{"id":26828,"date":"2018-02-14T19:23:02","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T19:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/02\/14\/white-house-budget-chief-military-was-more-important-than-deficit-cutting\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:50:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:50:36","slug":"white-house-budget-chief-military-was-more-important-than-deficit-cutting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/management\/2018\/02\/14\/white-house-budget-chief-military-was-more-important-than-deficit-cutting\/","title":{"rendered":"White House budget chief: Military was more important than deficit cutting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 White House budget Director Mick Mulvaney defended President Trump\u2019s abandonment of his campaign pledge to erase the national debt as necessary to secure military funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not hypocritical,\u201d said Mulvaney, who served in Congress as a deficit hawk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the president takes deficits very clearly, but he also recognizes we live in a world where in order to get the funding that we needed for the Defense Department\u2014 that we considered critical, and a priority of ours, we had to agree to higher non-defense discretionary levels than we would have liked,\u201d Mulvaney said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deal to ease budget caps signed by Trump<\/a> last week lets Congress boost spending for both defense and non-defense programs by $300 billion over the next two years while suspending the debt ceiling for one year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics have called unrealistic the new fiscal 2019 budget\u2019s projections of $3 trillion in deficit reduction through 3 percent annual growth projections and $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings, bringing the U.S. to within 1 percent of GDP by 2028. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here for more on President Trump\u2019s FY19 budget!<\/a>
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As a member of Congress, Mulvaney criticized the Obama administration over deficit spending and pushed back on lawmaker efforts to prioritize military spending over deficit reductions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday, he said if he were still a member of Congress, he \u201cprobably\u201d would vote against a deficit-financed budget plan he and Trump are proposing. OMB has since clarified, saying he would have voted against a two-year budget deal reached last week<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday, Mulvaney defended the budget proposal as adhering to that deal in a tense exchange with Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee\u2019s sub panel on oversight.<\/p>\n\n\n\t