The Sumter Item - Mulvaney Tells Kiwanis Nation's Institutions Have Broken Down

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One of Mick Mulvaney's goals when he was first elected to Congress, he told the Kiwanis Club of Sumter, was not to embarrass his family. So he was a little sheepish when he called to ask his mother not to watch TV for the next 24 hours.

The Indian Land Republican was overheard by Capitol Hill reporters using some choice language to describe how a vote had just been conducted on the floor of the House of Representatives.

"You know when a male bovine eats grass?" Mulvaney told the Kiwanis on Friday. "I compared it to the product of that."

When his mother did hear about her son's verbal gaffe, she took a balanced approach to it.

"It wasn't the best language you could have used," he remembers his mother saying. "But it was accurate."

The vote that set off Mulvaney involved the so-called "doc fix" to Medicare, a cut in reimbursements to doctors that was agreed to in the '90s but repeatedly delayed by Congress since. Earlier this year, Mulvaney thought a majority of congressmen were ready to allow the change through as a cost-cutting measure, but at a time when opponents of the doc fix were off the floor, House leadership called for a quick voice vote that allowed the measure to pass a sparsely attended chamber.

Mulvaney, who watched the vote happen on a TV in his office, said it exemplified the current dysfunction in Washington.

"It's extraordinarily frustrating, because the institution of Congress, and the White House's relationship with Congress, have completely broken down," he said. "I'm fine with losing as long as I have a chance to do my job. But you, through your representative, were denied an ability to participate in the process."

The biggest issue Mulvaney thinks the country is failing to address is the national debt, the danger of which he thinks is underappreciated.

"Right now, we're spending 10 percent of our household income on the minimum payment on our credit card," he said. "That's large, but it's manageable."

But if interest rates go up, payments on U.S. debt could hamper the government's ability to do anything else. Failure to address the issue now, he said, will only compound the problem for future generations.

"When I speak to high school students, they are bored to tears until we get to this subject," Mulvaney said. "And then they ask, 'But why? Why are we in so much debt?' And the answer is for 30 years, we wanted what we didn't have the money to pay for, so we borrowed the money."

Debt-fueled spending removes the need for politicians to make the tough decision to either cut spending or raise taxes, so unless voters understand the dangers of the debt, Mulvaney said, there's no incentive for politicians to operate any other way.

The problem is compounded if Washington has no long-term plan to get the country out of debt. If you ask someone for money you intend to pay back, you're in debt, Mulvaney said. But if you take the money without any plan to pay it back, there's a different name for it.

"Theft."

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