Mick Mulvaney | The Constitution and American Politics

it's been put about this summer that Hillsdale College is a political conspiracy to support Donald Trump and I will tell you that it isn't and the reason is it wouldn't be any good at that because when I got to know all these kids that I called out how many how many are here who graduated since 2000 would you stand up [Applause] [Music] and I know every one of them and I met them when they were 18 and we didn't talk about the politics of the day we talked about the meanings of things this is a story I like to tell unruly and useless Michael Lucchese is here tonight and I had cause to tell it to him last spring because I've kept there's a wonderful book by Richard James Mellon the face of Lincoln you should find it in the used bookstore it's huge and it's got these beautiful pictures of Lincoln and on the other side of each picture is something Lincoln said or wrote at the time the picture was taken and I've kept that on my desk for 40 years now Claremont and now here and it's always open to the same page and what's on the other page is the strongest force on earth and he describes it in an interview with the journalist on the night before he gave a speech in Hartford Connecticut two days after the Cooper Union address Lincoln was trying to explain why it was right to condemn slavery but not restrain it except where the Constitution permits which means you can't touch it in the states where it exists already only in the territories which by a happy accident that changed history most of the land of the United States was not yet States and Lincoln gave this example he said if I see a rattlesnake what I do about it depends on where it is if it's in the yard I'll get a stick and kill it but if it's in bed with my children I might just leave it lie because it might bite them if I stir it up and this fella the next day Lincoln's getting on a train and he's very recognizable man and this journalist said you got a ride on this train and he said yeah and he said I want to talk to you and like it said fine and the man said Lincoln how did you think of that and Lincoln gave this answer he said when I was young and studying law said I would run across the word demonstrate in the newspaper article reprinted from The Hartford Courant which has published till today the word demonstrate is italicized I saw the word demonstrate and I thought that must be some higher kind of proof have you read Lincoln it'll make you cry it's so firm and true and good and decisive see it's like reading Churchill it's the same thing he said I ran across this word and I thought I need to learn to demonstrate and so I read and I looked and I thought and I said to her I read Blackstone and he said and I said you know Lincoln you'll never make a lawyer if you don't learn to demonstrate a thing learn what that word means see that's what college is by the way he's learning what words mean that's why it's hard that's why it's joyous so he said I left my position in Springfield and I went home to my father's house and I did not come back to work until I could repeat all of the proofs in the two books of Euclid from memory do you see the commitment it's it says it's as firm and resolute and determined as being willing to sacrifice your life to sacrifice your focus and your concentration to learn so it turns out Hillsdale College is not a conspiracy to support Donald Trump is to recover the meanings of the terms that gave rise to our nation so that we can explain them and love them and fight for them and if need be die for them [Applause] [Music] our bond hello kids our bond is that it's like if you play poker a lot but somebody or you work a lot with somebody or best of all if you fight in a war with somebody and you love them and you share something then because of that right the purpose of a college is to produce and share that specific phenomenon and there is no other and you know there's nobody I mean almost nobody who works within five miles of this space where we are right now who could give an accurate definition of that and yet they regulate the living daylights out of it and that brings us to the constitutional crisis that faces the American people and I won't explain that to you because there's somebody here again our speaker tonight is an important man we the college decided that five or six years ago how long ago was it he came to the campus with his triplets and they didn't enroll in our campus which is you know what's wrong with that guy it's always the parents fault but I'd been hearing about him and studying him up and I just saw him I didn't know he was coming and I saw him on the campus one day so here's what he is he's an excellent golfer he's the father of these triplets he's a graduate of Georgetown and UNC School of Law which means it's a miracle he has any good opinions of any kind he's a former member of the South Carolina House then the South Carolina Senate and the US House of Representatives he's a controversial because he's careful with people's money he's on in others and he's controversial because he's a stickler for the law I'm one of his employees little Paul over there do you see what a powerful man I am I have the ability to break the career of the very talented young Paul Ray and I want you all to know that I'm not afraid to do it he sent me something today yesterday I think I can't remember it was the release from the White House about Constitution Day and I'm gonna read you a passage from it now I told you that Paul works for this man and I haven't said what this man does and I'm not going to say because he's here in his private capacity and we want you to know what kind of man he is because whatever service he's doing right now that's just the beginning this comes from the White House but it was sent to me by one of his employees it says we are a nation of laws and laws must be enacted by the people's elective representatives the Constitution ensures that the government acts only with the consent of the governed I know a senior person in the FBI and I said to him not long ago I hope you're not messed up in that and he said I'm trying to keep the FBI independent and I said independent of what are you armed who gave you the authority to be well he said never had that question asked I said I think that ought to come up more on the top floor of the FBI only with the consent of the governed that's what guarantees that you can't be governed the way a horse is governed that vital safeguard consider the government as expressed by the representatives responsible to them I could be reading from the Federalist Papers here but I'm reading from a document produced two days ago in this city of all things that vital safeguard is lost when obscure and unaccountable regulators impose unforeseen mandates on the American people or twist the plain meaning of statutes to regulate without authority from the Constitution our Constitution will be of little avail to the people Madison said when the law is little known and less fixed that is actually the point of the sphere that will rescue our freedom and it comes from that man Mick Mulvaney [Applause] [Music] it's always fun to try and follow Larry in a speech and I thank you very much for that introduction thank you for pointing out as I will here very briefly to take care of this legality that I am here tonight in my personal capacity and not in anything that I do for living from 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever hours those might be I cannot tell you how excited I am to be here tonight I do this for a living pretty much I talk to groups and I have talked to just about every single one of the organizations that I really admire I have talked to the club for growth I have talked to heritage I have talked to Hoover Institute I've talked to a I had a wonderful time with the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute but this this is the big one to speak to this organization on Constitution Day is is quite a pleasure thank you I I think so highly of Hillsdale College that it's actually one of the few schools that I agreed to take my children to go see they can go to school for free in South Carolina said look if I'm gonna pay for you to go to school someplace else it better be a really really good school and we went to go visit Hillsdale and my children then 16 had the unusual opportunity to meet dr. Arnn which when you're 16 can probably be a little bit of a challenge he walked in sat down looked at my Joe and said hi I'm dr. Arne what's the most important thing to know in life and my wife just looked at me and I sit back and said don't let him go I have no idea what the what the two boys said but my daughter who I love and is my favorite child and she will tell you that said looked at him and said I know know that she said where is my towel okay now a lot of the younger people in the room if you're under the age of 50 got that Larry is not under the age of 50 and had no idea what that meant and looked at me like I was from another planet and very clearly decided my daughter could not go to school there and we walked out the door and my daughter says well I can't go to school here and I said why cause he doesn't get it for those of you who have not read some of the more I guess you folks in this room probably don't spend much time reading douglas adams as Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy but in that particular book I know where my towel is or you know where your towel is is code for a well-ordered life someone who knows what's right and what's wrong and how things are supposed to be in the world and my daughter was really kind of I thought it was a great answer because I had read the book Larry had not my daughter was really disappointed she felt like she embarrassed herself and I and Larry doesn't know this we left the office and finished the tour the University if you could bring up the slide that would be great I saw this okay this is on your campus right there is a place where you evidently raised a bunch of money and or donors could put things on the brick in the walkway so 10 minutes after my daughter says that to dr. Arnn this is what I found on the Hillsdale College campus and that's what my daughter said I'm really not going here at all so [Applause] that's right she made the mistake of following her dad to his alma mater as I sent here to try and figure out how to do this and what to say to this group on this particular day I realized I was going to fail miserably and by the way I'm scared to death because ordinarily when I give speeches there's zero chance that my parents will find out about it since they both read your newsletter my guess is they're going to hear about this today which is why I'm wearing the tie that my mom gave me and I can't do what Larry can do and I can't stand up here and give you speeches that that quote Jefferson and and Churchill and Reagan and Lincoln and Plato and Aristotle I can't do it I tried before and I failed miserably at those types of speeches but as Larry was up here telling the story about Lincoln it occurred to me that I might be able to do something else worthwhile and interesting to you which is I might be able to demonstrate something and that's we're going to talk about today I'm going to demonstrate something about the government and something about the constitutional crisis that we face in the government now when I say the government I want to be very clear who I'm talking about because there's two real groups of people in the government the elected and the unelected the folks that you elect about five hundred and thirty-odd of those by the way in fact the ones that you actually elect on an individual basis are probably closer to four or five president vice-president your two senators and your member of Congress and that's about it but all in all there's just over 500 of those it's just over two million unelected non-military government workers in this country and that's what I want to talk about tonight that the bureaucracy but I also want to start by making it clear that I'm not talking about all of them there are really really good government workers there are really really good bureaucrats many of them are in this room Paul is a great bureaucrat he just is I happen to think I'm getting pretty good at it it hurts me to say that after having been a elected right wing Republican nutjob but I think I'm a good bureaucrat why what what makes a good bureaucrat what why is Paul good at it because I think we do what we were told to do under the Constitution which is look at the law and administer it and execute it and don't make it and don't interpret it and there are a lot of folks in this town that do that many of them work for me and one of the various places that I work I know men and women who I can assure you without reservation we're working just as hard for Donald Trump the first day of his administration as they were working for President Obama on the last day of his administration so as I sit here tonight and talk about the bureaucracy I want to make it clear that I'm not talking about all of them but I am talking about a very very important minority I don't know what to call it some people call it the resistance some people have called it the the deep state and all of those names have pejoratives I'll try to use the term entrenched bureaucracy tonight or the bureaucracy but when I say that I'm talking about the folks who aren't being good government workers and my point tonight is that whatever you want to call it the deep state the bureaucracy the resistance my point is this it's real it's not something that somebody cooked up in order to win an election it is absolutely positively a real thing and it is absolutely positively a challenge and a threat to many of the things that a liberal democracy and at some point I do hope we have a larger longer conversation about taking that word back you used it tonight thank you so much for using it it is a term I hope we can get as I'm supposedly a conservative and I work at a government that spends four trillion dollars a year I'm not interested in conserving that so I do hope we get that but that's another discussion for another day but that entrenched bureaucracy is a threat to the principles that a traditional liberal democracy holds the limited government account government efficacy of Elections that's what I'm going to talk about tonight and the challenge that we face and I think I can prove to you that it's real and I hope to give you just a few examples from my time here as to as to the fact that it is real and it's not it is not some paper threat I got sued by someone who works for me which is probably not the first time that's ever happened but the president asked me to go over and work at the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and on the first day I was there I got sued by someone who works for me because she wanted my job she thought she had the job lost by the way but let's let's think about that for a second I am a political appointment the president United States asked me to come over and run a bureaucracy to run an agency to run a bureau and a career staffer a government worker went to court to sue me to prevent me from doing that that's outrageous if you stop to think about the implications of that and it's it's it's indicative of I think all of what you see at a lot of different places many of these folks really do believe that they are in charge and that they are not accountable to whoever the particular political leaders were put in place it's an extraordinarily dangerous position to be in the bureau I've said several times publicly I think is what Elizabeth Warren set up to be the ideal bureaucracy one that was completely unaccountable and one that they really thought would continue forever and ever in her image regardless of who was in the White House you hear Elizabeth Warren say well it was meant to be independent what she meant to be was it meant to be dependent on her and independent from everybody else when I got to the Bureau of the very first day guess how many political appointments there were at that office one me that was it I'm about 40 that worked for me at the at the Office of Management and Budget we have about 500 people there there's about 1,700 to work at the bureau I had one political appointment quite frankly because the previous leadership didn't need it to have political appointments so the simple fact that someone would sue in order to prevent a political appointment particular bureaucracy should frighten you because they thought that they really could go about their business without regard to the outcome of the election more recently I had somebody quit on me again probably not that all unusual all things considered about 2200 people worked for me and people quit all the time this gentleman who would quit quit by sending a letter to the USA Today newspaper which they published on the front page I'd never met the person did not know his name had never seen him in my life went to go talk to his supervisor who informed me that he had never complained about the job the entire time that I had been there what didn't he like apparently he didn't like that we decided to enforce the law the law says that the Bureau is responsible for oversight of private student loans okay you may remember this part of the Obamacare legislation the government effectively nationalized the student loan business and the private student loan market now accounts for about eight percent of the market under the previous leadership at this particular Bureau they didn't care about that and they were still regulating all a hundred percent and I simply came in and said look if the statute says we get to govern private private student loans we are going to cover private student loans and that bureaucrat was so incapable of operating within the law that he decided to quit and to make a big deal out of it by the way this also shows in many ways how the media is complicit with this I do always say they didn't call me to ask him anything about it didn't ask me if the guy had complained and asked me why of the circumstances ever he wished it was legit they simply printed the story again another example of the bureaucracy being completely detached from what I consider to be the constitutional reality they are supposed to work for the elected representatives not against the last story I have and just not just as by pure coincidence comes from the same Bureau because and I wanna make this clear you could talk to any cabinet secretary who's been in the government for years and years and years and they could tell you these stories again and again and again in fact there's I think just today there was a couple stories coming out along these same lines but there's folks as a very small group they call them Dumbledore's Army at the bureau and I didn't read whatever book it comes from it's Harry Potter I think yeah I didn't read that one either showing my age now but they had set out to try and make sure that I was not effective in my job so what they did some people call them leaks I call the blinds but they knew our policy okay because they're on the inside and the policy was that we'd never comment on ongoing investigations we will not confirm or deny the existence of an ongoing investigation so what they would do is leak out that we had stopped high-profile investigations mr. Mulvaney we just heard a leak somebody's telling us that you have discontinued your investigation of Equifax would you like to comment on that no I'm sorry we don't comment on the existence or non-existence of investigations printed in the press that we had stopped the investigations why to undermine what I'm trying to do and to undermine the President's agenda it was completely false and we able six months later to prove that it was false as we came public and were able to say now that we've complete our investigation here's what we're doing but we were not able to respond to it for six months and they knew it so were they doing this was a concerted and intentional act to try and undermine the President of the United States I didn't know it was like this I really didn't I have been in Congress for six years there's members of Congress here I know mr. shkolu served you did right for allowing from Indiana I had no idea was like this I had we had seen bits and pieces of it if you serve it and in Congress you see bits and pieces of the bureaucracy and you'll see it you'll read books and so forth and you hear people give speeches until you are on the inside of it you will not realize how large and entrench the bureaucracy is and I cannot state enough what a threat it is I do want to come here and tonight and just tell you all bad news cuz my staff told me that the speech is way too dark so I promised them that I would also try and talk about how to fix that very briefly unfortunately that makes it even darker because because the fix is is really quite challenging the fix is to give more authority to the executive okay which on its face sounds like a very very dangerous thing to do but I want to make clear I'm not talking about more authority to implement or interpret the law I'm not talking about Congress giving power to the such-and-such or secretaries as you know secretary share makes such rules to do thus and such talking about giving the executive any executive the authority to actually run the government you would be stunned at how hard it is to fire an employee okay why wouldn't we give the executive the ability to hire the best keep the best and fire the worst doesn't that make some sense wouldn't both parties supposedly support that and doesn't it demoralize me in fact we just had conversations the other day about how federal workers actually demoralized because they know that if they perform well they really won't be treated that much differently from those who perform poorly there's been two very high-profile stories at the last 24 hours I think about undercover interviews with with members of the bureaucracy and what's the common theme in both of them they both say nobody can fire us okay they know that and so do all of the really really good federal workers so not just for us from it from it from a standpoint of doing the right thing by the Constitution just doing the right thing by the coworkers you would hope that Congress would give us more ability they don't in fact they do the exact opposite last time I tried to when we talked about the steps you had to take in order to try and lathe people off it's nearly impossible to do in fact the only way just about the only way you can do it short of something really egregious is for Congress to simply not appropriate the money and if Congress wants you to keep that many people working at that Bureau and they give you enough money to hire that many people you pretty much have to do it it goes a little bit deeper than that one of my favorite stories I've told that many times and this is from the spending side but it goes to how the legislature doesn't want to actually get into the details of the law but they love getting into the details of micromanaging the executive so you got as a situation where the legislature is actually trying to run the executive instead of trying to run the legislature and my example is this two years ago and by the way this is the exact right crowd to tell this story because you folks don't take this money the I made a proposal in the budget to reduce spending on the National Institutes of Health which you work with a large research universities and of course every research university in the country came to my office and said this was going to be the end of the world at cetera cetera et cetera and I said no that's fine here's what we do because would we give you a federal dollar and thank the Lord you all don't know about this you can spend like 30 percent of it on overhead okay which is why all these universities have these fabulous new buildings been paid for by the taxpayer but if you get a private grant from the Gates Foundation you can all and 10% and my theory was okay if we simply reduce the overhead from 30 to 20 we can spend less money and actually do with the same or more research and simply not pay for the overhead and not only that Congress ignore that they put a line item in the next year's spending bill that said it was against the law for me to consider that again the next year okay that is the type of micromanagement we talked about and it's in the exact wrong place the executives hands are tied and until the legislature decides to be the legislature and stop being the executive I think we're going to continue to have that problem this is the point where I'm realizing I have the notes here on my piece of paper that my steps of this speech is way too dark and if I painted a really grim picture I do apologize for ruining your dinner I don't apologize for telling you like it is because it is like this and and if we're going to fix it we need to do what you folks are doing which is to educate folks like Paul and like Brittany that it doesn't have to be like this in fact it's not supposed to be like this if you actually read the Constitution you'll see how it is supposed to be and thank you for sending us these types of people who can actually help us to implement that and thank you for also making it more widely available through the work that you folks to in your outreach as I close I'm gonna break a promise I said at the beginning that I wasn't gonna do any quotes from famous people including Jefferson but I have a couple people that Hillsdale work for me they wouldn't let me do that so I want to read one and it's not really a quote from Jefferson but you'll probably recognize it the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these states to prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world he has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance obviously you recognize that from a Declaration of Independence I am NOT saying that the entrenched bureaucracy is the exact same as the monarchy of George the 3rd but I am telling you that an entrenched bureaucracy can present the same type of threats to our individual liberties that a distant monarch does in fact what was one of the complaints about George the third was that he was a distant monarch day and he was unaccountable and unresponsive how often we hear that again about our own government today and it's usually not your elected officials it's about the bureaucracy they're not physically distant we know exactly where they are they're right here they're within miles of this building but they are psychologically distant and they are certainly non-responsive and they are certainly not accountable to you I'm obviously not suggesting that we rise up in armed rebellion against the government over the intention Brock recei I'll let Larry do that later on in the closing but I am sounding a call for people to recognize that entrenched bureaucracy can be just as animal to the rights of a free citizenry as a distant monarch can in fact to close I'm gonna do something I'm gonna do something that I know has never been done at a at a Hillsdale speech before in fact this is the one that's guaranteed not to get me put in the in the newsletter I'm gonna read a quotation from Leon Trotsky and when he made this statement balance I'll read the statement first I couldn't I couldn't leave this when I found it bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other he wrote that 1936 he wrote it I think he was living in Norway at the time and he wrote it against what was happening happening in Russia with the Stalinist regime because he saw what Stalin was doing Stalin was creating a huge bureaucracy in order to create a despotic government think about that for a second even Leon Trotsky who was no fan obviously of a liberal democracy knew how dangerous an entrenched bureaucracy could be and I simply suggest you tonight if Leon Trotsky knew was a problem maybe we should as well and we should be aware of the challenges we face I will say this the folks that you've sent us are aware of the challenges the folks who work with this administration every single day are aware of the challenges we want the same things you want we want a constitution that works and that governs our lives we want responsive government we want electable government we want free citizenry and we will do everything we possibly can to make sure that we change as much of what I've talked about tonight as we can so with that dr. Arden there's a true honor thank you very much for having it [Applause] so thank you for that Oh Big O bureaucrat bureaucrat that means rule of bureaus that's the rule of furniture we're gonna try to get something those questions here constitutionally the federal government is given numerated powers with everything else left to the states how do the 430 federal agencies honor that's true as of today that could be probably more that exists today fit into the federal government's enumerated powers so when the class of 2010 took over the United States House of Representatives and again I'm going to be just as dark in question and answer as I was by I'm becoming a cynic that I feel like I've earned it after eight years in this town we passed a rule of the house that said that with every bill that we introduced you had to make a specific citation to the section of the Constitution that gave authority for the Act that you were laying out in the bill that you were offering okay guess which one was the most commonly used by Republican members of government the general welfare clause yeah so the how does it fit in we make it fit in is what it comes down to you know you could go case by case as to whether or not you know the Department of Education fits the obviously Department of State does so the answer to question is it just we make it fit is it ideal no but we need to do a lot better perfect follow-up what what do you think is the most the most unconstitutional agency of the moderate administrative state strictly speaking I think the two trying to get it's either energy or education and I think it's probably education just because there was such a tradition and still is of having that be run by the states the the energy was what 1977 and education was not not too long before after that and I think education was first was 79 one of the reasons by the way that when we proposed to reorganize the government we actually merged the the labor and the Education Department together for a variety of reasons but I think it's probably education I still to this day when when folks call me and say look you need to do this in public education I'm like well where do you live and they said Idaho and I'm saying I've never been to Idaho why why would you want me to have anything to do with the education in your state but they still a lot of folks see the federal government as a court of appeals they can't get what they want out of their local government or their state government so they simply come to us and ask us to get involved and we do you've been both a legislator and you're now in the executive branch and you've sometimes been criticized for having been one in the other and there seems to be some being consistency we actually talked to this woman before your talk how do you relate having been a legislator and now looking at it in a different branch of government in terms of how all of this operates your and your responsibilities one and the other yeah that's easy I mean at least I hope it's easy I mean I hope that you don't blur the lines between what you're supposed to do as a lawmaker and what you're supposed to do as a member of the executive branch it's pretty clear fact I think we get in trouble when we start to blur those lines we were talking before about John McCain's passing and how sad it has been that not only do lawmakers sometimes think their executives they're also unwilling to actually execute the duties of lawmakers back when mccain feingold passed there was a bunch of people in the House and Senate who said they're voting for it even though they think it's unconstitutional because it wasn't their job to make that interpretation President Bush famously signed it saying he thought it was unconstitutional but he was still going to sign because it wasn't his job so I the the transition between the two is quite simple and while it might end up putting you taking different positions for example when I was a member of the House I advocated for completely shutting down the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and I haven't done that since I've been there and I can defend to you that that is the exact position that you should want me to take as a member of the executive branch what would I be doing if I walk to say look I know the statute is on the books and it says there shall exist a Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and it shall do these five things but I McGrew to ignore that I'm gonna lock the doors we're gonna go home is that the right thing for a for a good bureaucrat to do or should i instead sit there go okay it says we're gonna do these five things we're actually gonna do these five things and not the other seventeen things that they were doing previously in the name of those five things I think that's a much better way if you want the real fundamental structural change that we've talked about tonight then the legislature needs to pass laws to do that if you could go back to the Constitution convention and give the founders one's heads up heads up about a future event in American politics that they might use to create a constitutional safeguard so put a safeguard in and looking back and find out what we know now what would that be clarifying a clause something else elaborating something I would have warned and I always get this wrong which is the one that got rid of the be a misdirect is the seventeenth to direct election of the Senate yeah I think that was the that's where we law there was that natural tension between the federal government and the states and I think we really lost that when we went to direct election of senators I was in the state legislature for four years and I can assure you that my senators would have acted very very differently on very significant pieces of legislation if they had to answer to us instead of answer directly to the voters so there's probably a lot of really really good answers to that question but since we just had that conversation my office the other day that's a that's one that I would put on the list so there's several questions people had about actually about budgeting and your your background as a legislator and now in the executive branch can help us with this can Congress ever get back to regular order for budgeting and we will will we ever reform the problems of non descript discretionary spending first answer is easy of course that getting back to regular order right now but they're solving it in the worst way possible which is they're just spending more money I've always told people back home be careful of how much bipartisanship you say you want because there's one thing that is bipartisan in this town it is spending more money that's how you get 20 trillion dollars and debt you don't get 20 trillion dollars in debt by one party sticking it to you the two parties walk hand-in-hand down that road and have all sorts of excuses right I have to do it in the moment but the end of the the end result is you end up twenty trillion dollars in debt as to the non-discretionary spending so called mandatory spending entitlement spending I know I was having this conversation with with Christian Cola before before dinner look I can sit here all night and tell you about the challenges that we face in our entitlement spending programs so folks don't like that word it's it's the Social Security Medicare and a couple of things that's not the problem right now you are not one trillion dollars in debt today on the deficit today okay we will be a trillion dollars in the deficit this year only about 38% of that comes from entitlement spending the rest of it is discretionary spending and I think many of us in my party have convinced ourselves that the entitlement spending is such a problem that we've also convinced ourselves that entitlement that discretionary spending is not a problem we increased the discretionary budget last year by 13% 13% there is no way that we can grow the government fast enough to raise revenues to cover that shortfall okay the goal here and the goal that I've been pushing with in this administration I'm not givin up on cutting spending but I can tell you I'm pretty cynical about it just because I've been through those types of those circumstances by the way that the example I gave about the National Institutes of Health funding I could you twenty of those with the legislature literally ties our hands the next year because we can't do it they love spending money there's a saying in this town there's three parties Republicans Democrats and appropriators and they love spending money so I have sort of giving up on actually reducing spending I'm more into focus now in trying to slow the growth of spending so that revenues can catch up right now if you're growing your rent your expenses by thirteen percent and you're growing your revenues by four percent that is a really bad place to be if we can you know if we can grow the revenues in by four percent and maybe grow government gross spending by one or two percent sooner or later or over a period of time you can catch up but mmm internal spending is a problem long-term it's a longer discussion for another day but right now the problem is real and it's the discretionary part of the budget several people mentioned baseline budgeting okay speaking of dark and you have things can we ever get rid of it and okay basically this is my favorite example of baseline budget last year if you spend a hundred dollars on something and your household and this year you spent a hundred dollars you would call that a freeze we call it a cut if you spend a hundred dollars last year and one hundred two dollars this year you call that an increase we call it a cut if you spend a hundred four dollars this year instead of hundred ollars you call it increase we call that a freeze and if you spend a hundred six dollars this year instead of a hundred you call that increase and we finally call that an increase that we are set up to spend more money it's it's they don't correlate perfectly but the 1974 Budget Act the the the deficits as a percent of GDP really take off in 1980 1981 all my Reagan friends always cringed when I say that but it's absolutely true they but the Republicans the Democrats figured out that time that Democrats Republicans could cut taxes and Democrats could still increase spending and everybody could keep his and her job because they were simply gonna borrow to make up the difference but it was really the 1974 Budget Act that set up that type of that type of spending curve by the way if you wanted to be really cynical again if you see a theme yeah okay again I do budgets for living it's what I get paid to do why is that convenient why hasn't it changed and why is it gonna be so difficult to change okay we spent $100 last year we spent a hundred and four dollars this year okay you call it increase we call it a cut you come into my office and you really really like that program and I'm a member of Congress and I could say and thank you very much I want you know I agree with you and I think that is a really important program and that's why we increased spending on that this year so will you remember that and vote for me in November thanks very much and when you come in the next day and you're a good fiscal conservative voter of mine from back home I see you know what I agree with you and that's why we cut spending on that program last year so would you vote for me in November so it's it's been a very convenient way for a bunch of people to stay elected I'm gonna be more uplifting if I can get a better this is this is our last question so you can answer it however you choose we've talked about the budget people often focus on the be in omen OMB tell us more about the managerial side of OMB and how you you were doing that what kind of changes you envision to which I can add how are you going to save the country and give us an optimistic answer yeah listen we just we just this it's the coolest place in the whole world to work and we do the management part people always assume that we they know us for the budget cuz that's what gets me on television but the management really takes up just as much if not this more of our time to do it but some of the really cool stuff that you've read about coming out of this administration has been driven by the management side of things at the office of OMB the fact if you had a chance to see that the Kevin if you're watching daytime in cable news at two o'clock in the afternoon or Tuesday you need more to do but there was a cabinet meeting and the president turns to me in the middle of cabinet meeting says make why don't you talk about government reorg which is always fun when you don't know you're gonna speak on national cable television and I it's when I got up to talk about pizzas and chicken and I said well you know if you make a frozen pizza and it's a cheese pizza you're governed by the USDA but if you put pepperonis on it you're governed by the USDA and if you're a chicken a live chicken you're governed by the USD I always get this backwards but you get the point the live chicken is governed by the USDA it lays an egg that's covered by the FDA you break the egg it's now covered by the USDA again but you freeze it and put it in a batter it's covered by the FDA again that's we describe that we have a policy for that we have a name for that we call it stupid and the management folks are the folks who are really running it out routing that stuff out and saying look how could we do it better the government is always going to exist so the question becomes how could we make it as limited a part of our life as possible but still effective and put yourself in the in the in the in the shoes of the guy I used to work for a guy literally I didn't know this and I mean I didn't know this was going to come up when I was 14 years old but I spent a summer one time helping a guy who made frozen pizzas and I would put the pepperonis on him and I played again a machine and they would freeze him at the end of the thing and I'm like I never occurred to me that by putting the pepperonis on the cheese pizza which is all a pepperoni pizza is that he had to move from an entirely different regulatory regime and having the the awareness that that's real having the awareness that makes a difference having an awareness that small business people especially have to deal with that every single day is an important part of why I think the administration has been so successful say what you want about the president I've been critical I said look there's one of our biggest challenges is that we were brought up people a bunch of people into the administration who don't have any government experience and Washington is its own sort of place there are people who say government should be run more like a business and I'm certainly agree with you to search that government is never going to run like a business it's just not the same we don't sell a product we don't sell a service it's not it's never going to be the same so none knowing a little bit about Washington about governor's helpful so it's one of our biggest challenges that we had a bunch of people who came from the business world but it's also one of the biggest advantages that we've had because I can tell you men and women in this administration who have worked out in the private sector have brought that experience into the into the government and they say you know what when I when I was a look at the president one of the reasons the president was so excited about the government reorganization about bureaucracy is not affected in any way it is real and it is born of the best kind of background which is real experience and when people come to him and say I'm having trouble with the Army Corps of Engineers he could look them right in the eye and say you know what I did too let's fix that and having that attitude it's not academic and by the way I get asked on clothes with this because I want to talk to your students for two seconds because I'm still a frustrated academic kids ask me all the time mr. Blaine I want to go into politics what should I do and without exception I tell them go get a real life first go get a real job and do do what the president did because like the best men and women who come into government are the people who realize that government can be extraordinary helpful the government can also be a hindrance to success and bringing that real world experience in can be a huge advantage and to the extent that we have improved the country in the last two years and I really do believe that we do I believe that people are better off now and will continue to be better off I think a large portion of why that is is that we have so many people in here who share my cynicism and also share a passion to fix things so maybe that's the most uplifting way to finish Thanks thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 35,535

Keywords: Hillsdale, Hillsdale College, truth, politics, mick mulvaney, constitution, constitution day

Id: 6BIVFQM4-7M

Length: 50min 17sec (3017 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 28 2018