Mick Mulvaney is firing back at Democratic critics of the White House’s plan to cut $15.4 billion in spending, including $7 billion in unspent funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, the Office of Management and Budget director calls Democratic objections to clawing back those unspent funds “hypocrisy in its purest form.”
Mulvaney notes that “Congress claws back unspent and unspendable funds all the time” and that Democrats recently voted to rescind $6.8 billion in CHIP funding as part of the spending bill passed in March — though those savings were used as offsets to other spending in the package. He adds that, counter to Democrats’ claims that the cuts would hurt children covered under the program, the Congressional Budget Office analysis found that the proposal would have no impact on the number of children insured. (The CBO also said that the $7 billion in CHIP rescissions wouldn’t affect the program’s spending, or lead to any real savings.)
“It’s fascinating to watch Democrats in Congress spin a good-government proposal into a message of grave concern,” Mulvaney writes. “In this instance, Trump is trying to return unspent government money to the taxpayers, while Democrats are demagoguing the effort as his attempt to hurt innocent children. ‘Never let facts get in the way of a political attack’ appears to be the Democratic mantra.”
Read Mulvaney’s full defense of the rescissions package here.
