President Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget said Tuesday that the large and growing national debt requires tough choices, and that he accepts that his job will be to deliver tough news to the White House.
“I don’t want to be alarmist, but the point of the matter is, we have allowed things to get in a bad situation, and now it will fall to us to make some very difficult decisions,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., told the Senate Budget Committee.
“What do I see my job, and why do I think I might be good at it?” he asked. “I see my job is giving some really, really hard facts to some really, really important people under very difficult circumstances.”
The national debt is nearly $20 trillion, which he called “unsustainable” in his prepared testimony. The federal government will have to decide what to do about it in mid-March, when the suspension of the debt ceiling expires. In March, the debt ceiling will be whatever the current level of debt is at the time.
To borrow more, the government will have to either suspend the debt ceiling again, raise the ceiling to a new, specific number, or, in theory, control government spending. Mulvaney, a noted fiscal hawk, indicated to senators that he’s open exploring ways to keep spending down.
“The fact is that historically, and this goes back to the Roosevelt administration, the debt ceiling was always used, and has regularly been used, as an opportunity for us to sit back and say, ‘now wait a second, why do we have to raise the debt ceiling again?'” he said.
“I will counsel the president as to the ramifications of raising the debt ceiling and of not raising the debt ceiling,” he added. “I feel like I have a grasp of both sides of that issue, and look forward to conveying all of the arguments so that he can make the best decision possible. And I will defend his position.”
