Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Mulvaney: Screw Deficits, Tax Cuts and Letting Wealthy Keep Their Money is Goal.

For the longest time I've been trying to figure out is whether Republicans actually believe their bullshit; or each deserve their own "Oscar" for keeping a straight face while "sincerely" sticking to their "core values."

Finally, the Cold Hard Truth: One of the most brutal policy wonks ever, besides Paul Ryan, is Trump's budget director Mich Mulvaney. Remember when Mulvaney said how wrong it was to go to a single mom in Detroit with two kids and ask for money to help fund Head Start? Actually, he doesn't care about her or her two kids who are probably using Head Start. Mulvaney is out to protect billionaires from redistributing their wealth:


Mick Mulvaney, in a new interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, basically admits that what he cares about is reducing transfers from the rich to the poor:

Mulvaney: "Bad spending, to me, in terms of its economic benefit, would be wealth-transfer payments. It’s a misallocation of resources. Infrastructure is sort of that good spending in the middle, where ... you do misallocate resources a little bit. At the other end of the spectrum, at the very other end, is letting people keep more of their money, which — while it can contribute to the deficit in a large fashion — is the most efficient way to actually allocate resources. It’s a little less important to me if infrastructure adds to the deficit. And I’m really not interested in how tax reform handles the deficit."
What makes Mulvaney’s comments so unusual is not only their frankness, but also their comprehensiveness. Republican politicians tend to … frame their opposition to transfer payments as concern about deficits, while framing their desire of regressive tax cuts as being unrelated to deficits. Mulvaney is essentially conceding that deficits have nothing to do with the Republican fiscal agenda.

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