A Citizen's Look At Mick Mulvaney

From running 5Ks to painting trash trucks pink, most people will do just about anything to raise awareness and money for breast cancer research. Millions of families have been affected by breast cancer, though advances in early detection and treatment continue to improve outcomes for those afflicted. Roughly 1 in 8 women, or some 45,000 residents of South Carolina’s 5th Congressional district, will face a breast cancer diagnosis at some point in their lives.

A piece of legislation that enables the government to raise millions of dollars in funding for breast cancer research without the US Treasury contributing a penny would seem to be a no-brainer, the sort of bill that can be passed unanimously with a bipartisan rubber stamp.

In 2015, just such a bill was proposed, but Mick Mulvaney and his colleagues rebelled against it. When the bill was changed to make it more politically palatable, over 400 members of Congress voted for the new bill, but Mick Mulvaney still couldn’t find the courage to support women and vote yes.

From time to time, the United States government authorizes the mint to make special coins for collectors. They are typically fundraisers for events or non-profit organizations, which get to keep some amount over the cost of making, marketing, and delivering the coins (recently, $35 for each gold coin sold, $10 for silver ones, and $5 for others). Most of these coins are non-controversial and pass Congress by unanimous or nearly unanimous consent.

In 2015, a bill was introduced that authorized the United States Mint to make a coin celebrating breast cancer awareness. Half of the money made would have gone to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the well regarded charity whose Race For The Cure has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for breast cancer research over more than 25 years. The other half was designated for another breast cancer research organization. The Heritage Foundation, a Washington DC political organization, instructed Republican members of Congress to vote against the measure because $465,000 had been earmarked by local Susan G. Komen affiliates in 2015 to fund breast cancer programs at local Planned Parenthoods. The money represented less than 1% of their total grants to organizations that help fight breast cancer, and would have been used exclusively to help battle the disease, but the relationship to Planned Parenthood was enough to kill the bill.

In a spirit of bipartisanship, a new bill was composed that sent all the money raised by the coins to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which has no relationship at all with Planned Parenthood. The new bill passed easily, by a vote of 421-9. By keeping the end goal of raising money for breast cancer research in mind, officials on both sides of the aisle were able to craft and pass a bill that just about everyone could agree on.

Mick Mulvaney did not vote for it. He also didn’t have the courage to go on the record voting against it. Instead, he was the only member of Congress to vote “present.”

He doesn’t object to collector coin programs in a general sense: Mulvaney voted in favor of coins to commemorate World War I and the Baseball Hall of Fame, among others. So if it wasn’t the Planned Parenthood connection, which was deleted before passing the amended bill, and it wasn’t opposition to collector coin programs in general, is it just saving women’s lives that Mick Mulvaney has a problem with?

Remember when Mick Mulvaney went red in the face pointing a finger at the CEO of Mylan, the company that hiked the price of the life-saving Epi-Pen in the name of company profits? The best evidence that he has no intention of helping make the Epi-Pen cheaper comes from his most recent filing with the Federal Elections Commission. Nine days after Mulvaney chastised Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, John Paulson, a New York billionaire hedge fund owner who owns $1 billion worth of Mylan stock, donated the maximum legal personal contribution to Mulvaney’s campaign. No one on earth has as much to lose if Congress brings the price of Epi-Pen down as John Paulson, and clearly he sees a bet on Mulvaney as an investment worth making.

Twice as many out-of-state billionaires donated to the Mulvaney campaign on a single day, September 30, as live in the entire state of South Carolina. John Paulson is the richer of the two, with personal wealth exceeding $8 billion and control over a hedge fund that is worth even more. That hedge fund has investments in all kinds of companies, but its largest single position is in Mylan and their now-infamous Epi-Pen.

Aside from their support for Mick Mulvaney, what do John Paulson and the other billionare, Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts, have in common? Neither billionaire has ever given a nickel to Mick Mulvaney before this fall, or shown any interest in any other South Carolina race for the U.S. House of Representatives, but both billionaires happen to be major supporters of Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign.

John Paulson serves on Trump’s board of economic advisors, making him one of the few billionaires to support Trump as wholeheartedly as Mick Mulvaney. Joe Ricketts has personally donated $1 million to the Trump campaign, and the Ricketts family has committed to help raise $70 million for Trump before the election. His wealth is paltry compared to Paulson’s, checking in at a mere $1.57 billion.

A billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) is a lot of money, a thousand millions, more than most of us can even imagine. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling (named for a Political Action Committee that has given Mick Mulvaney $16,000 since 2010), billionaires can funnel unlimited funds into Congressional and Presidential elections. In 2012, half of all money given to Super PACs came from just 22 individual donors, a statistic highlighted by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. John Paulson, whose riches were made when he bet on the collapse of the US housing market, is one of those 22. He stands to gain more than anyone in the world if Epi-Pen profits remain sky high.

It’s no wonder that a New York City billionaire Trump advisor has suddenly taken interest in a little ol’ South Carolina Congressional district that he never bothered with before.

Back in 2010, when Mick Mulvaney defeated long-time Congressman John Spratt, one of the critiques Mulvaney and his critics levied against Spratt was that he had passed only 4 laws out of the 104 bills he had sponsored. Six years later, it must sting that Mulvaney is now 0-for-64.

To help save face when confronted when that fact, Mulvaney has been quick to point to the 2015 Improper Federal Payments Coordination Act as his major legislative achievement. It’s a pretty commonsense piece of legislation, expanding access to a Federal database on which contractors should and should not be paid. Connecting disparate sources of data together to create benefits for everyone is sort of what government is there for, despite the cries against “big government” that have become commonplace among Mulvaney’s associates.

Three months after the Senate version of this bill (S. 614) was introduced in February 2015, Mulvaney and Democrat Cheri Bustos, along with 4 other original sponsors, introduced a bill (H.R. 2320) that was identical, word-for-word. The House bill sat, unseen outside of a committee. Meanwhile, the Senate version, sponsored by Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Tom Carper of Delaware, passed by unanimous consent.

When the Senate sent their rubber-stamped bill to the House of Representatives, Mulvaney was permitted to introduce it on the House floor.

Mulvaney’s further contribution amounted to introducing the already-passed Senate bill to the House (where it passed by people shouting out Aye or Nay, like most non-controversial bills) and talking about it for no more than 20 minutes. The highlight of his brief speech offers a rich lesson in irony:

“So, Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank Mrs. Bustos, Mr. Connolly, Mr. Carter of Georgia, and Mr. Westmoreland in the House for helping bring this bill to the floor. Also, I want to thank Senator Carper from Delaware and Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin for shepherding it through the Senate.

This is their bill that we are taking. I guess that is another inevitability, that, if the Senate has the same bill as the House does, the Senate gets all the credit. But sometimes it is interesting to see what you can actually accomplish around here, Mr. Speaker, if you don’t worry about who gets the credit.”

Now, a month away from an election, Mick Mulvaney is trying to take all the credit, pointing to this piece of legislation when asked by a constituent to “name one bill he’s proposed and seen passed in Washington.” It’s almost sad, but that’s all he’s got.

 

Mick Mulvaney has been pretty upset about the cash payments the current administration made to Iran. He’s sat in judgement on the issue in Congressional hearings. He’s written about them on his Facebook page, scolded the administration about them during stump appearances, and complained about them on TV.

Reasonable people can disagree on the Iran deal. They can also disagree about the timing and purpose of the cash payments made to Iran.

Those same reasonable people would probably agree that if you spend a lot of time complaining about those cash payments, it would probably be a good idea to vote for the resolution condemning them.

Mick Mulvaney didn’t. He didn’t even bother to show up.

He made time to talk about it on his official Facebook several times: September 6, September 7, September 8.

He made time to talk about it on Fox Business Network.

He made time to talk about being on Fox Business Network on his official Facebook too.

But, when it came time to actually represent the people of the 5th district of South Carolina and vote, he had something else to do.

It kind of makes you wonder if he’ll bother showing up when it’s time to make your voice heard in Washington, doesn’t it?

If you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep, Mick Mulvaney’s full throated endorsement of a Donald Trump presidency condemns him better than I ever could.

There is some courage in admitting an opinion like his, that the most obnoxious and least qualified candidate in the history of the Republic should hold its highest office. Others play footsie with the idea of supporting “the nominee,” in the interest of being able to deny it when such support inevitably becomes a liability someday, but Mick Mulvaney will never be able to hide from his support. I can at least congratulate him for holding such a bothersome idea so forthrightly, even though it may well affect his future political ambitions.

Support for Trump has little to do with politics. There are plenty of old-fashioned, Chamber of Commerce Republicans who condemn his antics, puzzle over his “policies,” and loathe his backstory. Even some extremely conservative folks have real problems with his lack of experience, his coddling of extreme elements, and his ability to seemingly hold two conflicting policy positions at once. Some of them will vote for him anyway, in the interest of defeating his opponent. I won’t say I agree, but at least their opinions of Trump match their more deeply held beliefs.

Mick Mulvaney’s do not. He opposes nearly everything Donald Trump seems to stand for, yet he stands with Trump anyway.

In a January 2016 radio interview, Mulvaney made a sensible statement: “I’m not a big fan of Vladimir Putin, I don’t know who would be.”

Compare that with the man whom he fervently supports for the White House.

On the same radio program, just a month later, Mick Mulvaney was asked about his ideal Presidential candidate. He responded, sensibly, “I want someone who can have an intelligent conversation on the issues.”

Then why does he support the guy about whom Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says “it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t know a lot about the issues?”

Mick Mulvaney often names the debt and budget his number one issue. Fox Business reported that Trump’s plans would increase the national debt by $11.5 trillion. I suppose the debt isn’t as near and dear to Mulvaney’s heart as you might think.

So if Donald Trump conflicts with so many of Mick Mulvaney’s deeply held (cough) principles, why is he supporting him? Over a year ago, Mulvaney claimed he “has a very tough time taking Trump seriously.” What could have possibly changed his mind?

Well, he says Trump would make his job “more fun and entertaining.” That’s important. Wouldn’t want the guy getting bored while he makes $174,000 for working 111 days a year. I wonder if his expectation that “it’s going to be kind of fun” having Donald Trump at the top of his ticket has turned out as he expected.

Many of Mulvaney’s Republican supporters (or former supporters) have found it hard to believe that such a “principled conservative” would support a guy like Donald Trump. “I support Mr. Trump, and have made that explicitly clear here dozens of times,” Mulvaney told people on his Facebook page. He brushed off the many concerns about Trump’s offensive rhetoric or his coddling of racist elements, saying “If I thought Trump was a bigot, misogynist or an outright idiot, I wouldn’t be supporting him. But I don’t think that. I am sorry that you apparently do.”

Left unsaid: what Mulvaney thinks might qualify a person as a bigot, misogynist, or an outright idiot, but the rest of America seems to have a pretty good idea. 

Mick Mulvaney and Donald Trump have apparently been a mutual admiration society since before this campaign even started. Trump doled out $1000 to Mulvaney’s campaign in 2014. 

Perhaps the most telling quote is this one: “A lot of the stuff I want to accomplish would require Donald Trump winning the presidency.” It’s pretty obvious that main thing Mulvaney wants to accomplish is getting himself re-elected. It’s an open question as to whether the people of South Carolina will see his affection for Donald Trump as a help or a hindrance towards that goal.

Is it hypocritical for a guy who believes banks should be unregulated to be among those who sit in judgement when they break a law or do something unethical?

From Mick Mulvaney’s Facebook page, January 2016:

“I have NEVER pushed fro (sic) more regulations on banking, and in fact spend a lot of my time doing the exact opposite.” — Mick Mulvaney

Why regulate when you can investigate? It’s makes a lot more news when you grill CEOs on live TV than when you actually pass laws to protect citizens from their abuses in the first place.

The House Financial Services Committee hosted a tense hearing today, grilling the CEO of Wells Fargo on the recent (and not-so-recent) revelation that customers were ripped off when bank employees opened accounts without their knowledge, among a host of other abuses dating back nearly a decade.

Mick Mulvaney used his allotted time in front of the CEO of Wells Fargo to:

1) Talk about himself

2) Ask one question: “Does this organization reflect you?”

3) Encourage his colleagues not to regulate banks on the premise that “you can’t fully regulate bad actors.”

Unrelated: Mick Mulvaney gets more campaign contributions from the financial sector than any other, and it’s not even close.

Over the course of his Congressional career, since the 2010 election cycle, Mulvaney has been the recipient of well over a million dollars ($1,201,974) from the financial sector.

I’m sure no one reading this believes there is a connection between a million bucks in campaign contributions and a belief that banks don’t need laws and oversight to keep them from ripping people off. If we can trust banks to behave well out of the goodness of their hearts, shouldn’t we trust politicians to do the same?

Mick Mulvaney has another ad out now, offering lip service about “believing what people do, not what they say.” He seems to either believe he’s achieved something in Congress or is intent on buffaloing people into thinking he has.

If you want to put more stock in what people do than what they say, Mick Mulvaney’s record is clear, and it’s not a record you’d make an ad about.

Mulvaney has never offered a single bill that became law. Not one. Zero.

Mulvaney has never offered a single bill that even came to a floor vote, quite the trick in a chamber that has been in Republican control since he got elected!

He hasn’t done much better on amendments. Since 2012, he’s proposed 18 amendments. Only 3 of them passed. If you counted up all the votes on his amendments, No votes lead Yes votes by a more than 2 to 1 (4715 to 2039) margin. Keep in mind, the Republicans have controlled the House the entire time.

Mulvaney has introduced 63 bills. Among those, 44, or more than 2/3 of them, didn’t get a single co-sponsor. Not one person among the 434 other members of the House wanted to put their name on them. It’s hard to be that unpopular. On the bills where he did manage to talk a colleague into co-sponsoring, Republican co-sponsors led Democratic co-sponsors 386 to 26, marking him as one of the biggest partisans in the House.

He’s allergic to compromise, even with members of his own party. Asked in May 2012 about finding common ground, Mulvaney’s words were plain: “Does it concern me that they’re negotiating with the Democrats? They’ve been doing that for the last 16 months. Does it concern me? Yes.”

The American system of government was founded upon compromise. Mulvaney’s inability to compromise not only makes him ineffective, it also doesn’t win any friends in Congress. This is evident the way Mulvaney hands out plenty of blame for his utter lack of achievement — to former Speaker John Boehner, to Democrats, to his fellow Republican lawmakers — to shield himself from the truth: he’s never gotten a single thing done in Congress.

The two achievements he bragged about in his ad were a balanced budget bill and a term limit bill. Both ideas sound good, and might even make for good policy, but neither bill merited enough acceptance with his colleagues to even get a vote. If you’re tallying under “do” and “say,” this is clearly a whole lot more of the second category.

If term limits were such a passion of his, you’d never know it as he seeks his 4th consecutive term. Then again, he sure didn’t mind limiting his time in the SC House and SC Senate when there was a bigger prize to chase.

Mick Mulvaney’s first TV ads have hit the air, and his main bragging point seems to be that he’s never taken a taxpayer funded trip. When that’s your biggest accomplishment as a Congressman, color me unimpressed.

Taxpayer funded trips may sound wasteful, but most of them are not sending members of Congress to Disneyland and Bora Bora. Instead, they’re fact-finding and diplomatic missions, intended to create overseas markets for our products, bolster alliances, or obtain new insight on important issues. Insight and diplomacy don’t rank highly on Mick Mulvaney’s list of talents, so his disinterest in improving them shouldn’t come as a great surprise.

The most important reason trips for members of Congress are funded by the people they represent is to ensure that when they do travel, they don’t do it on the tab of special interests or those that would line their campaign coffers. These so-called “junkets” still happen, and Mulvaney hasn’t minded helping himself to them.

Take, for instance, his June 2014 trip to sunny Santa Barbara. With highs averaging 71 degrees that time of year, it’s a lovely place to spend a long weekend. There’s gourmet cuisine, sunshine, sailing, sandy beaches — and more rich people than almost anywhere else in America. Forbes reports that 11 of the 400 richest Americans (all billionaires) live in Santa Barbara, 11 times more than the number of billionaires in the entire state of South Carolina. According to CNNMoney, only three towns in the entire country have a larger percentage of million-dollar homes than Santa Barbara.

Why was Mulvaney there? Finding facts? Finding wealthy investors who want to bring jobs to South Carolina? Finding new markets for South Carolina products or learning to be a more effective representative?

Nope. Raising campaign cash from lobbyists and the PACs (political action committees) they work for.

Fundraising firm Gula Graham advertised the presence of Mick Mulvaney and three other members of Congress during their “Santa Barbara Getaway,” June 2-5, 2014. To attend, and get some face time, Gula Graham had a “suggested contribution” to Mulvaney for Congress of $2,500 per PAC or $1,500 per individual. For those attending, they reserved a block of rooms at a Four Seasons Resort, The Biltmore Santa Barbara, “at a special rate of $485 per night (+ taxes & fees).” I’m sure you’re as disappointed as I am to have missed out on that bargain.

It doesn’t look like too many individuals forked over $1,500 to hang out with Mr. Mulvaney in the Southern California sunshine: the only $1,500 donation reported in his July 2014 FEC filing came from a man from Rock Hill. Corporate PACs lined up to give $2500 during this time though. There were 18 different donations of exactly $2500 (to say nothing of the many donations of higher and lower amounts) in May and June 2014 from PACs representing the following trade groups and companies:

American Institute of Certified Public Accountants

American Resort Development Association

Association for Advanced Life Underwriting

CME Group, Inc.

Commercial Real Estate Finance Council

Duke Energy Corporation

Exxon Mobil Corporation

Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America

J.P. Morgan Chase

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company

Morgan Stanley

National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts

National Restaurant Association

Property Casualty Insurers Association of America

Grant Thornton LLP

Title Industry PAC

UBS Americas Inc.

Mulvaney collected more than $114,000 in special interest PAC money in that quarter of 2014 alone, compared to just over $9000 in money from actual people. We don’t know how many lobbyists joined him at the Four Seasons. Hopefully those that did had fun.

Invitations to fundraising junkets like this one are usually closely controlled by the DC firms who get paid to raise campaign cash, so it’s something of a miracle that news about the Santa Barbara Getaway was even leaked out. Mulvaney travels a good deal (he was recently spotted by a friend on a flight from CLT to Dallas wearing some remarkably garish golf pants that Mulvaney called “my pajamas”). If voters aren’t paying for his trips, it’s fair to wonder: who is?

It seems that Mr. Mulvaney, or at least his staff, has discovered this website. That’s fine, as nothing I say on here is untrue, as they undoubtedly know. While I’ve been contacted by various people who have known Mr. Mulvaney over the years, and offered all manner of rumors, insults, and innuendo, I traffic in facts, I deal with documents, and I report the truth. This is not a gossip site. Should evidence turn up to back one claim or other, I am happy to investigate it and, if it falls under the purview of truth, I’ll put it here.

Their apparent frustration with this site turned up in an unusual way yesterday. First, a company that buys and sells Internet domain names was contacted, and someone attempted to purchase this domain for cash. I declined the rather generous offer. Soon thereafter, a visitor came to the site from a computer operating on the servers of the US House of Representatives, followed by another with the same service provider. This is not the first time the site had been visited from the US House of Representatives, but it is the first time they saw fit to send me a message.

First they ran a search on the site for the word “FRAN,” apparently looking for references to Mr. Mulvaney’s opponent. They will find nothing here, because this site is not about Mr. Mulvaney’s opponent. He has his own site. This site is about Mr. Mulvaney.

Finding no incidences of the word “FRAN,” the visitors from the US House of Representatives next searched for a misspelled word (CORAD), then followed it up with the word they were attempting: COWARD. They followed that almost instantly with another search term: CARPETBAGGER. The message was clear (though sending me an email seems easier).

I am neither a coward nor a carpetbagger. Nor am I easily intimidated. Mr. Mulvaney’s team will not be able to purchase this website, nor will they silence my voice. This is the way democracies work: honest criticism, discussion of facts, and presentation of evidence. Their efforts at intimidation do not speak well of a man who purports to be a leader. Needless to say, I was of the opinion that his leadership qualities were lacking already.