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At a news briefing this week, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney continued to push the Trump administration’s goal of cutting back on Obama-era regulations. On Thursday, Mulvaney unveiled a “secret list” of proposed federal rules that he said the Obama administration had been hoping to implement. “They had a bunch of things that they wanted to regulate. And what we’re hearing is that they just didn’t want to tell you about it,” said Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget. “They thought it would be bad for their re-election prospects in 2012, so they created a secret...

(CNSNews.com) - Both the Congressional Budget Office and the White House Office of Management and Budget project that federal spending will top $4 trillion for the first time in fiscal 2017, which began on Oct. 1, 2016 and will end on Sept. 30. In its “Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027” published last week, CBO projected that total federal spending in fiscal 2017 will hit $4,008,000,000,000. That is up from the approximately $3,853,000,000,000 that CBO and OMB say the federal government spent in fiscal 2016. In President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal, the OMB estimates...

First they came for the wedding planners and the bakers. Then they came for the Catholic farmers and the Baptist high school valedictorians. And now, the secularists are coming after the evangelical public servants.On Wednesday, Russell Vought, President Trump’s nominee to be deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, was viciously attacked by Sen. Bernie Sanders over his Christian faith.Sen. Sanders deemed Vought unsuitable for office because he believes that salvation is found alone through Jesus Christ. He said someone with that kind of a religious belief system is “really not someone who this country is...

Bureaucracy: With surprisingly little fanfare, President Trump has set about doing something that has evaded presidents of both parties for decades: reshaping, resizing and reforming our vast, dysfunctional federal bureaucracy. If he succeeds, all Americans will be the better for it. It's not an easy task. But it is a vital one. Last Wednesday, the ball really got rolling when Trump ended his temporary freeze on federal hiring, and announced a plan to "resize" the government to make it less costly, more productive and more responsive to average citizens. It's the kind of thing that private businesses do all the...

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney will send a letter this week ordering federal agencies to prepare for massive cuts, according to a report from Axios. As part of Donald Trump’s plan to streamline federal government, Mulvaney will demand that federal agencies significantly reduce their costs and increase efficiency. The reorganization will likely involve selling assets, laying off employees, and the cancellation of programs deemed unnecessary. The letter will fall in line with Trump’s executive order from March 13th, which dictates Mulvaney “propose a plan to reorganize governmental functions and eliminate unnecessary agencies (as defined in section 551(1)...

Thursday at the White House press briefing while answering questions about President Donald Trump’s “America First Budget,” Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney called climate change research “a waste of your money” regarding proposed cuts in that area. “Again, this comes back to the President’s business person view of government, which is if you took over this as a CEO and you look at this on a spreadsheet, and you go, ‘Why do we have all of these facilities? Why do we have seven when we can do the same job with three? Won’t that save money?'” he...

Shaken by confirmation that the new administration of its biggest contributor is proposing sweeping reductions to its funding, the United Nations on Thursday warned that “abrupt funding cuts” could harm long-term reform efforts. Meanwhile more than 100 Christian leaders — including two participants in President Trump’s inauguration ceremony — appealed to Congress to reject the administration’s proposals for significant cuts to foreign aid. […] More than 100 Christian leaders signed a letter to congressional leaders on Thursday, urging them to “support and protect” the international affairs budget. […] Among the signatories were New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan and National Hispanic...

Outspoken Trump critic Glenn Beck praised President Trump’s proposed federal budget on his radio show Thursday, declaring himself “pro-Trump” after highlighting the president’s proposed spending cuts. The radio host gleefully read out a list of some of the agencies and programs Trump’s budget would cut, including the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and so on. “And my favorite: The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,” he said, concluding the list. Beck, who has written and spoken extensively about his dislike of President Woodrow Wilson, joked with his co-hosts...

Update: echoing comments made by Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the top House Democrat said that the Trump budget proposal is "dead on arrival."* * *Today at 7am, Trump released his "skinny budget", his administration's first federal budget blueprint revealing the President's plan to dramatically reduce the size of the government. As previewed last night, the document calls for deep cuts at departments and agencies that would eliminate entire programs and slash the size of the federal workforce. It also proposes a $54 billion increase in defense spending, which...

President Donald Trump will call for a substantial increase in military spending and look to safeguard Social Security and Medicare from any cuts in his first major step toward compiling a budget proposal for the coming fiscal year, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday. The White House on Monday will issue the outlines of a budget proposal to federal agencies, a document that has largely been drafted by Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, the official said. The budget outline will also call for spending cuts to several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency. The...

In a press briefing Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. (F, 10%) attacked Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C. (A, 94%) for having a “radical agenda” and “very bad judgement in terms of values in a budget.” While Pelosi was giving her press conference, Mulvaney was confirmed by the Senate, 51-49, as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Only one Republican, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 32%) voted against confirming Mulvaney. “You remember — some of you were here — for the shutdown of government a few years ago? Mulvaney was the leader of the pack. And he...

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Rep. Mick Mulvaney to lead the Office of Management and Budget under President Donald Trump, placing the South Carolina Republican in a key White House role that holds significant sway over the administration's spending priorities. Mulvaney is one of the founding members of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-line group of some 40 congressmen who have yanked the GOP conference in the chamber to the right and were instrumental in forcing out former House Speaker John Boehner in 2015. The Senate approved Mulvaney's nomination mostly along party lines, 51 to 49, with Majority Leader Mitch...

As if on cue. I swear we didn’t know this was going to be in the Swamp Media Newsletter when we earlier wrote about Trump’s anticipated budget battle with the UniParty…Apparently the GOPe has had enough of this hiding behind the guise of supporting Trump. We know this specifically because the Corinthian Chair sitting GOPe “Decepticons” never trot out Thad Cochran unless -and until- Mitch McConnell pulls him out of the closet for a purpose.For those who don’t know, Senator Thad Cochran is, well, to put it nicely, cognitively impaired. As such, McConnell keeps him tucked away, and hidden...

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) has been selected by President-elect Trump to be the next Director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to an article in today's The Washington Times. I had the pleasure of hearing Rep. Mulvaney speak at a John Birch Society meeting in Columbia SC last July. I've heard a lot of officials speak to groups like JBS and America's Party over the years, but Rep. Mulvaney made an especially lasting impression with me because he expressed much hopefulness about how cryptocurrency may help turn our nation onto a better economic path. I share his enthusiasm...

Game changer Of all the excellent cabinet and staff picks Donald Trump has announced thus far, there may be none bigger than the choice of U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-South Carolina) as director of the Office of Management and Budget. The federal government faces no more urgent challenge than $20 trillion in debt and no existing plan but to add more of it through deficits as far as they eye can see. Mulvaney is not just a fiscal conservative in word. He was a fierce critic of former House Speaker John Boehner over Boehner’s unwillingness to stand up to Barack...

On Friday President-elect Donald Trump nominated Representative Michael “Mick” Mulvaney (shown, R-S.C.) to head up his Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Sounding like a fiscal conservative, Trump said this in his statement: "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."Mulvaney, freshly reelected for a third term, said he was up to the task: "The Trump administration will restore budgetary and fiscal sanity back in Washington after eight years of an out-of-control,...

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Mick Mulvaney, a conservative Republican congressman from South Carolina who is known as a budget “hawk”, as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Donald Trump accuses China of 'unpresidented' act over US navy drone Read more In a statement issued on Saturday morning – shortly after Trump tweeted an inflammatory comment about China’s seizure of a US navy drone in the South China Sea – Trump called Mulvaney 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...

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped South Carolina GOP Rep. Mick Mulvaney as his budget director, naming a tough-on-spending conservative and an advocate of balancing the federal budget to the important post. An official on Trump’s transition team, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter before it is officially announced, confirmed Trump’s pick Friday evening. Mulvaney, 49, was elected in the 2010 tea party wave and is a founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, whose members pushed former Speaker John Boehner from power and have caused heartburn for current Speaker Paul Ryan. He is one of the...

President-elect Donald Trump is considering Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn for a senior administration job, possibly as director of the Office of Management and Budget, several sources close to the situation said on Wednesday. People familiar with the matter say Cohn's meeting with Trump on Tuesday included talks about a potential job in the new administration, possibly to run OMB, a sprawling office that will handle much of Trump's budget policy after he takes office in January. Cohn, who is friendly with Republicans and Democrats in Washington, is a longtime commodities trader who became Goldman's president and co-chief operating officer...

The administration issued a record amount of heft in the federal rule book in 2015 as President Obama's team, carrying out his orders to work around Congress, pushed his expansive government agenda on environmental, labor and Wall Street policy. With one day to go, the administration added 81,611 pages to the Federal Register, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's count of the official record-keeping digest of federal agencies' rule-making. It's the highest total on record and the third time Mr. Obama has crossed the 80,000-page level during his presidency, the institute's Clyde Wayne Crews calculated. "This is the pen and...