Mick Mulvaney
John Michael "Mick" Mulvaney 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. Prior to his appointments to the Trump administration, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Mulvaney, a Republican, served in the South Carolina General Assembly from 2007 to 2011, first in the House of Representatives and then the Senate. He served as a U.S. representative for South Carolina's fifth congressional district from 2011 to 2017. He was nominated as OMB director by President-elect Donald Trump in December 2016 and confirmed by Senate vote on. While confirmed as OMB director, he served as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from November 2017 to December 2018, and as acting White House chief of staff from January 2019 until March 2020. After resigning as OMB director and acting White House chief of staff, he served as the U.S. special envoy for Northern Ireland from March 2020 until January 2021.
Mulvaney was known for his support for fiscal conservatism as a congressman, which included a willingness to shut down the government during Barack Obama's presidency. However, as OMB director in the Trump administration, he oversaw an expansion in the deficit. The deficit increases were a result of both spending increases and tax cuts, and were unusually high for a period of economic expansion. A staunch opponent of the CFPB while in Congress, Mulvaney's tenure as acting director of the bureau led to a considerable reduction of the bureau's enforcement and regulatory powers.
In January 2019, Mulvaney became acting White House chief of staff. In a White House press conference held on October 17, 2019, Mulvaney said the White House had withheld military aid in part until Ukraine investigated an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for hacking Democratic Party emails in 2016. Mark Meadows succeeded Mulvaney as chief of staff.
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. In 2022, Mulvaney was hired as an on-air contributor for CBS News. His hiring stirred controversy within the company due to his history of promoting Trump's false claims and attacking the press. He has since joined NewsNation and CNBC as a contributor.
Early life and education
Mulvaney was born in Alexandria, Virginia, to Mike, a real estate developer, and Kathy Mulvaney, a teacher. He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. He later moved to Indian Land, South Carolina. He has Polish and Irish ancestry, with roots in County Mayo, Ireland. He attended Charlotte Catholic High School and then Georgetown University, where he majored in international economics, commerce and finance. At Georgetown, he was an Honors Scholar of the Walsh 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 antitrust law. He earned a Juris Doctor in 1992.
Early career
From 1992 to 1997, Mulvaney practiced law with the firm James, McElroy and Diehl. Mulvaney joined his family's homebuilding and real estate business. He participated in the Owners and Presidents Management Program at Harvard Business School. He was a minority shareholder and owner-operator in Salsarita's Fresh Cantina, a privately held regional restaurant chain.South Carolina legislature
State House
Mulvaney was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2006.State Senate
In 2008 an unexpected retirement created a vacancy in the South Carolina Senate. 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 Woman's Ultrasound Right to Know Act, which required physicians to perform ultrasounds on pregnant women seeking abortions and inform them of the fetus' gestational age before performing the procedure.In 2010 he was named Legislator of the Year for his work in support of the State's Emergency Medical Services. He has received one of the few A+ ratings in the entire legislature from the South Carolina Club for Growth.
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections
2010Mulvaney, a GOP Young Gun, ran against Democratic incumbent John M. Spratt Jr. for. 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. Mulvaney's involvement in the now-defunct Edenmoor real estate development in Lancaster County, South Carolina became a campaign issue, with his opponents alleging that he misled the Lancaster County council and taxpayers to provide $30 million in public funding for the 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 $7 million profit. Mulvaney denied the allegations and said the project's failure was due to Democratic economic policies. He defeated Spratt, who had held the seat since 1983, with 55% of the vote.
Mulvaney's campaign against Spratt was aided by a 501 organization named the Commission on Hope, Growth, and Opportunity. The group, which was established by anonymous donors and run by lobbyist Scott W. Reed, was 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.
2012
He won re-election to a second term by defeating Democrat Joyce Knott 56%–44%.
2014
He won re-election to a third term by defeating Democrat Tom Adams, a Fort Mill Town Council member, 59%–41%.
Mulvaney co-founded the bipartisan Blockchain Caucus, "meant to help congressmen stay up to speed on cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies," and develop policies that advance them.
2016
Mulvaney faced Ray Craig in the Republican primary and defeated him 78–22%. Mulvaney was re-elected to a fourth term, winning over 59% of the vote against Fran Person, a former aide to then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Tenure
During his time in the U.S. House, Mulvaney aligned himself with the Tea Party movement. He is a founding member of the Freedom Caucus.He opposed gun control initiatives and the Affordable Care Act. In response to criticism for meeting with the paleoconservative John Birch Society in July 2016, Mulvaney said, "I regularly speak to groups across the political spectrum because my constituents deserve access to their congressman. I can't remember ever turning down an opportunity to speak to a group based on the group's political ideology."
Pay-to-play
In April 2018, Mulvaney told a room of banking industry executives and lobbyists that as a Congressman he refused to take meetings with lobbyists unless they contributed to his congressional campaigns. He said, "If you are a lobbyist who never gave us money, I did not talk to you. If you are a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you." At the top of the hierarchy, he added, were his constituents: "If you came from back home and sat in my lobby, I talked to you without exception, regardless of the financial contributions."Government shutdown
According to The New York Times, Mulvaney took "a hard line on spending during President Obama's term, vowing not to raise the nation's debt limit and embracing the term 'Shutdown Caucus' because of his willingness to shut the government down instead." In 2015, Mulvaney voted against a government-funding resolution, which would have prevented a government shutdown, in part because it included funding for Planned Parenthood. Explaining his vote, Mulvaney said, "This is not about women's health. It's about trafficking in pieces of dead children." After his appointment as head of the OMB in 2017, he reiterated his conditional position of support for a shutdown.Regulations
Mulvaney supported the Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015, which would have " a commission tasked with eliminating and revising outdated and redundant federal regulations".Fiscal year 2014 budget
On December 10, 2013, Republican Representative Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray announced that they had negotiated the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, a proposed two-year budget deal. The budget deal capped the federal government's spending for Fiscal Year 2014 at $1.012 trillion and for Fiscal Year 2015 at $1.014.The proposed deal eliminated some of the spending cuts required by the sequester by $45 billion of the cuts scheduled to happen in January and $18 billion of the cuts scheduled to happen in 2015. This did not decrease federal spending; instead, by reducing the amount of spending cuts the government was going to be forced to make by the sequester, it actually increased government spending by $45 billion and $18 billion over what would have been spent had the sequester remained in place. Some Republicans wanted Speaker John Boehner to pursue a temporary measure that would cover the rest of Fiscal Year 2014 at the level set by the sequester—$967 billion, rather than pass this budget deal, which would have $45 billion in additional spending.
The deal was designed to make up for this increase in spending by raising airline fees and changing the pension contribution requirements of new federal workers. According to The Hill, Mulvaney spearheaded opposition to the bill. He did not blame Ryan for the budget deal, instead saying the problem was that too few conservatives had been elected to Congress to pass a budget with a greater focus on debt reduction. Mulvaney said he expected the budget deal to pass because "it was designed to get the support of defense hawks and appropriators and Democrats", not conservatives.
On April 9, 2014, Mulvaney offered a proposal based on the Obama proposal as a substitute amendment in order to force a vote on the President's budget request. The President's proposal failed in a vote of 2–413, although Democrats were urged by their leadership to vote against this "political stunt".