During a hearing Tuesday on the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2019 budget request, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a member of the Senate Budget Committee, commended Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney for submitting "a more realistic budget proposal." Senator Corker also expressed his disappointment with the "massive" spending agreement reached by congressional leaders last week.
He said, “I do want to applaud you for creating a more real budget. It seems that every year we have these fake budgets that balance in 10 years. It doesn’t matter who the administration is or what side of the aisle they’re on, we have these fictitious budgets that create imaginary things that are never going to occur, and you didn’t do that. So, I want to thank you for that.”
Senator Corker added, “We as a nation, as you know, are on an unsustainable path. I was somewhat discouraged that the cap deal that was reached last week was really far above what even the president had asked for. I think we have to say that Congress, in this particular case, went way beyond what the president was even requesting… way beyond that both on military spending and on non-military spending. So, you’ve had to actually jack your budget up. So, as people are giving you a hard time today about deficits, you actually requested less money and at the last moment had to elevate everything to take into account what Congress, on its own accord, did to create even bigger deficits.”
“By 2028, we are going to be at 91 percent debt-to-GDP. I know that our military leaders would tell us that our deficits are the greatest threat to our nation – not Russia, not ISIS, not the many things that we are dealing with in the Middle East and around the world… Philosophically, tell me where we go from here.”
“I think the budget gives some insight into that, senator,” replied Mr. Mulvaney. “Keep in mind even though it doesn’t balance within the 10-year window, this budget still represents a $3 trillion reduction in spending over the course of the 10-year window. That’s the second largest reduction in proposed spending of any budget ever. The only one that’s larger was the budget that we introduced last year. In fact, but for the caps deal, it probably would have been larger this year.”