Saturday, December 17, 2016

CNBC — Trump's pick for budget director has urged big spending cuts

Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney, President-elect Donald Trump's choice as his budget director, is a fierce deficit hawk with a record of pushing deep spending cuts across the federal government to balance the budget.
Is DJT caving to Paul Ryan?

Maybe not.
Strongly anti-establishment, Mulvaney has supported cuts beyond what House Republican leaders preferred and has refused to back deals to raise the government's borrowing limit, more recently causing heartburn for current Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
What was that about Trump's big spending plans?
In a statement, Trump commended Mulvaney's strong voice in Congress who will get America's fiscal house in order.

"Right now we are nearly $20 trillion in debt, but Mick is a very high-energy leader with deep convictions for how to responsibly manage our nation's finances and save our country from drowning in red ink," Trump said.

Mulvaney said he looked forward to working with Congress to create policies that will be "friendly to American workers and businesses."

"The Trump administration will restore budgetary and fiscal sanity back in Washington after eight years of an out-of-control, tax and spend financial agenda," he said.
Bait and switch? Change of heart?

CNBC
Trump's pick for budget director has urged big spending cuts
Associated Press

8 comments:

Penguin pop said...

With loons like this being appointed, it's easy to see why Mike has been bearish lately. I also haven't been that optimistic about what will happen in the next year.

These people are antithetical to what Trump stated he would do. Will Trump somehow make them get with the program?

Six said...

Oops

Matt Franko said...

Trump has never exhibited any of our knowledge... ever...

The only way this kinda works is if he eliminates the external deficit but imo the ROW USD zombies are not ready for that cold turkey (probably not the US domestically either short term...) ... nevertheless he says he is going to do it...

Bannon has said post election: "we're going to throw some stuff up on the wall and see what sticks".... SCARY!!!!!

Ignacio said...

Trial and error... and they won't do things "because markets!" anyway (they believe in the santity of 'markets'). That's why i don't believe this curving the trade deficit is realistic or going to happen.

So if the last doesn't happen but at the same time they want to "balance budgets!" you know what is going to happen... This world wide regression to pseudo-gold-standard is going to push us to WWIII in a couple decades if it continues.

Pathetic and sad. Kudos to libertarians for winning the ideological battle (and dooming humanity in the process). The "we cannot do anything" is pure libertarianism and this is were this is heading.

Schofield said...

On the one hand Trump wants to raise tariff barriers to create more jobs for Americans and on the other hand he wants to cut demand supporting those jobs by balancing the government's account or worse running a surplus on it. This nonsense gets you elected as leader of your country, however!

Matt Franko said...

There are over $6T of USTs in possession of the foreign sector...

If he gets them (the zombies..) to start to come off of that hoard and buy US products seeking balanced trade plus, that could be an increase in USD flow intra-non-govt of $600B/yr for 10 years... 1.2T for 5 etc... eventually that pot will empty but it would take significant time....

Matt Franko said...

Not that he has evidenced he is looking at it that way... but imo he does look at all of those USDs the zombies have as "ours!" and he would like to "get even!" on it...

Tom Hickey said...

US products too expensive with strong dollar and high cost of US production to increase US exports by much other than what US hold monopolies on, most high tech and intellectual property. US limits sale of high tech though for national security reasons.

The way to to disgorge the USD external balance is FDI — get them to buy US real assets instead of holding financial assets.