr. Mulvaney tells people that he loves the job, an attitude that allies said has improved morale.

Even some Democrats praised Mr. Mulvaney for reaching out. Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said his relations with Mr. Mulvaney were “excellent” and noted that he was invited to Camp David for a trust-building visit.

“Mick’s never going to resolve Trump’s erratic behavior,” Mr. Yarmuth said. “He’s never going to be able to do anything about that. But over all, I think he’s been a much more effective chief than Kelly has.”

Still, Mr. Mulvaney has been criticized internally, by colleagues unwilling to be identified, for creating his own fief. And he has been faulted for appealing to Mr. Trump’s nativist instincts and desire to cater to his hard-core political base.

Mr. Trump does not share Mr. Mulvaney’s special passion for hawkish fiscal policies but signed off on a largely symbolic budget that incorporated some of those priorities, only to overrule his aides when proposed funding cuts to Special Olympics were publicized.

“The biggest problem I sense with Mulvaney is because of his own politics, he tends to push Trump further to the right than even Trump might want to go,” said Leon E. Panetta, who held the job under President Bill Clinton. “As chief of staff, your greater responsibility is to present to the president the options for what he should decide.”

Mr. Mulvaney has told people that he strives to do just that, ensuring that the president hears different points of view. During the deliberations over the Affordable Care Act, allies noted that Mr. Mulvaney made sure that Mr. Trump heard objections lodged by the Justice Department and White House counsel.

While Mr. Mulvaney has kept the essence of Mr. Kelly’s policy-development procedure, he consults with Mr. Trump earlier in the process to get his direction, rather than wait until the end. Although he was known as a firebrand in the House who stood up to Republican leaders, he is deferential to Mr. Trump, calling him “boss,” while making a point of spending off hours on the golf course with him.

In the West Wing, Mr. Mulvaney is seen as someone who knows when to fight battles, as opposed to Mr. Kelly, who often found himself at odds with Mr. Trump’s adult children and informal advisers. He does not try to manage access to the president as Mr. Kelly did. Rather than fight Mr. Trump’s natural desire to meet and talk with a variety of people, Mr. Mulvaney has taken a decentralized approach that he calls chief of staff by committee, empowering different advisers to provide the president their guidance.

It is a style most associated with Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, each of whom resisted having a strong chief of staff at first, preferring what was called a “hub and spoke” model in which many people had access to the Oval Office. Both eventually abandoned the approach, concluding that it did not work, and Mr. Mulvaney eschews the hub-and-spoke term to avoid associations with those failed experiments.

People close to the president say Mr. Mulvaney gets too much credit — or blame — for Mr. Trump’s rightward turn on policy. Mr. Trump’s instinct is to appeal to core supporters who he fears will leave him, and he is the one who wants to demonstrate to them that he is continuing a hard line on immigration.

David Bossie, president of the conservative group Citizens United and a former deputy campaign manager for Mr. Trump, said the president was adjusting to a changing political environment.

“The president is responding to that new world order and that’s the mind-set,” Mr. Bossie said. “He is under siege by congressional Democrats, and that is how he’s operating — under siege.”

And Mr. Mulvaney is in the trench next to him.

Glenn Thrush, Katie Rogers and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

Follow Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman on Twitter: @peterbakernyt and @maggienyt.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: At White House, Gatekeeper Lets Trump Be Trump. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Trump orders Mulvaney to fire Secret Service director as part of ‘near-systemic purge’ of key national security personnel: CNN

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/the-freedom-caucus-white-house-coup-is-officially-complete/

If there’s one thing that really sums up just how profoundly messed up the Trump White House is, top to bottom, it’s this: the one person capable of making Trump and Co. happy in the role of chief of staff is former Freedom Caucus maniac Mick Mulvaney. The once—and current—Office of Management and Budget Director, who also moonlighted as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for over a year, has been filling in as top deputy for Trump since John Kelly left last year, reportedly no longer even trying to talk with Trump. But Mulvaney is doing so great at the job, they’re making it permanent.

That’s right, the Freedom Caucus lives on, and this time it’s taking over the White House. Apparently, Mulvaney is working out so well because he just lets Trump do whatever the hell he wants, and is also nice to first daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, the guy running around on the world stage with a security clearance he should not have. Mulvaney lets them do whatever they want, as well, so they don’t go running to Daddy complaining about the nanny being mean. This all is absolutely real, sources tell Politico. He’s succeeding because he lets them be awful. “He has stayed out of a lot of people’s way,” a senior administration official told reporter Nancy Cook. “No one is saying he is killing it but staying out of people’s way has helped.”

Here’s something to help you sleep at night: “Mulvaney has also quietly installed roughly eight loyal aides within the West Wing.” It’s a Freedom Caucus coup, brought about by the fact that literally no one else Trump tried to talk into taking the chief job was willing to do it. He got bored with the hunt for Kelly’s replacement after multiple, public rejections by people like Rep. Mark Meadows, the North Carolina maniac, Nick Ayers, and Chris Christie, so it looks like Mulvaney is ending up on top. Trump has apparently not made it official yet, and could change his mind, but he’s done nothing else in the interest of the country so it doesn’t seem likely he’ll want to chance getting someone else who might try to rein in his impulses again.

Back to that coup—he’s installed his people in the “chief of staff’s office, communications shop and Domestic Policy Council, which crafts policy on issues like health care, drug prices, welfare, education and transportation.” That’s comforting, huh? While Trump’s out there being as Trumpy as he wants to be, Mulvaney and team will be behind the scenes trying to dismantle our society. Good times.

omfg

Many consumer groups including Americans for Financial Reform and U.S. PIRG consider Trump’s appointment of Mulvaney to be illegal. Mulvaney already had a job as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. The CFBP already had an acting director as provided by statute, long-time CFPB deputy director Leandra English. Now the issue is in court and a federal judge is expected to rule soon. But Mulvaney did not sit around waiting for the courts to rule, he got right to work.

Advance America, owned by the Mexican conglomerate Grupo Salinas, has its U.S. headquarters in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Mulvaney’s old House district includes parts of Spartanburg.

As a Republican U.S. House member from South Carolina, Mulvaney took over $62,000 from payday lenders. This week he gave a speech to the American Bankers Association and told them how his office operated.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” said Mulvaney. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

Well, Mulvaney appears to have carried that policy, right into the nation’s most important consumer protection agency. In December 2017, Mulvaney abnegated his responsibility to protect consumers by deciding to indefinitely postpone the new payday lender rule.

Opinions

Is the GOP the law and order party? Not so much.

Jeffrey Epstein appears in custody in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 2008. (Uma Sanghvi/AP)

By Catherine Rampell

Columnist

December 10, 2018

For a party that claims to be “tough on crime,” Republicans seem pretty confused by what it means to hold criminals to account.

Particularly when it comes to white-collar crimes, or really any crimes committed by rich people.

On Friday, for instance, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) argued that President Trump should pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who has been convicted of eight felonies and pleaded guilty to another two.

“If Manafort was going to be prosecuted as a consequence of his tax crimes or lobbying crimes, that would have happened more than a decade ago,” Gaetz said on Fox News, adding on Twitter, “The only reason he was prosecuted is because of politics.”

Joseph diGenova, a former Reagan-appointed federal prosecutor and now frequent Trump surrogate, likewise has suggested that Manafort should not have been prosecuted because he had “no criminal record.”

By this logic, absent an extant criminal record, no one — not even pre-prosecution Al Capone — should ever get charged with a crime. Never having been in jail becomes a Get Out of Jail Free card.

In reality, the reason Manafort wasn’t prosecuted ages ago — despite the many red flags over the years — has little to do with politics and more to do with the fact that the United States has basically stopped prosecuting white-collar crimes. Adjusted for population, there were half as many white-collar prosecutions in fiscal 2018 as there were 30 years earlier, according to data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Manafort is hardly the only wealthy white guy whom prominent Republicans — including GOP law enforcement officials — have sought to shield from the full weight of the law.

Consider the sweetheart plea deal given to Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, which the Miami Herald recently reported on in damning detail.

In a “cult-like sex pyramid scheme,” Epstein allegedly molested or sexually abused dozens of underage girls, some still in braces. One 15-year-old victim said she was recruited to be a “sex slave” out of the Mar-a-Lago locker room, where she worked as a towel girl.

The 53-page indictment prepared by law enforcement officials in 2007 could have landed Epstein in prison for life. Instead, Epstein, a longtime Democratic donor, hired a few well-connected Republican lawyers (including former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr) and scored “one of the most lenient deals for a serial child sex offender in history,” according to the Herald.

The no-prosecution deal allowed him to serve just 13 months in the private wing of a local jail, from which he was granted “work release” 12 hours a day, six days a week. The agreement also effectively shut down an FBI investigation into others who might have been involved.

Which George W. Bush-appointed U.S. attorney decided to go so soft on sex crime? Why, Alexander Acosta, now Trump’s secretary of labor, a position with oversight over international child-labor laws and human trafficking.

Acosta effectively squelched an investigation into a real-life, Pizzagate-style child-sex ring. Yet law-and-order Republicans have remained mum on calls for his removal.

Other well-heeled, well-connected entities have also found the quality of Republican mercy unstrained.

Shortly after White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney took over as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency dropped an investigation into an installment lender that had donated to his congressional campaign. A ProPublica investigation had found that the company was charging annual interest rates that could exceed 200 percent.

...

https://www.alternet.org/economy/trumps-budget-director-reveals-plans-attack-social-security-and-medicare

Opponents of Social Security and Medicare are so eager to end these two overwhelmingly important and popular earned benefits that they can’t contain themselves. Mick Mulvaney, the Trump administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the latest to make crystal clear the longstanding plan to destroy both programs.

Speaking at a conference of state legislators hosted by the anti-government American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”), Mulvaney just revealed that he plans first to go after what he sees as more politically achievable cuts. He explained that the next step, presumably after Trump is in his second term, will be for the administration not just to cut these programs but to end them as we know them.

Mulvaney is apparently so eager to go after our earned benefits that he threw the point into a speech to state legislators, even though both Social Security and Medicare are federal programs.

Mulvaney’s apparent uncontained enthusiasm to take away people’s earned benefits is similar to that of Mitch McConnell, who just weeks before the midterm, called for Social Security and Medicare to be “adjusted” (code for destroying them). McConnell couldn’t resist broadcasting his intentions, even though these programs are extremely popular even with Republican voters.

Why are these opponents so hostile to such important programs? Social Security, now more than eight decades old, and Medicare, now more than five decades old, have stood the test of time. Both of these efficient, virtually universal, overwhelmingly popular programs insure us against risks that all of us face. Rich or poor, anyone can suffer a disabling illness or accident, making work impossible. Rich or poor, any parent can die prematurely leaving dependent children. Rich or poor, all of us hope to live to old age and, if we are so fortunate, require income we cannot outlive and health insurance for the treatments and medication we inevitably will need.

The private sector is incapable of providing the wage and health insurance that Social Security and Medicare provide as efficiently, universally, securely or effectively as the federal government. Insurance works best when the greatest numbers of people are covered. The only entity that can require that everyone is covered and pays premiums as soon as they start working is the federal government. That is one of the reasons both Social Security and Medicare work so well.

And that is why Mulvaney, McConnell, and other opponents of these programs want to end them. These programs put the lie to their ideological zealotry, which insists that the private sector is always better than government.

Decades ago, opponents of these programs were forthright that their objections were ideological. They did not see the creation and administration of universal insurance programs as an appropriate role for the federal government. But the American people overwhelmingly disagreed, so this argument was utterly unsuccessful.

Now most opponents have changed their tactics, and proclaim their love for these programs. President George W. Bush, for example, proclaimed, “Social Security was a great moral success of the 20th century, and we must honor its great purposes in this new century.” His very next sentence argued for radically changing it.

Similarly, Mulvaney, McConnell, and other opponents hide their straightforward ideological opposition. Rather, these opponents subversively seek to undermine confidence in Social Security’s and Medicare’s future by asserting that both programs are unaffordable.

Worse, in their efforts to end Social Security and Medicare, they seek to turn Americans against each other. They tell us that seniors are taking from children, that people with disabilities are taking from seniors.

Moreover, in their efforts to lull us into thinking they are not seeking to hurt our legitimate interests, opponents claim that our vital and earned financial protection in the event of disability isn’t as “core” as our financial protection in the event of old age. In his recent ALEC speech, Mulvaney tried to make just such a claim, asserting, “You can reform and save a ton of money in Medicare and Social Security and not touch the primary pillars for the next several years.” Along those same lines, last April, Mulvaney rhetorically asked, “Do you really think that Social Security disability insurance is part of what people think of when they think of Social Security?”

I am confident that the over 10 million Americans receiving Social Security because of wages lost as the result of serious, work-ending disabilities understand that Social Security disability insurance is Social Security. When American workers pay into Social Security with every paycheck, disability insurance is one of the protections they earn, along with life insurance and retirement annuities.

Social Security disability benefits are inextricably intertwined with Social Security’s retirement and survivor benefits. Social Security benefits are generated from the same formula. When workers with disabilities reach retirement age, their benefit is unchanged in amount but is paid as a retirement benefit, no longer as a disability benefit. Despite those facts, though, Mulvaney’s claim that Social Security disability insurance is not really Social Security is a convenient rhetorical game to claim “core” benefits are not being touched.

For Medicare, Mulvaney revealed another trick before his ALEC audience. He floated the idea of Medicare no longer reimbursing teaching hospitals its fair share of those hospitals’ costs, arguing that the cut wouldn’t hurt beneficiaries. Like his claim that Social Security disability insurance is not “really’ Social Security, beneficiaries would be hurt, though not immediately, and the cause of the hurt would be difficult to trace.

While benefits wouldn’t be directly cut, it certainly would limit the ability of Medicare beneficiaries to get treatment at teaching hospitals if that were their choice and the best setting for their care. To the extent Medicare didn’t pay its fair share and teaching hospitals nevertheless continued to treat seniors and people with disabilities, those costs would be shifted to everyone else.

And, of course, this is just the start, Mulvaney made clear. “In the long term you’ll have to [make more major changes.] The president has asked me to fix the easy stuff first,” Mulvaney explained to his audience.

Fortunately, the Democrats—who support expanding, not cutting, Social Security and Medicare—have control of the House of Representatives, at least for now. But, all of us who want to keep the benefits we have earned must remain vigilant. We must not be fooled or confused into allowing opponents to make what they deem “easy” cuts to our earned benefits.

These opponents will not give up. And neither must we. Expanding, not cutting, our Social Security and Medicare is profoundly wise policy and is overwhelmingly popular. But it will only become a reality if we keep our voices loud, reminding our political leaders that it’s voters, not donors, to whom they must account next election day.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

"Easy to pay for something that costs less': New study shows 'Medicare for All' would save US $5.1 trillion over 10 years

By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

"Medicare for All promises a system that

AN holland, j

818

*****

Embracing the reality of Trumpism means acknowledging the myriad ways in which he's broadened and deepened the swamp. Consider just a week of headlines about how his regime has made life easier for the plutocracy by giving them opportunities to fuck over working America -- in some cases, disproportionately targeting Trump's own credulous base.

"The Trump administration is planning to suspend routine examinations of lenders for violations of the Military Lending Act, which was devised to protect military service members and their families from financial fraud, predatory loans and credit card gouging," reported The New York Times this week.According to the exit polls, military veterans voted for Trump by a 2-1 ratio.

(Back in April, The Timesalso reported that Mulvaney had "advise[d] bankers on ways to curtail" his own agency's abilities to oversee their industry.)

A tangentially related story that did get prominent coverage this week was ProPublica's report about how three of Trump's "cronies" from Mar-a-Lago who have never "served in the U.S. military or government" are "exerting sweeping influence" on the regime's policies for veterans.

*****

https://www.dcreport.org/2018/07/20/the-federal-deficit-mulvaney-says-the-congressional-budget-office-was-right-after-all/

The Federal Deficit: Mulvaney Says The Congressional Budget Office Was Right After All CBO Comes In Lower Than The White House—Still, Both Numbers Are Really, Really Big ...Since Becoming Trump’s Office Of Management And Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney Has Viciously Attacked The Congressional Budget Office As A Highly Partisan And Substantively Inept Organization. He Has Repeatedly Questioned Its Economic Assumptions, Its Budget Analyses And The Politics Of Its Analysts.

[Chart]

CBO Said In Its Long-Term Budget Outlook Report Released Last Month That The 2018 Deficit Will Be $793 Billion; OMB Said In Its Just-Released Mid-Session Review Of The President’s Budget That It Will Be $890 Billion. For 2019, CBO Said The Deficit Will Be $973 Billion While OMB Said It Will Be $1.085 Trillion.For 2020, CBO Said $1.003 Trillion Compared To OMB’s $1.076 Trillion.And That Makes It More Than A Little Newsworthy That OMB, The Federal Agency Mulvaney Himself Directs And In His Mind Is A Paragon Of Bipartisanship And Objectivity, Released A Report Last Friday That Not Only Shows That CBO’s Numbers Were Substantively Good, It Also Shows That The Organization Mulvaney Had Attacked For Being Too Partisan Was More Optimistic About Where The Federal Deficit Is Headed The Next Few Years Than Trump’s Own Budget Director.

It’s Important To Note That OMB’s Numbers Are Based On What We Already Know Is A Complete Myth: That The Spending Cuts Included In The Trump Fiscal 2019 Budget Sent To Congress Earlier This Year Will Be Enacted. For The Second Year In A Row, The GOP Congress Has Shown No Interest Whatsoever In Adopting The Spending Cuts The President Proposed.

As A Result, The Disparity Between CBO’s Relatively Optimistic Deficit Estimates And OMB’s Comparatively Pessimistic Projections Is Most Likely To Get Larger.

OMB Director Mick Mulvaney Owes The Congressional Budget Office A Huge Apology.

To Be Fair, CBO And OMB Diverge In The Opposite Direction From 2022 Through 2028. But, Also To Be Fair, Everyone’s Budget Forecast Beyond Three Years Is Far More Guesswork Than Substantive Analysis Given That Its Multiple Congressional And Presidential Elections And Countless Natural And Man-Made Disasters Will Occur, And Long-Term Forecasts Of How Fast The Economy Will Grow (Or Not) Are Often Just Wishful Thinking Or Straight-Line Extrapolations.

In The Meantime, However, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney Owes The Congressional Budget Office A Huge Apology.

Stan Collender Is One Of The Leading Experts On The Federal Budget, Federal Spending And Revenues, The Deficit, The National Debt And The Congressional Budget Process. He Blogs Thebudgetguy

mofo: shuts down student debt cops;

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/05/02/alec-payday-loan-company-gets-reprieve-under-trump-administration

Corporate members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are benefiting from the deregulation frenzy of the Trump Administration. ALEC of course is the corporate bill mill that provides a library of lobbyist-drafted or approved “model legislation” to right-wing state lawmakers across the land.

Advance America is the largest payday loan lender in the United States, with 2,500 locations. The company did not return our call about its latest activities, but in 2014 Advance America was listed as a “trustee level” financial sponsor of ALEC.

The Trump administration’s treatment of Advance America and the predatory payday loan industry shows how the Trump teams “deconstruction of the administrative state” often pits the low income and working poor against giant companies, companies that enjoy the protection of the politicians who take their money.

CFPB CRACKS DOWN ON PAYDAY LENDING INDUSTRY

The Center for Media and Democracy has crunched the numbers and Advance America had over $40 million in class action lawsuit pay-outs, fines and restitution as a result of cases brought by state attorneys generals since 2009. The company was found to be cheating consumers by overcharging and ladling on the hidden fees. In some instances, when people authorize withdrawals from bank accounts to pay the loan, the banks will also charge fees.

This type of predatory lending prompted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the federal consumer agency championed by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Obama, to crack down on the industry.

Among other things, the CFPB issued a rule in 2017, that would have forced the payday industry to “reasonably determine that the consumer has the ability to repay the loan,” and would have prevented lenders from attempting to collect payment from people’s bank accounts in ways that racks up excessive fees. The rule also would have made payday loan companies notify consumers before attempting to withdraw payments from their account.

But when President Trump put Mick Mulvaney in charge of the CFPB, he literally put the fox in charge of the hen house.

MULVANEY WREAKS HAVOC AT CFPB

Advance America, owned by the Mexican conglomerate Grupo Salinas, has its U.S. headquarters in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Mulvaney’s old House district includes parts of Spartanburg.

By putting the rule on ice, Mulvaney helps Advance America and other payday lenders by allowing them to continue to lend short term money without any real credit check of borrowers.

Next he dropped the CFPB lawsuit against four predatory lenders who were unlawfully making loans with interest rates of an astounding 950 percent APR in at least 17 states. Mulvaney even wants to deep-six the critically important, public data base where consumers can register complaints against abusive financial firms, reports NPR this week.

There is a need for short term lending in times of economic distress for consumers and especially for those who are “unbanked”–do not have access to affordable community banks or credit unions in their neighborhoods–but the industry has a long history of charging excessive fees and interest rates, as much as 500% per year in some states, and then suing borrowers and garnishing wages for repayment.

Payday loans “trap borrowers in an unaffordable cycle of debt, causing severe financial harm such as bank penalty fees, delinquency on other bills, or even bankruptcy.” Mulvaney’s action “shows disdain for consumer protection and low-income communities that are targeted by these debt trap loans,” says the public interest group Stop the Debt Trap.

The history of state attorneys general lawsuits and class action claims against Advance America, summarized below, as well as the fact that almost all payday lenders do business in multiple states clearly shows the need for federal legislation, not just state oversight, which might be spotty in some states.

2018: Advance America forced to pay $160,000 to state of California and refund $88,000 to customers for charging above legal interest rates, and for using lead generators to find borrowers, a practice prohibited by California law.

2015: Advance America agrees to refund $8 million in loan fees and interest to Pennsylvania customers and write-off $12 million in loans, for exceeding state interest rate limits by charging excessive fees to get around the state interest rate cap. “We maintain that this company disguised its outrageous interest rates as fees, misleading consumers and violating the law,” former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane said. “Payday lending practices adversely impact vulnerable consumers and often force them into a cycle of debt from which many cannot recover.”

2010: Advance America settles a class action lawsuit in North Carolina by paying 140,000 customers $18.75 million in restitution. In both the class, the largest of its kind against a payday lender and the state Attorney General accused Advance America of charging excessive fees and fines.

2009: Advance America agrees to pay a minimum of $2 million to Georgia borrowers to settle all class action claims in the state. The average borrower would receive up to $90 to settle lawsuits that claimed the company violated state law by charging excessive fees to get around interest rate caps.

budget director and interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Mick Mulvaney made a stunning admission: While in Congress, he only met with lobbyists who gave him money. And he didn't just make this admission. He said it out loud in a room full of bankers and lobbyists while asking them for money. This is the sort of scandal that would be months long if it happened in any other administration. As it was, Fox & Friends ignored it and some pundits on CNN said that this type of scandal is just what happens in American politics. In fact, Fox News didn't even cover the scandal until Shep Smith did, nearly a day after it broke.=

OMB

promoted to primary 2/18 snap, evil pending

coup cfpb

Senate moved Wednesday to end an Obama-era policy that warns auto lenders against discriminating against people of color by charging them more on auto loans. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin joined Republicans in a 51 to 47 vote to overrule the policy by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—an agency that’s been assailed by Republicans since its creation in 2010. The House is expected to approve the bill and to send it to President Trump for his signature. The rule was adopted after a 2011 report by the Center for Responsible Lending found African Americans and Latinos disproportionately received interest rate markups more frequently and to a greater degree than their white counterparts.

Head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Asks Congress to Gut His Own Agency

He calls the bureau “the very definition of tyranny.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/the-head-of-trumps-wall-street-watchdog-just-asked-congress-to-gut-his-own-agency/

Before joining the Trump administration, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney made no secret of his dislike for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the agency created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to better supervise Wall Street.

As a congressman, Mulvaney proposed legislation to eliminate the bureau, calling it a “sick, sad” joke. Now as the Trump-appointed interim head of the agency, Mulvaney on Monday presented his first report to Congress on the work of the bureau, recommending four major changes to the CFPB’s structure, funding, and oversight, that would vastly weaken the consumer watchdog.

The report offers yet more evidence that Mulvaney is capitalizing on his temporary position atop the CFPB to bring years of proposals to undermine the agency to life.

“The bureau is far too powerful, and with precious little oversight of its activities,” Mulvaney writes in a blistering introduction. Mulvaney then cites the Federalist Papers, quoting James Madison on how overly powerful bureaucracies meet “the very definition of tyranny.”

While there are in fact many checks on the CFPB’s activity across all three branches of government, Mulvaney calls the CFPB’s current structure “a warning sign that a lapse in democratic structure and republican principles has occurred.”

Mulvaney makes a number of major policy recommendations in the report. While the CFPB is currently funded through a special appropriation from the Federal Reserve, Mulvaney suggests it instead be funded through the regular congressional budget process. The move would give Congress, and accordingly, whichever political party is in the majority, far more control over the bureau. He also asks Congress to pass a law requiring legislative approval of any CFPB rules. Since its inception in 2011, the CFPB has passed a number of rules aimed at curbing abusive practices by financial institutions, including new limits on payday lenders that are popular with consumers, and rules that helped the CFPB undertake enforcement efforts that have recovered millions of dollars on behalf of hundreds of thousands of consumers.

In a move that is likely related to the controversy surrounding Mulvaney’s own appointment this fall, the report also suggests Congress enact a law clarifying that the CFPB’s director must answer directly to the president. When the Obama-appointed CFPB director Richard Cordray stepped down from his post in November, Cordray, citing the 2010 law that established the bureau, appointed an interim director to succeed him. The Trump administration argued that, under a different federal law, Trump had the right to install his own interim director. A district court initially ruled in Trump’s favor, installing Mulvaney, but the battle is still winding through the courts.

Mulvaney also advises that Congress create an independent inspector general dedicated to overseeing the CFPB. Debbie Goldstein of the Center for Responsible Lending, a financial services watchdog group, calls the suggestion “a red herring” given that the CFPB is already overseen by an inspector general that also monitors the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established as an independent agency in order to buttress it from the enormous political pressures of the banking lobby,” said Goldstein in an emailed statement. “Mulvaney’s proposed changes would make consumer protection dependent on Congress and the White House standing up to the financial industry.”

The rest of Mulvaney’s CFPB report details the bureau’s work towards its enforcement and supervision missions. Most of the actions described took place from April through September 2017—when Cordray was still in charge.

...

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mick-mulvaney-bids-gary-cohn-farewell-anti-semitic-dog-whistle

months after watching Donald Trump praise some of the white nationalists in Charlottesville as "very good people," Gary Cohn resigned as chief economic adviser Tuesday, deciding the president's newly declared tariffs on steel and aluminum were his red line. That evening, Director of the Office of Budget and Management Mick Mulvaney thanked Cohn for his service as only a member of the Trump administration could: with an anti-Semitic dog whistle.

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While the term "globalism" has gained new currency since Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015, it has been a far-right conspiracy theory for the better part of a century, echoing the tropes of a fraudulent text titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Published in Russia in 1903 and disseminated across Europe and the United States, Protocols outlined a fabricated plot of Jewish global hegemony that has served as the basis for modern anti-Semitism.

Those decrying "globalists" similarly maintain that a shadowy cabal controls the news media, the banks and the federal government. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Ryan Lenz, “Globalism is a principal driver of the fears that animate the radical right in the United States. It is the enemy, ultimately.”

That a far-right ideologue and moral cretin like Mulvaney subscribes to this worldview is unremarkable. What is remarkable, and what makes his statement so foreboding, is that he has no compunction about sharing it.

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-acting-director-announces-chief-staff/

Washington, D.C. — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Acting Director Mick Mulvaney announced today that he has named Kirsten Sutton Mork chief of staff for the agency. Ms. Sutton Mork has been serving as staff director of the House Financial Services Committee under Chairman Jeb Hensarling.

"I am pleased to announce Ms. Sutton Mork as the new chief of staff at the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection," said CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney. "I worked with Kirsten during my tenure as a member on the House Financial Services Committee and can attest to her in-depth financial policy expertise, proven track record of developing and implementing strategic initiatives, and ability to manage a team. Kirsten brings with her more than a decade of invaluable experience that will advance the mission of the Bureau and make it more efficient, effective, and accountable."

Ms. Sutton Mork’s tenure on Capitol Hill spans the financial crisis and post-crisis legislative response. She staffed Hensarling during House Financial Services Committee, House and conference committee consideration of the legislation that established the Bureau, the Dodd-Frank Act, and she is intimately familiar with the Bureau’s statutory mission and obligations. She was appointed deputy staff director to the House Financial Services Committee in 2013 and became staff director in early 2017. Ms. Sutton Mork attended Wheaton College where she received a B.A. in communications.

Blue Apron but for the poor. On the heels of a $1.5 trillion tax cut for multinational corporations and the richest tenth of the 1 percent, it's a proposal so transparent in its contempt for lower-income earners that few public officials would consider it, much less pitch it to the public. Then again, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is not most public officials.

According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration aims to roll back the federal food stamps program, embracing what Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, calls a "Depression-era approach" to fighting hunger. Rather than receive paper coupons or credit toward an EBT card, as many as 81 percent of SNAP recipients would be issued "America's Harvest Boxes" approved by the USDA, each containing nonperishable food items like shelf-stable milk, juice, grains, cereals, pasta, peanut butter and beans, as well as canned meat, fruits and vegetables.

“What we do is propose that for folks who are on food stamps, part—not all, part—of their benefits come in the actual sort of—and I don't want to steal somebody's copyright—but a Blue Apron-type program where you actually receive the food instead of receive the cash,” Mulvaney told the White House press corps during a Monday briefing. “It lowers the cost to us because we can buy [at wholesale prices] whereas they have to buy it at retail. It also makes sure they're getting nutritious food. So we're pretty excited about that."

Where to begin? While a meal on food stamps costs $1.37, the average order from Blue Apron's meal-kit delivery service runs upwards of $10 per person. Blue Apron also allows its customers to purchase from a menu of eight meals, including fresh fish, meat and produce—a privilege neither the president nor his budget director believes the poor are entitled to.

Adding potential injury to insult, Mulvaney makes no mention of how the Harvest Box plan will address the individual dietary restrictions of millions of Americans. Nor does he explain how canned meats and produce, which are typically loaded with preservatives, will meet the nutritional needs of their recipients.

The proposal would likely upend the supermarket industry, with chains like Walmart, Target and Aldi losing billions in food stamp payments. Unsurprisingly, the Food Marketing Institute, a lobbying group for grocery stores, has called the boxed meals "expensive, inefficient and unlikely to generate any long-term government savings."

Blue Apron itself has not been without its detractors. As the Post notes, the company "saw its customer base contract in 2017. A recent report by the market research firm Datassential found that four in 10 lapsed meal-kit subscribers dropped their service because they were too costly."

The Trump administration's latest budget proposal is almost certainly dead on arrival. But as long as the GOP controls all three branches of government, no social welfare program is safe and no prospective cut is too shameless.

trump OMB recall dark arts of john graham etc

lcv 14/11% http://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/mick-mulvaney

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-gets-list-of-forbidden-words-fetus-transgender-diversity/2017/12/15/

We’re fully into Orwellian territory now. The Washington Post’s Lena H. Sun and Juliet Eilperin reportedFriday evening that a group of CDC employees were told not to use seven words in official budget documents: “vulnerable,” “fetus,” “transgender,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based.”

Twenty-four hours later, Sun and Eilperin followed up by reporting that another HHS agency received similar guidance about avoiding “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” and “diversity,” as well as instructions to use “Obamacare” instead of “Affordable Care Act.” Another linguistic substitution is visible at the State Department, where some documents now refer to “sexual risk avoidance” rather than “sex education.”

In a post at the Union of Concerned Scientists blog on Saturday morning, Michael Halpern wrote:

OMB says will maintain satellite GOES weather budget, but house, sen, trump want cuts.

...The calendars for Mick Mulvaney, the former South Carolina congressman who now runs the White House Office of Management and Budget, offer a glimpse of who has access to the highest levels of the Trump administration.

The Trump administration fought in court to block public records requests by Property of the People, a Washington-based nonprofit transparency group, to release the calendars as well as visitor logs from several other White House offices. Lawyers for the group ultimately prevailed and provided the documents to ProPublica, which we are posting in a searchable format.

As OMB director, Mulvaney is the driving force behind the president’s budget and influences regulations and government procurement. It’s been widely reportedthat he will become the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also has the ear of the president, who is reportedly a fan of Mulvaney’s performances on the Sunday political shows. The calendars, which cover February to September, typically don’t include details on what was discussed at the meetings. In some cases, the timing of contact with Mulvaney line up with OMB business.

The quickest way to get access to Mulvaney appears to be to hire his former congressional chief of staff, Al Simpson, who joined the lobbying firm Mercury in February.“The OMB director is a member of the cabinet and also a senior adviser to the president — because of that, the director often spends a ton of time in the West Wing,” said Kenneth Baer, who was senior adviser and associate director at the agency for several years of the Obama administration.

A Mercury spokesman said: “The firm fully complies with all registration and disclosure requirements when representing clients.” The OMB press office did not respond to requests for comment.

In July, Simpson and Koch Industries lobbyists Brian Henneberry and Raymond Paul met with Mulvaney.

In late February, Mulvaney had a call with Eugene Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court justice and a prominent lawyer at Gibson Dunn. At the time, Scalia was representing business groups that wanted OMB to delay the implementation of a regulation known as the fiduciary rule. Scalia didn’t respond to a request for comment. Many of his meetings with health care executives came as Republicans in Congress tried to repeal Obamacare.

...

https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/wh-complex

mtg logs

jim h

In the contest for “Most Awful Member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet,” you’d assume that Jeff Sessions, the bigoted twerp now serving as attorney general, would be a shoo-in. Suddenly, however, Mick Mulvaney has darted from out of the deepest, meanest darkness of severe right-wing dogma to become the new favorite for awfulest of them all.

Who? Mulvaney, a former tea party congress critter from South Carolina, was plucked from obscurity to become Trump’s budget director – and chief demonizer of America’s poor people. The budget he wrote for The Donald savages such effective anti-poverty programs as food stamps, Medicaid, and job training in order to pay for massive, unneeded, and unproductive tax cuts for America’s pampered 1-percenters.

But that’s not the only reason they want to clobber the poor, for Mulvaney sees himself as the wrathful enforcer of the Holy Work Ethic, a Dickensian character whose job it is to punish the poor for being, in his view, a morally bankrupt class of slothful moochers. The Trump budget is all about “compassion” he declaims – explaining that it shows compassion for the poor by compelling them to get a job in order to end their so-called “shame” of accepting public assistance, rather than “taking charge of their own lives.” Never mind that most able-bodied adults getting poverty aid already work or are looking for a job, Mulvaney mindlessly barks, “We need people to go to work.”

No, Mick, we need you to go get a clue about the harsh realities of living in poverty – including having to endure constant condescension from judgmental jerks like you who smugly condemn a food-stamp family while drawing a six-figure salary from taxpayers, plus health coverage, a rich pension, and a chauffeured limousine. Congratulations, you’re the awfulest of the awful.

“Trump Can’t Add Things Up,” The New York Times, May 25, 2017.

“Defending Cuts, and Misleading on Big Bird,” The New York Times,

“States Could Make Work a Medicaid Requirement Under G.O.P. Deal,” The New York Times, March 18, 2017.

“Work Requirement Ignites Fairness Debate,” The New York Times, May 24, 2017.

The White House released its budget request for the 2018 fiscal year on Tuesday, the Trump administration made good on its promise to target deep cuts to federal spending on climate, energy, science, research and other programs widely seen as critical to America’s ability to adapt to a warming world and reduce its impact on the climate.

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Tuesday that the government has been spending too much money on climate change and Trump’s proposed budget intentionally rebukes the Obama administration’s support for federally funded climate research.

“We want to do some climate science, but we're not going to do some of the crazy stuff the previous administration did,” Mulvaney said.

Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, has strenuously objected to the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas emissions regulations created by the Obama administration. His budget reflects his vow to hamstring the EPA’s ability to control and monitor climate pollution by cutting its budget by about 30 percent — more than any other agency.

The $4 trillion budget proposes massive tax cuts for the rich and major corporations while boosting defense spending and it attempts to pay for both with cuts to nearly everything else. The budget eviscerates Medicaid and other social safety net programs, eliminates federal arts support and slashes environmental programs that are unpopular with the administration and its supporters.***

Congressional hearings on the budget begin this week, and deliberations in the House and Senate are expected to last into the summer. If the process is not completed by September, lawmakers can pass continuing resolutions to keep the government operating into the next fiscal year, which begins in October. If no agreement is reached, the government will shut down.

Other big proposed cuts to federal climate, environment and energy programs that were outlined in the administration’s “skinny” budget in March are largely intact in the final version. Compared to 2017 levels approved by Congress in May, the budget calls for a 9 percent funding cut for the Department of Energy and a nearly 7 percent cut for the Department of Interior. NASA saw a cut of about 3 percent, including 8.7 percent from its earth science programs, and the National Science Foundation saw an 11 percent cut, according to the American Geophysical Union.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the government’s key climate science and meteorological agencies, is targeted for a 16 percent cut. NOAA’s climate research program received a 19 percent cut, according to AGU.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Climate and Land Use Change program, now known as the “Land Resources” program, is targeted for a 24 percent cut, and the agency, part of the Interior Department, is proposed to receive a 15 percent cut overall.

The cuts to NSF and USGS were particularly surprisingly large because their budgets have mostly stayed flat and haven’t been part of the more rancorous policy discussions, said AGU public affairs director Lexi Shultz.

The budget calls for numerous programs to be killed entirely, including the the EPA’s Energy Star Program energy efficiency program and the DOE’s National Sea Grant College Program. The Energy Star Program certifies consumer electronic goods and buildings for energy efficiency. And the National Sea Grant College program pays for university-based efforts to shore up coastal economies and communities against the ravages of climate change and extreme weather.

The Trump administration is calling for the elimination of four DOE energy research and development programs, including those focusing on energy efficiency, renewables, nuclear, and electric power grid modernization. Also targeted is the DOE’s Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy, which supports research for cutting-edge clean energy technology. Its tasks can be best handled by the private sector, the administration said.

Five climate-related NASA satellite missions are also targeted for elimination. The missions help scientists learn more about the earth’s climate system and how global warming is changing it. They also monitor the health of the nation’s coasts and provided early warnings of drought stress in crops.

Deeply unpopular with scientists, the budget is now in the hands of Congress, which is broadly expected to give the White House few of the cuts it is asking for. Congress ignored Trump’s call for deep cuts in federal programs when it passed a budget for the last five months of the 2017 fiscal year in early May, funding the government largely at 2016 levels.

“If the White House budget plan were to become law, it would devastate America’s science and technology enterprise,” Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former New Jersey congressman, told reporters Tuesday. “The White House does not make appropriations. It is Congress that makes appropriations. Congress has made it clear that they do not buy into this really harsh and abrupt approach to science funding.”

Shultz said Congress has pushed back against Trump’s previous budget proposal and it’s likely Congress will do so again.

If the cuts in the skinny budget had made it into law, they “would’ve really decimated the federal sciences,” and not just what the agencies do themselves, but in academia as well “because that’s where the grants come from,” Shultz, said.

Antonio Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, said UCAR is concerned that the proposed budget cuts for federal earth systems science programs will undermine scientific progress needed to protect the U.S. from natural disasters.

“This would have serious repercussions for the U.S. economy and national security, and for the ability to protect life and property,” he said.

Danny Cullenward, an energy economist at Stanford University, said the proposed budget is an attack on the integrity of both U.S. environmental protection and the nation’s leadership in energy innovation.

“The proposed budget includes massive cuts to national environmental remediation programs, earth sciences, and basic energy research,” he said. “At a time when advanced science and technology is so important to solving our national challenges, this budget would force the United States’ smartest researchers out of public interest science.”

https://votesmart.org/candidate/60348/mick-mulvaney#.WSXSz-vyuM8

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 93% by Heritage Action for America (Positions)

05/12/2017

Endorsed: Mick Mulvaney was endorsed by Humane Society Legislative Fund

03/29/2017

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 88% by The John Birch Society (Positions)

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 15% by Humane Society Legislative Fund (Positions)

03/17/2017

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 96% by The Club for Growth (Positions (Lifetime))

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 94% by The Club for Growth (Positions)

03/16/2017

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 91% by National Taxpayers Union (Positions)

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 100% by National Right to Life Committee (Positions)

03/13/2017

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 0% by NARAL Pro-Choice America (Positions)

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 100% by Eagle Forum (Positions)

03/10/2017

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 100% by Campaign for Working Families (Positions)

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 73% by Americans for Prosperity (Lifetime Score)

03/08/2017

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 100% by Americans for Prosperity (Positions)

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 22% by American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) (Positions)

03/01/2017

Endorsed: Mick Mulvaney was endorsed by National Federation of Independent Business

02/22/2017

Rating: Mick Mulvaney was rated 100% by FreedomWorks (Positions)

https://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/60348/mick-mulvaney#.WSXUFuvyuM8

Finance/Insur/RealEst $478,139.00

Misc Business$90,120.00

Other$86,792.00

Construction$64,400.00

Ideology/Single-Issue$62,951.00

Lawyers & Lobbyists$62,860.00

Health$54,520.00

Energy/Nat Resource$39,900.00

Transportation$39,185.00

Communic/Electronics$26,790.00

Agribusiness$25,175.00

Labor$5,000.00

Defense$3,775.00

Finance/Insur/RealEst$478,139.00Misc Business$90,120.00Other$86,792.00Construction$64,400.00Ideology/Single-Issue$62,951.00Lawyers & Lobbyists$62,860.00Health$54,520.00Energy/Nat Resource$39,900.00Transportation$39,185.00Communic/Electronics$26,790.00Agribusiness$25,175.00Labor$5,000.00Defense$3,775.00

Cycle2016

Total Raised$1,124,593.74

Total Spent$1,170,967.21

Cash On Hand$156,797.36

Debt$0.00

Data provided by OpenSecrets.org

NVR Inc$16,200.00Capital Corp$14,100.00Element Electronics$13,500.00CM Tucker Lumber Companies$12,800.00Sella Dev$10,800.00Delta Air Lines$10,200.00Duke Energy$10,050.00American Bankers Assn$10,000.00American Institute of CPAs$10,000.00Ernst & Young$10,000.00

http://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-budget-chief-mark-mulvaney-loves-gold-and-bitcoin-2016-12

...President-elect Donald Trump's federal budget is a big believer in gold, according to financial disclosures.

Mick Mulvaney, Trump's pick to lead the Office of Budget and Management, owns significant amounts of precious metals and gold-mining stocks based on financial disclosures compiled by Bloomberg.

According to the filings, Mulvaney held $50,000 to $100,000 in precious metals at the end of 2015. In addition, the South Carolina congressman holds stock in numerous gold and silver mining corporations totaling $252,000 to $855,000, according to the filing.

Bloomberg found that Mulvaney had sold significant amounts of the gold miners' stock in early 2016, citing financial filings from the end of June.

The heavy investments into gold is not surprising given past criticism by Mulvaney of the Federal Reserve. In a speech obtained by Mother Jones, Mulvaney told the John Birch Society, a group that believes the only legal forms of currency are gold and silver coins, that the Fed had "effectively devalued the dollar" and "choke[d] off economic growth."

In the same speech, Mulvaney also praised bitcoin, saying the cryptocurrency could not be "manipulated" by the government.

Gold-mining stocks have had an up-and-down year. VanEck's Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF — the largest gold-mining sector exchange-traded fund in which Mulvaney had an investment ($15,001 to $50,000) — is up 45% year-to-date but is down roughly 35% from its 2016 high in August.

The dollar has strengthened by a little over 5% since the US presidential election, while gold has fallen by roughly 10%. Bitcoin has been surging in the past week, hitting its highest level since November 2013 on Thursday.

wapo

It’s not the sexiest White House job. But it might soon be among the most dangerous.

Over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump tapped Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) to be his director of the Office of Management and Budget. This Cabinet-level post is responsible for producing the federal budget, overseeing and evaluating executive branch agencies and otherwise advising the president on fiscal matters. It’s a position with tremendous, far-reaching power, even if the public doesn’t pay much attention to it.

Which is why it’s so concerning that Trump chose Mulvaney, who seems poised to help Trump ignite another worldwide financial crisis.

Mulvaney was first elected to Congress in 2010 as part of the anti-government, tea party wave. A founding member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, he is among Congress’s most committed fiscal hawks. He has repeatedly voted against his own party’s budget proposals because they were insufficiently conservative.

All this will presumably put him at odds with Trump’s plans to balloon federal deficits through a $7 trillion cut in individual and corporate income taxes, another half-trillion in infrastructure subsidies and other major spending expansions.

[The new OMB director’s first order of business? Standing up to Trump.]

It’s unclear how Trump’s fiscally profligate platform meshes with Mulvaney’s preference for penny-pinching. He might push back on Trump’s most expensive ideas. Maybe he’ll employ accounting gimmicks and magic asterisks to force Trump’s numbers to add up. Trump’s campaign advisers have already been doing this, disingenuously claiming that his policies will pay for themselves through unrealistic economic growth.

Or maybe Mulvaney’s job will simply be to convince the rest of the Freedom Caucus to stay mum when deficits explode.

Whatever their differences on line-item details, though, Mulvaney and the president-elect have at least one major thing in common: an alarming openness to defaulting on the federal debt.

As you may recall, during the campaign Trump repeatedly flirted with the idea of defaulting on U.S. debt obligations. In a CNBC interview in May, he suggested that his experience in offloading private debt would translate nicely to federal obligations. That is, he’d simply persuade the country’s creditors to accept less than full payment.

“I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed you could make a deal,” he said.

When the financial press freaked out, he walked back the language — only to revive it a month later.

Mulvaney has also questioned the need to preserve the country’s sterling reputation as a borrower.

He ran for Congress promising to never raise the country’s debt ceiling, and he has mostly kept to that pledge. Since taking office in January 2011, he has voted against (ultimately successful) legislation to raise this ceiling four times. He also publicly questioned whether failing to raise the ceiling would be such a bad thing, and whether it would necessitate defaulting on our debt.

To be clear: It would, and it would.

Raising the debt ceiling is about enabling the federal government to make payments that have already been promised, not new spending. Refusing to increase this limit would call into question the country’s creditworthiness.

Set aside the fact that this flippancy about making full and timely payments on our debt would likely violate Section 4 of the 14th Amendment. That’s the part of the Constitution that says that the “validity of the public debt of the United States .?.?. shall not be questioned.”

From a purely financial perspective, it would be ruinous.

[Donald Trump is serious about smashing GOP orthodoxy]

U.S. Treasurys, currently considered risk-free, are the benchmark of the global financial system. They enjoy safest-of-safe status precisely because creditors believe they’ll be paid back in full. Rattling the public’s faith in our creditworthiness would set off a crisis throughout the world.

And of course this would also make it more expensive for the United States to borrow, causing our debt to swell further.

One might hope that once Mulvaney adopts his new role, he’ll become more cautious about encouraging default. That seems optimistic, though, given that, as budget expert Stan Collender put it, Mulvaney will probably be the most ideological and least-qualified OMB director in decades.

Our best bet is that the two Goldman Sachs alumni taking White House roles (including Treasury secretary, the post directly responsible for managing the public debt) can explain to Trump why these kinds of actions would blow up the world,

Let’s just hope they’re the ones he listens to when the time comes.

no links

OMG

policy from pov of taxpayer (bs) jusge effectiveness of safety net pgm by how many ppl we boot?!

budget cuts foodstamps

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/15-heartless-proposals-trumps-budget

...But inside the right-wing bubble that is the Trump White House and GOP-majority Congress, what’s taken as serious policy ideas, spending principles and rationales for the president’s 2018 budget is reality-averse craziness.

Even as budget watchers say there’s no way Trump’s blueprint will make it through Congress, the starting line—before compromises, concessions and deals begin—is not just mean, cruel and uninformed; it’s delusional. Not only would the budget hit working-class white voters who bet on Trump like a lottery ticket, but the budget also shows a White House living in a land of make-believe.

Don’t take my word for it. Here are 15 excerpts from the transcript of White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney’s briefing Tuesday. The excerpts reveal this crew lives in a land where red ink bleeds, but people don’t; where the only deserving Americans are those who served in the military, not the poor, disabled, hungry nor fixed-income seniors; and where freezing health care spending isn't seen as a cut, even if the marketplace keeps jacking up prices year after year.

There have been many credible, lucid and analytical comments about this proposed budget, but sometimes it's important to listen to what the actual authors say, as it is revealing about their thinking and values—or the lack thereof. Take a look.

This isn’t a budget, it’s dressed-up tax cuts. Mulvaney said as much at the start of his press briefing. “The name on the cover is ‘The New Foundation for American Greatness.’ As I read through it over the weekend, as I did—in fact, we've been working on this since before I actually got here—it struck me that the title should have been different; that the title should have been, "A Taxpayer-First Budget." Because that's what this is... We looked at this budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the bills.”

If they’re hurting people, well, that’s compassion. The George W. Bush administration used to label itself the “compassionate conservatives.” The Trump administration has updated that by saying government needs to take pity on taxpayers, not the recipients of government benefits—even if they are people who have paid taxes for years! “Compassion needs to be on both sides of that equation. Yes, you have to have compassion for folks who are receiving the federal funds, but also you have to have compassion for the folks who are paying it. And that is one of the things that is new about this president’s budget.”

Yes, that's more than $800 billion in future cuts they're touting. The Obamacare repeal passed by the House takes more than $800 billion out of future Medicaid spending over the next decade. Mulvaney says that will help treat the needy better: “Everyone is interested in seeing the truly needy in their state and in our nation get the care that we promised them in Medicaid. But there's a better way to do it than under current law, which is Obamacare. We can also talk about what a failure that is. But there's a better way to do it, and that's what the American Health Care Act does.”

They could collect half a trillion in taxes, but will cut safety nets. This exchange from the Q&A part of Mulvaney’s press conference is stunning, as the White House budget director said there are hundreds of billions in uncollected taxes out there, but they don’t think it’s a good thing to collect the funds.

Mulvaney: “The tax gap is the amount of money that we should collect in taxes every single year, but don’t. 2016—that number is $486 billion. Almost enough to close the deficit that year. And we don’t assume an additional penny of that being closed as part of our tax reform. Why is that important? There's probably two reasons that people—well, three reasons people don’t want to pay tax. Number one, they just don’t pay tax, and there's always a certain number of people who don’t want to do that. Number two, it's just too hard for them to do it. It's too complicated for them to do it. Two reasons. Now I feel like I'm a Monty Python skit. But two reasons. And we think that—”

Question: “Airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.”

Mulvaney: “Exactly. That if it's a simpler tax code, that people are more likely to pay. That simply makes sense. If you can really fill out your tax reform—tax returns on a single piece of paper, you're much more likely to actually do it. It's also easier for us to see if you're paying the right amount. A simpler code is easy for you to pay and easy for the government to see if you're paying the right amount, which would allow us very reasonably to assume a reduction in the tax gap. And we don’t do a single penny of that.”

The EPA cuts are anti-climate science, but that's not anti-science! Huh? Here, Mulvaney said the Obama administration was overreacting to climate change and the only way to stop that was to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency. “What I think you saw happened during the previous administration is the pendulum went too far to one side, where we were spending too much of your money on climate change and not very efficiently. We don’t get rid of it here. Do we target it? Sure. Do a lot of the EPA reductions aimed at reducing the focus on climate science? Yes. Does it mean that we are anti-science? Absolutely not. We're simply trying to get things back in order to where we can look at the folks who pay the taxes, and say, look, yeah, we want to do some climate science, but we're not going to do some of the crazy stuff the previous administration did.”

...

. People on SSDI—disability—are not really on Social Security and not really disabled. Trump promised older voters would not touch Social Security or Medicare, but Mulvaney says recipients of Social Security’s disability assistance are not really on Social Security and are just lazy and trying to avoid work. “Social Security disability. It is a welfare program for the long-term disabled. It is not what most people would consider to be Social Security... There are people who are getting SSDI who should not be getting it.”

Same with food stamps; people pretend to be hungry. This is unbelievable, pretending that there is no such thing as hunger in America, because national economic statistics are saying we’ve emerged from the 2008 recession. “During bad economic times, more people will go onto food stamps. So it's completely within reason to look at that number—it went from 28 million on food stamps before the recession to 47 million at the height. It's 44 or 42 today. Yet here we are, eight years removed from the end of the recession. We've had economic growth, albeit slow. We're at what we consider to be full employment… Why is the number still that high?

The White House’s Right-Wing Bubble

The release of the White House’s proposed FY 2018 budget, for the year starting October 1, has prompted plenty of serious analyses—including some saying its assumptions fall apart if its 3 percent growth prediction is off. But those mainstream analyses are playing along as if this is a serious proposal grounded in grown-up governing. It’s not. Mulvaney, you may have noticed, did not discuss real details from federal programs to be fine-tuned.

This is another dressed-up version of the only thing this administration wants to do—cut taxes for the rich and make an army of contractors rich via privatization. This budget stops government revenues and blows up federal programs, leaving it up to states to clean up the mess. At the end of the briefing, Mulvaney was again asked by a reporter about cutting food stamps. Only on Monday did NPR air a report on how hunger was widespread throughout Appalachia and in many states that voted for Trump.

“Folks who are out there who are on food stamps and want to work, we'll be able to work with them to solve the problem,” he replied. “They are not what’s causing the difficulties in SNAP [food stamps]. It's the folks who are on there who don't want to work. And that's what we're trying to point out to people is, look, if there’s 44 million people on there, eight years from the end of the recession, maybe, maybe it's reasonable to ask if there are folks who are on there who shouldn’t be. That is a reasonable question to ask. I would even suggest to you it's a compassionate question to ask.”

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/16/515578360/senate-narrowly-confirms-mulvaney-as-trumps-nominee-for-omb-director

Rep. Mick Mulvaney, President Trump's pick to lead the White House's Office of Management and Budget, won a close confirmation vote in the full Senate on Thursday, two weeks after the Senate Budget Committee advanced the South Carolina Republican's nomination by a 12-11 vote.

In a back-and-forth voice vote, the tally was 50-47 when Sen. Mitch McConnell's name was called. His "aye" vote sealed the nomination with 51 senators in favor. As the votes rolled in, groups of Democrats and Republicans huddled on the Senate floor, locked in conversation.

Immediately after the vote, McConnell took the floor to begin consideration of another Trump nomination — that of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt for the post of U.S. EPA administrator.

Democrats who opposed Mulvaney's nomination spoke of his view that Social Security and Medicare must be overhauled — a move that, as NPR's Scott Horsley reported last month, Trump promised not to undertake.

At least one Republican — Sen. John McCain of Arizona — had said he would vote against Mulvaney's confirmation, in a move McCain said was based on the congressman's position on defense spending. In the past, McCain also faulted Mulvaney for his role in the 2013 government shutdown.

Mulvaney "is a prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of around 40 conservatives that grew out of the Tea Party movement," as we reported when his nomination was announced.

In the House, Mulvaney played a prominent role in the shutdown of the federal government over a budget impasse in late 2013. He had advocated for a similar shutdown back in 2011.

Mulvaney's confirmation follows a setback for Trump: On Wednesday, his labor secretary nominee, fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, withdrew his name from consideration after failing to get enough support from Republicans.

Feb. 16, 2017

Will Mulvaney Drop His Anti-Government Extremism at OMB?

Statement of Lisa Gilbert, Director, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division

Note: Today, the U.S. Senate voted to approve President Donald Trump’s nominee to direct the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.). The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards and 52 groups opposed the nomination. OMB coordinates the president’s legislative proposals and polices, proposes and implements the federal budget, oversees executive branch departments and agencies as well as federal procurement, manages the regulatory process, implements executive orders and much more.

Anti-government extremism has no place at OMB. As a South Carolina congressman, Mulvaney was a proud ringleader of government shutdowns and default threats and an outspoken advocate for steep cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. But as he repeatedly acknowledged in his confirmation hearings, those views are fundamentally incompatible with his new role as White House budget director. Mulvaney now must demonstrate that he can set aside his past as a radical and practice responsible governance.

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/the-worse-anti-science-nonsense-of-2016/

The climate-denying cabinet

Trump has loaded up his incoming administration with officials who, to varying extents, share his views on climate change. Vice President-elect Mike Pence once called global warming a “myth,” though he now acknowledges that humans have “some impact on climate.” Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency, wrote in May that “scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.” Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry once alleged that “a substantial number” of climate scientists had “manipulated data.” Trump’s interior secretary nominee, Ryan Zinke, believes that climate change is “not a hoax, but it’s not proven science either.” Ben Carson (see above) is slated to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an agency facing serious challenges from global warming. Mulvaney, the incoming White House budget director, has said we shouldn’t abandon domestic fossil fuels “because of baseless claims regarding global warming.” Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions claimed in 2015 that predictions of warming “aren’t coming true.”

Trump’s budget director isn’t sure the government should fund Zika research

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), Donald Trump’s choice to head the White House Office of Management and Budget, isn’t just a global warming denier. As Mother Jones reported, he recently questioned whether the government should even fund scientific research. In September, Mulvaney took to Facebook to discuss the congressional showdown over urgently needed funding for the Zika epidemic — money that would pay for mosquito control, vaccine studies, and research into the effects of the virus. (Among other disputes, Republicans sought to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving Zika funds.)

“[D]o we need government-funded research at all[?]” wrote Mulvaney in his since-deleted post. Even more remarkably, he went on to raise doubts about whether Zika really causes microcephaly in babies. As Slate’s Phil Plait noted, “There is wide scientific consensus that Zika and microcephaly are linked, and had been for some time before Mulvaney wrote that.”

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Mick_Mulvaney.htm

Rated 0% by UFCW, indicating a pro-management voting record. (May 2012)

"Mick" Mulvaney (born July 21, 1967) is an American politician who has been the U.S. Representative for South Carolina's 5th congressional district since 2011. He is a member of theRepublican Party. Mulvaney previously served as a member of the South Carolina Senate, representing the 16th district (Lancaster and York Counties),[1][2] from 2009 to 2011. He is the first Republican to represent South Carolina's 5th district since 1883.[3]

1 Early life, education, and early career

2 South Carolina legislature

2.1 State House

2.2 State Senate

3 U.S. House of Representatives

3.1 Elections

3.2 Committee assignments

3.3 Caucus memberships

4 Personal life

5 References

6 External links

Early life, education, and early career[edit]

Mulvaney was born in Alexandria, Virginia and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina before moving to Indian Land, South Carolina. Mulvaney attended 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 Georgetown 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 law degree in 1992.[4]

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. In addition, he had been a minority shareholder and Owner-Operator in Salsarita's Fresh Cantina, a privately held regional restaurant chain.[5]

South Carolina legislature[edit]

State House[edit]

Mulvaney was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2006, becoming the first Republican ever elected to that position in his district.[6]

State Senate[edit]

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.[7]

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.[8] 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.[9]

U.S. House of Representatives[edit]

Elections[edit]

2010

See also: United States House of Representatives elections in South Carolina, 2010#District 5

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. During the campaign, Mulvaney's involvement in the now defunct Edenmoor real estate development in Lancaster County, South Carolina came to public attention.[10] Mulvaney's opponents alleged that Mulvaney misled the Lancaster County council and taxpayers to provide some $30 million in public funding for the Edenmoor 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 substantial profit.[11][12] Mulvaney denied the allegations and claimed that the project's failure was due to Democratic economic policies.[11]Mulvaney defeated Spratt, who had held the seat since 1983; he received 55% of the vote to Spratt's 45%.[13]

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.[14]

2012

See also: United States House of Representatives elections in South Carolina, 2012#District 5

He won re-election to a second term, by defeating Democrat Joyce Knott 56%-44%.[15]

Committee assignments[edit]

Committee on Financial Services

Committee on Small Business

Subcommittee on Healthcare and Technology

Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access

Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce (Chairman)

Caucus memberships[edit]

Republican Study Committee

Tea Party Caucus

Personal life[edit]

He is the son of Mike and Kathy Mulvaney and has two siblings. Mulvaney married Pamela West in 1998; they have three children (a set of triplets).[16]

References[edit]

Jump up^ "Mick Mulvaney Advances to 'On the Radar'". National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). 6 January 2010. Retrieved 10 August 2010.

Jump up^ Chris Cillizza (21 July 2010). "Lindsey Graham's vote on Elena Kagan ensures primary challenge". Political news and analysis. The Washington Post Company. Retrieved 10 August 2010.

Jump up ^{http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/print-edition/2011/04/08/a-freshmans-view-of-washington.html}

Jump up^ "Sen. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC 16th District)". Congress.Org. Retrieved 10 August 2010.

Jump up^ "Sen. Mick Mulvaney latest Salsarita's franchisee". FastCasual.Com. 23 March 2009. Retrieved 10 August 2010.

Jump up^ "Mick Mulvaney". Catholicvote.org. Retrieved 2012-05-28.

Jump up^ "It's Spratt v. Mulvaney in SC-05". WolfeReports.Com. Retrieved 10 August 2010.

Jump up^ www.palmettofamily.org[dead link]

Jump up^ "The Club for Growth". VoteSmart.Org. Retrieved 10 August 2010.

Jump up^ Collins, Jeffrey (October 8, 2010). "Congressman attacks opponent over land deal". Aiken Standard. Associated Press.

^ Jump up to:a b Overman, Jenny (October 19, 2010). "Mulvaney refutes latest Edenmoor accusation". Rock Hill Herald.

Jump up^ Smith, Stanley (October 29, 2010). "Mulvaney & Edenmoor – I Was There". Herald Independent.

Jump up^ "2010 General Election". South Carolina State Election Commission. November 18, 2010. Retrieved 2012-05-28.

Jump up^ Weisman, Jonathan (July 17, 2012). "Tax-Exempt Group’s Election Activity Highlights Limits of Campaign Finance Rules". The New York Times. Retrieved July 21, 2012.

Jump up ^{http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=705214}

Jump up^ "About Mick". Mulvaneyforcongress.com. Retrieved 2012-05-28.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mick Mulvaney.

Congressman Mick Mulvaney official U.S. House site

Mick Mulvaney for Congress

Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Biography at Ballotpedia

Biography at NNDB

Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart

Congressional profile at GovTrack

Congressional profile at OpenCongress

Congressional profile at Roll Call

Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission

Financial information (federal office) at OpenSecrets.org

Financial investments (personal) at The Washington Post

Financial information (state office) at the National Institute for Money in State Politics

Issue positions and quotes at On the Issues

Legislation sponsored at The Library of Congress

Voting record at The Washington Post

Appearances on C-SPAN programs

Collected news and commentary at The Washington Post

Confused Republican thought the debt deal included money for Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

With all the dopey things said and done by intransigent Republicans in last week’s shitstorm of dopey intransigence, Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney earned his place right up there in the pantheon. When the 11th hour deal to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government was struck between Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, it did not have much trouble getting through both houses of Congress. But there were those Republicans deluding themselves that they could fight on.

Rep. Mulvaney of South Carolina was one—and among his objections? The deal, he said, included funding for Joseph Kony’s Uganda-based Lord’s Resistance Army. Now, that would be pretty evil if it were true. Kony is an exiled war criminal with a messianic complex known for kidnapping children, and turning them into sex slaves and soldiers who kill their own families. The funding, if Mr. Mulvaney had read a little closer, was a small amount earmarked to the Pentagon which is funding African troops trying to capture Kony and end his reign of terror and atrocity. Ohhhh...oops. It seems Sen. David Vitter isn’t the only Republican in Congress Harry Reid could legitimately claim was not playing with a full deck.

desmog

Credentials

B.S.F.S., Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (1989). [1]

J.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C. (1992). [1]

Background

John Michael “Mick” Mulvaney is a Representative from South Carolina. He was a member of the South Carolina state house of representatives from 2007 to 2009, member of the South Carolina Senate from 2009 to 2010, and elected as a Republican to the One Hundred Twelfth and to the three succeeding Congresses (January 3, 2011-present). [1] Mick Mulvaney was elected during the 2010 “Tea Party” wave.

He received a degree in international economics, commerce, and finance from Georgetown University and a law degree from the University of North Carolina. Before working in government, Mulvaney practiced law for several years and then joined his family's real estate business. [2]

Mick Mulvaney, chosen by President Trump to lead the Office of Management and Budget, is known as a budget “hawk” who has historically wished to cut federal spending. Mulvaney said he would restore budgetary and fiscal sanity […] after eight years of an out-of-control, tax-and-spend financial agenda” under the Obama administration. [3]

According to the League of Conservation Voter's “National Environmental Scorecard,” Mick Mulvaney has a lifetime score of 7%, and a 2015 score of 3%, with the majority of his votes classified as “anti-environment.”

Mulvaney has historically opposed funding for planned parenthood. In 2015, he called on House Republicans “to use every available tool to strip this organization [Planned Parenthood' of any and all taxpayer funds.”

He has called Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme,” a view that he did not renounce at his 2017 confirmation hearing. [4], [5], [6], [7]

Trump Pick as Director of the Office of Management and Budget

In December, 2016, Donald Trump selected Mick Mulvaney for the position of Director of the Office of Management and Budget. [8]

“He’s a tremendous talent, especially when it comes to numbers and budgets,” Trump said in a statement.

The Club for Growth applauded Trump's choice of Mulvaney as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, announcing that “The days of the White House producing massive, ridiculous budgets that are dead on arrival on Capitol Hill are over.” Club for Growth president David McIntosh described Mick Mulvaney as “a leader among economic conservatives, and the Trump Administration’s selection is a major victory for taxpayers and for all who want to see the downsizing of the federal government. […]” [9]

Mulvaney's nomination could face some challenges, given his disclosure that he failed to pay taxes for a household employee in the early 2000s. The Atlantic reported that He had failed to pay more than $15,000 in taxes, noting that such disclosures have threatened the nominations of high-profile presidential picks in the past. [10]

During his confirmation hearing, Muck Mulvaney made a number of statements at odds with the views of President Trump. For example, Mulvaney believed that tax increases could be on the table. Associated Press reported that Mulvaney said he would be open to increasing the amount of wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax, in addition to gradually raising the retirement age and other benefit cuts. While as a member of Congress Mulvaney had signed a pledge not to raise taxes, he has said “I will not be bound by that.” [11]

Stance on Climate Change

January 24, 2017

At his confirmation hearing as nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney said he did not believe climate change is a major risk. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) pressed Mick Mulvaney on his climate change views (video below): [12]

“Climate change driven partly by human-generated CO2 emissions is a huge risk ? agree or disagree?” Kaine asked.

After trying to avoid the question, claiming that climate change was not part of the responsibilities of the OMBdirector, Kaine still demanded an answer.

“I’m not asking about OMB. I’m off OMB now,” Kaine said. “Statement of fact, agree or disagree ? you’re gonna follow the facts ? climate change driven partly by human-generated CO2 emissions is a huge risk, agree or disagree?”

“I’m not convinced we’re at the point where we have to start to require American citizens to pay high prices ?” Mulvaney began to reply, before Kaine interjected.

“I’m just asking, do you agree with the fact. Is climate change driven by human-generated CO2 emissions a huge risk?” Kaine repeated.

“Yeah, I challenge the premise of your fact,” Mulvaney said.

2010

On his congressional bid website, archived in 2010, Mulvaney described climate change as “questionable science”: [13]

“Energy independence, green technology, and innovation is something we should pursue as a nation. However, we shouldn’t seek to accomplish that by taxing people based on questionable science. Neither should we ignore domestic energy resources – coal, natural gas, oil – because of baseless claims regarding global warming.

“I believe that making it easier to drill for and use domestic resources, build nuclear power plants, and develop new technologies is the best formula for ending the current energy regime, which essentially has us empowering governments and groups that are markedly anti-American.”

Key Quotes

September 9, 2016

Mother Jones reports that in a September 9 Facebook post, Mulvaney questioned whether the federal government should be spending any money on scientific research: [14]

“[D]o we need government-funded research at all,” he wrote. Mother Jones notes that Mulvaney appeared to have deleted his Facebook page since then. In his post, Mulvaney tries to justify his position on government-funded research by questioning the scientific consensus that the Zika virus causes the birth defect microcephaly. Mulvaney wrote:

“And before you inundate me with pictures of children with birth defects, consider this:

Brazil's microcephaly epidemic continues to pose a mystery – if Zika is the culprit, why are there no similar epidemics in countries also hit hard by the virus? In Brazil, the microcephaly rate soared with more than 1,500 confirmed cases. But in Colombia, a recent study of nearly 12,000 pregnant women infected with Zika found zero microcephaly cases. If Zika is to blame for microcephaly, where are the missing cases? According to a new report from the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), the number of missing cases in Colombia and elsewhere raises serious questions about the assumed connection between Zika and microcephaly.”

An image of the full post below:

[pix]

April 27, 2011

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Rock Hill, Mick Mulvaney declared: [15]

“Medicare as it exists today is finished.”

Top Campaign Contributors

According to data from OpenSecrets.org, Koch Industries was consistently a top donor to Mick Mulvaney and his related Leadership PACs. Duke Energy was another consistent backer. View top ten donors below, or see the attached spreadsheet for Mick Mulvaney's campaign donors by year (.xlsx). [16]

Contributor 2012 2014 2016 Grand Total

Blue Cross/Blue Shield $15,000 $30,500 $4,750 $50,250

Koch Industries $12,000 $18,000 $20,000 $50,000

American Financial Services Assn $5,000 $18,000 $15,000 $38,000

National Auto Dealers Assn $15,000 $10,000 $10,000 $35,000

Tucker Lumber $15,000 $13,200

$28,200

Duke Energy $8,000 $10,000 $10,050 $28,050

American Bankers Assn $7,500 $10,000 $10,000 $27,500

Credit Union National Assn $10,250 $10,000 $5,000 $25,250

Delta Air Lines $2,500 $12,100 $10,200 $24,800

American Society of Anesthesiologists $7,500 $10,000 $6,000 $23,500

Investment Co Institute

$12,000 $10,000 $22,000

Scana Corp $6,500 $9,000 $6,000 $21,500

CM Tucker Lumber Companies $2,500 $5,200 $12,800 $20,500

AFLAC Inc $5,000 $7,500 $7,500 $20,000

National Assn of Insurance & Financial Advisors

$10,000 $10,000 $20,000

Ernst & Young

$10,000 $10,000 $20,000

Key Deeds

January 24, 2017

Mick Mulvaney appeared for his confirmation hearing to become director of the Office of Management and Budget. Full video below: [17]

[vid]

During his confirmation hearing, Mulvaney said that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would need significant changes. Mulvaney said that he would not propose cutting Social Security or Medicare benefits for those already receiving them. [18]

“I’m not making my parents go back to work,” Mulvaney said. [18]

However, he also added that younger workers should expect to work longer than their parents.

“I think folks on Social Security and Medicare ought to be really worried,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. “The alarm bells should be going off right now.” [18]

Senator Bernie Sanders read quotes from Trump's campaign where Trump had said he would not cut the benefit programs.

“The only thing I know to do is to tell the president the truth,” Mulvaney said. “I have to imagine that the president knew who he was getting,” he added. [18]

On January 25, the Tea-Party-Affiliated FreedomWorks sent out social media advertising promoting Mulvaney as an OMBDirector pick. The FreedomWorks ad reads: [19]

“Yesterday, John McCain joined the Democrats to attack Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Trump's pick to head his OMB. This is wrong.

Call John McCain at 202-883-5773 and tell him to stand with you and support Rep. Mick Mulvaney for OMBright now.”

July, 2016

Mich Mulvaney spoke at an event hosted by the John Birch Society, an “ultra-conservative” group known for its continued emphasis on the communist threat and described by some as an embarrassment for the right, reported Mother Jones. [20]

Mulvaney's speech would address “the Federal Reserve's role in bailing out Europe.”

Mother Jones obtained audio of the speech, noting that Mulvaney proceeded to criticize the Federal Reserve, saying its actions have “effectively devalued the dollar” and “choke[d] off economic growth.” He praised bitcoin as a currency that is “not manipulatable by any government.” He told his audience, “You all put out some really good stuff and it's always interesting.” He said he was “looking forward to reading The Shadows of Power,” a 1988 book by James Perloff with the subtitle “The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline.” The book advances conspiracy theories about the New York-based think tank, alleging that it advocates “the creation of a world government.” After referring to this book, he told the crowd, “Keep doing it.” [20]

March 15, 2016

Mick Mulvaney introduced a bill, H.R. 4745, that would allow nuclear waste to be stored in interim storage facilities. While Mulvaney didn't specify where the interim site would be, he said the material should not stay in South Carolina or at power plants in other states. [21], [22]

Power plants “are in the power generation business,’’ he said. “They’re not supposed to be in the waste-management business. The whole idea is the best way to manage this stuff was to put it at one site.’’ [22]

August 13, 2014

Mick Mulvaney was one of 54 members of Congress to sign an letter to the House Leadership calling to end the Wind Production Tax Credit. [23]

“[W]e believe Congress should stop picking winners and losers and finally end the wind PTC,” the letter concludes. ” We applaud Chairman Camp’s leadership on this important issue and urge you to stand firm with him in opposition to extending this provision and allow the wind energy to compete on its own.” [23]

July 11, 2014

Mick Mulvaney was a co-sponsor of bill H.R.5078, which would prevent the expansion of the Waters of the United States. [24], [25]

May 12, 2011

Mick Mulvaney was one of those who voted “yes” on Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act (Bill H.1231). The bill would open up the outer Continental Shelf to drilling, an area containing an estimated 2.5 billion barrels of oil, and more than 7.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. [26], [27]

April 7, 2011

Mick Mulvaney voted “yes” to bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. From the congressional summary, the Energy Tax Prevention Act (Bill H.910): [28], [29]

Excludes GHGs from the definition of “air pollutant” for purposes of addressing climate change.

Exempts from such prohibition existing regulations on fuel efficiency, research, or CO2 monitoring.

Repeals and makes ineffective other rules and actions concerning GHGs.

July 27, 2010

Mick Mulvaney signed the “No Climate Tax” pledge (PDF) sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the National Taxpayers Union, and the Institute for Liberty. His pledge reads as follows: [30]

“I, Mick Mulvaney, pledge to the taxpayers of the State of South Carolina and to the American people that I will oppose any legislation related to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.” [30]

April, 2010

Mick Mulvaney was a signatory to the 2010 Contract from America, a legislative agenda put forward by the Tea Party movement and unveiled the day before Tea Party Protests scheduled to be held across the country on April 15, Tax Day. The contract took inspiration from the Contract With America, released by Representative Newt Gingrich and fellow Republicans in the 1994 midterm elections, reports The New York Times. [31], [32]

Oneof the contract's “agenda items” is to “Reject Cap & Trade” and “Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.” [33]

Contract from America describes itself as a “a grassroots-generated, crowd-sourced, bottom-up call for real economic conservative and good governance reform in Congress.” The Contract from America website launched in September 1, 2009 and the final contract was revised until it was released in April, 2010. According to their website, the contract received support from individuals from groups including FreedomWorks, National Taxpayers' Union, Liberty Central, American Solutions, Regular Folks United, and various tea party groups. [34]

“Founding Partners” listed on the Contract from America website include:

FreedomWorks

National Taxpayers Union

Americans for Tax Reform

American Solutions

FairTax

The Liberty Lab

Regular Folks United

Let Freedom Ring

The Heartland Institute

The Next Right

The Leadership Institute

Affiliations

Club for Growth — Endorsed Candidate (2010). [35]

House Freedom Caucus — Founding Member. The House Freedom Caucus advocated many principles supported by the Tea Party movement. [36], [37]

Tea Party Caucus — Member (2010). [38]

Social Media

Rep. Mick Mulvaney @RepMickMulvaney on Twitter.

Mick Mulvaney (2016 Campaign Page) on Facebook.

Mick Mulvaney's Facebook Page was taken down some time in 2016. Here is an archive of the page in 2012, and another in 2015.

Publications

Mick Mulvaney has published or co-published a range of Op-Eds and article. See some samples below:

“US News & World Report: Change is Good for Congress,” U.S. News & World Report, January 20, 2015.

Rep. Keith Ellison and Rep. Mick Mulvaney. ”Make Pentagon Savings Part of Budget Negotiations,” The Huffington Post, December 21, 2012.

“Op-Ed: How We Know the President Isn't Serious About Averting the Fiscal Cliff,” December 10, 2012.

“The president's tax math doesn't add up,” The Washington Examiner, November 4, 2011.

“Agencies stiffing small-businesses,” Politico, September 22, 2011.

“Cut, Cap, and Balance,” The State, July 20, 2011.

“Mulvaney: GOP Will Write Serious Budget Plan,” Roll Call, March 3, 2011.

Resources

“MULVANEY, Mick, (1967 - ),” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Archived February 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/Il74W

“Rep. Mick Mulvaney,” Conservative Review. Archived February 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/zxREj

“Trump picks budget 'hawk' Mick Mulvaney to lead budget office,” The Guardian, December 17, 2016. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/yZATW

“Representative Mick Mulvaney (R),” League of Conservation Voters. Archived February 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/9b1dR

“Rep. Mulvaney Leads Letter to House Leadership in Defund Planned Parenthood Effort,” United States Congressman Mick Mulvaney, July 29, 2015. Archived February 11, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/uYDJi

Ben Weyl. “Mick Mulvaney: What to watch,” Politico, January 24, 2017. Archived February 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/mBAaE

Michael McAuliff. “Trump’s Budget Nominee Still Thinks Social Security Is A Ponzi Scheme,” The Huffington Post, January 30, 2017. Archived February 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/78NOz

Michael D. Shear. “Trump Picks Mick Mulvaney, South Carolina Congressman, as Budget Director,” The New York Times, December 16, 2016. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/Ic6bN

Doug Sachtleben. “CLUB FOR GROWTH APPLAUDS CHOICE OF MULVANEY TO HEAD OMB,” The Club for Growth, December 17, 2016. Archived February 7, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/K32L3

Russell Berman. “Mick Mulvaney's Unpaid Taxes,” The Atlantic, January 18, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/1Bxhh

Associated Press. “Mick Mulvaney, Trump's OMB pick, faces questions at Senate hearing,” CBS News, January 24, 2017. Archived February 8, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/CnEgO

Daniel Marans. “Trump Budget Director Pick Does Not Believe Climate Change Is A Major Risk,” The Huffington Post, January 24, 2017. Archived February 7, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/8S0Lh

“Issues: Enough is Enough,” Mick Mulvaney. Archived July 22, 2010. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/ezh9P

Pena Levy. “Trump's Pick for Budget Director Isn't Sure the Government Should Fund Scientific Research,” Mother Jones, December 19, 2016. Archived February 7, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/xrUGQ

Jamie Self. “Mulvaney in York Co.: Budget a bipartisan mess,” The Herald, April 28, 2011. Archived February 11, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/yExXT

“Mick Mulvaney,” OpenSecrets.org. Data retrieved February 10, 2017.

Andrew V. Pestana. “Watch live: Mick Mulvaney's budget director confirmation hearing,” UPI, January 24, 2017. Archived February 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/H1Dxu

Stephen Ohlemacher. “Trump budget pick says benefit programs must be changed,“ The Seattle Times, January 24, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/Acvbm

“Yesterday, John McCain joined the Democrats to attack Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Trump's pick to head his OMB. This is wrong. […]” Facebook post by FreedomWorks, January 25 at 3:43 PM. Archived .png on file at DeSmog.

“Trump's Budget Director Pick Spoke at a John Birch Society Event,” Mother Jones, December 19, 2016. Archived February 8, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/9JE19

“H.R.4745 - Interim Consolidated Storage Act of 2016,” Congress.gov, March 15, 2016. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/t36Yn

“Mulvaney introduces bill to move nuclear waste,” The State, March 18, 2016. Archived February 17, 2016. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/0Z4sA

(Press Release). “54 Members of Congress Write House Leadership In Support of Concluding Crony System,” U.S.Congressman Mike Pompeo, August 13, 2014. Archived July 8, 2015. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/Gx7cF

“Summary: H.R.5078 — 113th Congress (2013-2014),” Congress.gov. Archived February 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/g6rZh

“Cosponsors: H.R.5078 — 113th Congress (2013-2014),” Congress.gov. Archived February 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/yPHa4

“FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 320,” Clark.house.gov, May 12, 2011. Archived February 8, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/wOG42

“H.R.1231 - Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act” Congress.gov. Archived February 8, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/coFI9

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