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Trump Names Mick Mulvaney Acting Chief of Staff Trump Names Mick Mulvaney Acting Chief of Staff
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced on Friday that he had selected Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, to serve as his acting chief of staff, temporarily halting a week of speculation about who would take over one of the most important positions in the federal government. WASHINGTON — President Trump announced on Friday that he had selected Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, to serve as acting White House chief of staff, putting a halt — at least for now — to his consideration of a parade of possible candidates, including several who turned him down, to take over one of the most important positions in the federal government.
Mr. Mulvaney, a hard-line conservative and former congressman from South Carolina, is a fiscal hawk who has produced budgets that cut federal spending only to see congressional Republicans and Democrats ignore them. In Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Trump made a safe choice for a Republican administration — a hard-line conservative and former congressman from South Carolina with a deep understanding of how Congress works and a personal chemistry with the president. Among some senior White House officials, Mr. Mulvaney had long been considered the “Original Plan B.”
He was more successful in a rare, dual-hatted role that Mr. Trump had given him, overseeing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he scaled back the mission, and in many ways neutered its influence, in keeping with the president’s view of the agency. Mr. Trump made the announcement on Twitter, one week after his first choice for the job, Nick Ayers, a Georgia political operative who is now Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, took himself out of the running, citing family considerations. The sometimes chaotic search process that went on in between served as another measure of the often frenetic manner of decision making in the Trump White House.
Still, unlike the two others who have served as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, he brings an understanding of the intersection between the White House and Congress. “For the record,” the president tweeted later Friday evening, “there were MANY people who wanted to be the White House Chief of Staff. Mick M will do a GREAT job!”
[Chris Christie took himself out of the running for the job of White House chief of staff.] At the beginning of the week, the president said there were 10 to 12 candidates actively vying for the position, but that list seemed to shrink by the day during what was often a highly public audition. Just hours before the announcement about Mr. Mulvaney, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, whom the president was strongly considering, took himself out of contention.
Mr. Mulvaney emerged as the president’s choice for a position that, in other administrations, has been akin to the chief operating officer of the country, after high-profile announcements from others that they were not interested in the job to replace John F. Kelly. Mr. Kelly is set to leave the position by the end of the year. Mr. Trump met with members of his family and one of his top political advisers, Brad Parscale, before making his decision on Mr. Mulvaney.
On Friday, a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition on anonymity, said there would be no end date to Mr. Mulvaney’s role despite his “acting” title. For whatever period he serves, Mr. Mulvaney will be trying to succeed where John F. Kelly, the current chief of staff, and Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s first, struggled. Mr. Kelly is set to leave the White House by the end of the year.
While Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, was initially seen as someone who could work well with Democrats and Republicans, Mr. Mulvaney has a reputation as a sharp-elbowed partisan, who as both the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pursued a strongly conservative agenda.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said Mr. Mulvaney was “hardly the kind of peacemaker” needed to smooth relations between the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
“What he did at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was destroy an agency and undermine its mission,” Mr. Blumenthal said in an interview. “He seems to be a Trump surrogate with a clear agenda, and my fear is he will exacerbate divisions at a time when they need to be bridged.”
Last year, Mr. Trump asked him to oversee the consumer bureau, an agency the president was bent on diminishing. That led to a messy public spat and court hearing as the Trump administration wrested control over the financial watchdog from an Obama-era holdover.
Mr. Mulvaney quickly went to work on the president’s mission. He seemed to relish his role at the agency, where he tried to vastly curtail its activities, including virtually freezing new investigations and changing its well-known name in an attempt to unbrand it.
When he first took over, he promised to split his time between the budget office and the consumer bureau, which is within walking distance of the White House. But as the months dragged on, he spent less time at the bureau and toward the end of his tenure there employees reported seeing him no more than once or twice a week.
The White House said Mr. Mulvaney was not resigning from his job at the budget office, but would spend all of his time as chief of staff. He will turn over running the department to Russ Vought, the office’s deputy director, at a somewhat precarious time. The budget deficit widened to $305 billion in October and November, compared with $202 billion from the same period last year, the Treasury Department reported on Thursday.
During Mr. Trump’s first full fiscal year in office, which ended in September, the deficit surged to $779 billion, the largest since 2012, when the economy and federal revenues were still recovering from the depths of the recession. It is on track to hit $1 trillion before 2020.
The deficit has surged in large part because of Mr. Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut and the spending increases enacted by Congress, which have contributed to the government paying out more than it takes in. Mr. Trump has told federal agencies to start finding spending cuts to help reduce the deficit, a process that will require the budget office’s involvement.
Allowing such red ink to mount under his stewardship has been uncomfortable for Mr. Mulvaney, a self-proclaimed deficit hawk who envisioned enacting deep cuts across the federal government upon assuming the role of budget director.
Mr. Mulvaney, a golfer with a 7 handicap, has long sought to ingratiate himself with Mr. Trump, spending time with him on the president’s courses and proposing quick-hit, tweetable policy proposals to get Mr. Trump through a difficult news cycle. One such plan, ultimately abandoned, was an attempt to claw back $15.4 billion in domestic spending programs to placate angry members of the House Freedom Caucus.
Similarly, many of Mr. Mulvaney’s budget proposals have pleased Mr. Trump only to be rejected outright by his former Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, chose not to include Mr. Mulvaney in many of his budget negotiations, opting to work directly with Mr. Trump’s former legislative affairs director, Marc Short.
On Friday, a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there would be no end date to Mr. Mulvaney’s role despite his “acting” title.
“There’s no time limit. He’s the acting chief of staff, which means he’s the chief of staff,” the official said. “He got picked because the president liked him — they get along.”“There’s no time limit. He’s the acting chief of staff, which means he’s the chief of staff,” the official said. “He got picked because the president liked him — they get along.”
Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, took himself out of the running for the job on Friday, saying in a statement that he had asked to no longer be considered a day after he met with Mr. Trump at the White House about it. Mr. Trump did not offer it to him, but they had what was described as a good discussion. In withdrawing his name from consideration on Friday, Mr. Christie said in a statement that it was not “the right time for me or my family to undertake this serious assignment.” An old friend of the president who campaigned for him in 2016, Mr. Christie was summarily dismissed as Mr. Trump’s transition chief after the election and has been thwarted in getting the one job he has said he wanted — attorney general.
“It’s an honor to have the president consider me as he looks to choose a new White House chief of staff,” Mr. Christie said. “However, I’ve told the president that now is not the right time for me or my family to undertake this serious assignment. As a result, I have asked him to no longer keep me in any of his considerations for this post.” Another possible choice — and the only person who said publicly that he was interested in the job —Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, was ruled out on Tuesday by the White House, with Mr. Trump saying he preferred for Mr. Meadows to stay in Congress.
Mr. Trump’s first choice to replace Mr. Kelly, Nick Ayers, a political operative from Georgia who is now Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, turned down an offer from the president over the weekend and plans to leave the administration. Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who said publicly that he was interested in the job, was ruled out on Tuesday by the White House. Mr. Mulvaney was asked about his interest at a briefing with reporters at the consumer bureau in June, when the speculation was intense, and ultimately incorrect, that Mr. Kelly was about to leave the White House.
“If the president asks you to be chief of staff, the answer is yes,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “Do I think I would be good at it? I have no idea.”