Senate Narrowly Confirms Mulvaney As Trump’s Budget Director

@reuters
Senate Narrowly Confirms Mulvaney As Trump’s Budget Director

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday narrowly confirmed South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney to serve as White House budget director in a 51-49 vote that largely followed party lines.

Underscoring the rocky reception that President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees have had on Capitol Hill, the vote came as Republican Senator John McCain opposed Mulvaney along with 46 Democrats and two independents.

McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Wednesday he was concerned about Mulvaney’s opposition to defense spending.

An outspoken budget hawk who has been branded by Democrats as a threat to popular social programs including Social Security and Medicare, Mulvaney entered the House of Representatives as a Tea Party candidate in 2011 and is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Democrats have also criticized him for failing to pay more than $15,000 in taxes related to a household employee until after he was nominated.

Mulvaney was narrowly approved earlier this month by both the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee, where McCain provided a crucial ‘yes’ vote to move the nomination forward.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Chris Reese and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Advertising

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

Narcissist Trump Disdained The Wounded And Admired The War Criminal

Former President Donald Trump, Gen. Mark Milley and former Vice President Mike Pence

We’ve long known who Donald Trump is: narcissistic, impressed with authoritarian displays, contemptuous of anyone he sees as low status, a man for whom the highest principle is his own self-interest. It’s still shocking to read new accounts of the moments where he’s most willing to come out and show all that, to not even pretend to be anything but what he is—and holy crap, does The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg have the goods in his new profile of outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley, which focuses on Milley’s efforts to protect the military as a nonpartisan institution under Trump.

Keep reading...Show less
Ben Wikler

Ben Wikler

White House

From Alabama Republicans' blatantly discriminatory congressional map, to the Wisconsin GOP's ousting of a the states' top election official and attempt to impeach a liberal Supreme Court justice, to North Carolina's decision to allow the majority-Republican legislature to appoint state and local election board members, News from the States reports these anti-democratic moves have all recently "generated national headlines" and stoked fears ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}