OMB Director Mick Mulvaney took to the White House podium today to forcefully lay out what is really in the bipartisan funding bill and basically accused Democrats of lying to people. In fact he seemed pretty upset about it, suggesting in the beginning that Democrats coming out and spiking the football on this won’t bode well for future negotiations with them.
Watch:
Mulvaney points out what Republicans did get in the bill:
- 21 billion in additional defense spending. He said that’s made up of two numbers, 15 billion in an overseas contingency operation account and another 6 billion that is hardwired into the DOD appropriations bill.
- He then says they are getting 42 billion for border security, the largest spending on the border in 10 years.
- Every single 2nd amendment protection that Democrats wanted to get rid of, Mulvaney says is still in the bill. The same goes for pro-life protections.
- Mulvaney then points to the fact that they broke parity, saying for every 1 dollar of defense spending they only spent 20 cents domestically, and some of that was exactly the spending the administration wanted. He calls that a tremendous development for this presidency and a huge win from a negotiating standpoint.
- He also says they got more money for school choice.
- And lastly, while he says there is no money for brick and mortar in terms of building a wall, there is money for the administration to replace cyclone fencing with 20 foot high steel walls. There are also several hundreds of millions of dollars to build levy walls along the southern border which he says is absolutely necessary along our waterways.
As far as what the Democrats did NOT get in the bill that they wanted, Mulvaney lays them out here:
- There is NO Obamacare bailout money in this funding bill. He says the Democrats are lying about it because they told their base they would deliver it and they failed.
- There is NO new money for Puerto Rico. He said not a penny of the 295 million that Democrats got is new money. He said that money was already allocated under previous agreements and all they allowed Democrats to spend that money. The Democrats wanted new money but they refused to give it to them.
- There are NO renewable energy subsidies.
- Mulvaney points out that they wanted a shutdown and didn’t get it, that Democrats desperately wanted to make the administration look bad and look like it couldn’t function. But they didn’t get that either.
While I laid all of this out for you, I highly recommend you watch the video as the one thing I couldn’t communicate very well was just how forceful and adamant Mulvaney was about each of these issues. He’s clearly upset with Democrats and felt he needed to come out and tell the truth about what is in the bill.