Congressional Record, Volume 163 Issue 27 (Wednesday, February 15, 2017)

[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 27 (Wednesday, February 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1187-S1190]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

Andrew Puzder

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, before I begin to speak about the
nomination before us right now, I did want to comment on the breaking
news regarding the nomination of Andrew Puzder.
There is some good news today for workers and women and families in
America. Back on the campaign trail, President Trump promised to put
workers first, but from the start, it has been pretty clear that his
nominee for Secretary of Labor, who has now withdrawn, was a clear
signal that President Trump had no intention of keeping that promise,
and instead he planned to rig his Cabinet with the staunchest allies
for Wall Street--big corporations and special interests--that he could
find.
So I am not surprised that when workers and families heard about the
pride Mr. Puzder takes in objectifying women, that he called his own
workers ``the best of the worst,'' and that his vision for our economy
is one in which workers are squeezed so those at the top can boost
their profits higher and higher, they said no. They spoke up loud and
clear that they want a true champion for all workers in the Labor
Department.
I just want to thank all the workers who bravely shared their stories
in the last few months. It is clear today that your words are powerful,
and I am going to keep bringing your voices here to the Senate, and we
will keep fighting.
With that, Mr. President, I wanted to be here today to speak about
OMB Director Nominee Mulvaney. I submitted comments on this nomination
in the Budget Committee, and I want to bring them to the full Senate
today.
I am here today to urge my colleagues to oppose Congressman Mulvaney.
Mr. President, we all know that a budget is more than just numbers on a
page; a budget represents our values and our priorities, the kind of
Nation we are now and the kind of Nation we want to be.
Congressman Mulvaney is not shy about where he stands on this. When I
sat down with him a couple of weeks ago, he made it very clear that he
would use our budget to radically reshape our country in a way that I
believe would be devastating to families, to seniors, to veterans, to
the middle class, and to many others.
Congressman Mulvaney has said he wants to make drastic, radical cuts
to Federal investments, trillions of dollars across the board. His
budget proposals would slash Federal funding for education, leaving
students across the country with fewer opportunities to learn and to
succeed. They would cut investments in jobs and training, leaving our
workers scrambling to keep up with the changing economy. They would
eliminate support for children and families who need a hand up to get
back on their feet. They would eliminate basic medical research that
creates jobs and leads to lifesaving cures. They would continue the
work President Trump has done to destroy healthcare in America and
create even more chaos and confusion. They would lead to dramatic cuts
to Medicare and Medicaid, betraying the commitments we have made to our
seniors and so much more. He wants to do that while giving away even
more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations and
has proposed raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, causing
millions of Americans to drop under the poverty line. In other words,
Congressman Mulvaney's nomination is another perfect example of how
President Trump is breaking the promises he made on the campaign trail
to stand with workers and seniors and the middle class.
Just a few years ago, Congressman Mulvaney was at the fringes of the
Republican Party. He is one of the most extreme members of the tea
party wing of the party who supported the government shutdown when
others were working to end it; who failed to show the proper concern
about a potentially catastrophic breach of the debt limit and remains
cavalier even now, telling me he would advise the President against
accepting a clean debt limit; who, by the way, isn't even willing to
support the budget deal I reached with Speaker Ryan. He is someone whom
responsible members of his own Republican Party scorned just a few
years ago and whose budget ideas they rejected as damaging, unworkable,
and political suicide. But now he is the person whom Republicans are
holding up as a budget leader.
As we see this nomination, as we see Republicans use the budget
process to slam through a partisan plan to destroy our healthcare
system, it is clearer than ever how far the Republican Party has moved,
even from the days of our bipartisan budget deal.
Finally, I am extremely troubled by Congressman Mulvaney's failure to
pay taxes and comply with the law. I know I am not the only one who has
been here long enough to see Cabinet nominees withdraw over less
egregious breaches than this. Congressman Mulvaney's motivations,
explanations, and defenses have not been credible. It is hard to
believe that every single one of my Republican colleagues feels
comfortable with someone with such a serious lapse of judgment in
charge of the budget of this administration.

I voted against Congressman Mulvaney in the Budget Committee for
those reasons and more, and I am here today to oppose his nomination,
and I urge my colleagues to do the same. Certainly, we can do better
than this.
Thank you, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I think Senator Murray has said it very
well, and I want to pick up on what I think is really at stake with
this nomination. In effect, if confirmed, Congressman Mulvaney would be
the numbers guy for the Trump team, the architect for the President's
fiscal plan for the Nation's future.
I want to start by way of saying that, when you look at the
President's promises that he made on the campaign trail to protect
Medicare and Social Security from draconian cuts, Congressman
Mulvaney's nomination and his record would be one of the biggest bait-
and-switch schemes inflicted on America's seniors that I can imagine.
I am going to start by taking a minute to read some of what the
President said on the campaign trail. He said:

Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social
Security. They want to do it on Medicare . . . and we can't
do that. It's not fair to the people.

The President said: ``It's my absolute intention to leave Social
Security the way it is, not increase the age, but to leave it as-is.''
The President said:

You can't get rid of Medicare. Medicare's a program that
works . . . people love Medicare and it's unfair to them. I'm
going to fix it and make it better, but I'm not going to cut
it.

[[Page S1188]]

So those are just some of the promises that President Trump made with
respect to Social Security and Medicare. There are quotes like that
from rallies and campaign events and debates over a period of some
months. I think it would be fair to say that, for a lot of seniors,
when they heard that--when they heard these promises that these vital
programs would be protected--that was a political litmus test for many
American older people. So I describe this contrast between the promises
of President Trump and Candidate Trump and Congressman Mulvaney as a
bait and switch, but I think the Senate needs to know a little bit more
detail with respect to specifics.
In 2011 Congressman Mulvaney said: ``We have to end Medicare as we
know it.'' He added in another interview: ``Medicare as it exists today
is finished.'' He proposed raising the Social Security age to 70. He
called the program a Ponzi scheme. While he was a State lawmaker, he
even voted to declare Social Security unconstitutional.
My sense is it will be a while before seniors get over the whiplash
from the 180-degree turn the administration has pulled on Medicare and
Social Security cuts.
Now, with respect to the days ahead, for me, a lot of this debate
starts in my days when I was codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers.
The seniors that I worked with knew what those programs meant. It was
their grandparents who faced old age without Social Security. Those
seniors with whom I worked during those Gray Panther days remember what
happened before we had the safety net. Before there was Social Security
and Medicare, you would have needy older people shunted off to poor
farms and almshouses. Even if you had meager savings, you were on your
own for income or you had to rely on family, and lots of family members
were not exactly well off. If you came down with a serious illness, it
really meant that you would be living in poverty and squalor. Social
Security and Medicare changed those unacceptable terms of the social
contract between this country and older people--and changed it for all
time. Those programs were about saying that in America--for the older
people who fought our wars, strengthened our communities day in and day
out, made America a better place because they were always pitching in
to help and be constructive--Medicare and Social Security meant that
older people and seniors would not face a life of destitution.
That is why I believe every Member of this body--and I heard Senator
Murray talk about this--ought to find what Congressman Mulvaney has
said against Medicare--his anti-Medicare and anti-Social Security
agenda--so troubling. I want to be very specific about the days ahead.
Medicare, at its core, has always been a promise. It has been a promise
of guaranteed benefits. It is not a voucher. It is not a slip of paper.
It is a promise of guaranteed benefits. We made the judgment--I just
went briefly through some of the history--because no one would ever
know how healthy they would be when they reached age 65. We talked
about it in the Budget Committee and in a number of meetings here in
the Senate. I am definitely for updating the Medicare promise, updating
the Medicare guarantee, and improving it, for example, to include
chronic care services, cancer services, diabetes, services dealing with
a whole host of chronic illnesses. That is going to consume much of the
Medicare budget. We can have more home care and we can use
telemedicine, and we can use nonphysician providers.
Senator Murray knows that in our part of the country we really have
found a way to get people good quality care in an affordable way, but
we are keeping the promise. We are keeping the promise of the Medicare
guarantee.

Congressman Mulvaney would break the promise of Medicare. If
confirmed, he would join his former House colleague who just became
Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, who said in really very
blunt terms over the years that he wanted to privatize the program. He
wanted to privatize and cut the program. He basically indicated with
his legislation that he didn't really believe in Medicare, and he
didn't believe in the guarantee of services that Medicare provided. If
you look at Congressman Mulvaney's record, it certainly indicates he
shares the views of our former House colleague who just became Health
and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price.
With respect to Social Security, this year nearly 62 million
Americans and their families count on receiving retirement, survivors,
and disability benefits to stay afloat. This is a program that keeps
tens of millions of seniors out of poverty. It is unquestionably one of
the most popular programs in American history. It has changed the
fabric of the country for the better.
Again, I think about the days when I worked with older people. We had
millions of older people who month in and month out would just walk an
economic tightrope. They would try to balance their food costs against
their fuel costs and their fuel costs against their medical costs.
Social Security and Medicare came along to make sure those older people
wouldn't be pushed off that economic tightrope. So Social Security has
changed the fabric of the country for the better without doubt, and yet
Congressman Mulvaney proposes to raise the Social Security age to 70,
which would be a 20 percent cut to benefits.
Let's picture what this means, particularly for the millions of older
people who might not have had a job where they could work on their
laptop, and they had a physical job. They worked hours and hours on
their feet day in and day out. Ask the single mom who spent decades
working multiple jobs that way to put food on the table and send her
kids to school what it is going to mean to cut their benefits that
way--or the loggers or the dock workers, the miners, and all of those
people who have worked hard and have been on their feet with physically
grueling work. Ask them about raising the Social Security age this way.
I think you are going to get a pretty good sense of how strongly
Americans oppose this kind of Mulvaney approach.
So by way of summing up, I think it would be hard to find a more
significant task for the Congress at this time than protecting Social
Security and Medicare, advocating for the two as great achievements in
the history of American policymaking. They are right at the center of
our safety net.
Now you have to give Congressman Mulvaney credit for one thing. He
has been blunt, he has been explicit, and he is not shy about
essentially his vision of hollowing these programs out and dismantling
them. When asked about whether he was going to stick to his proposal to
cut the programs, he said:

I have to imagine that the President knew what he was
getting when he asked me to fill this role. I would like to
think it is why he hired me.

That is why I say--and Senator Murray touched on this--what kind of a
bait-and-switch game are we talking about here? You have the
President--Candidate Trump--saying: Nothing doing; nobody is going to
mess with Social Security and Medicare--off limits. I want older people
in America to know they are going to be safe if they elect me.
It was almost like a litmus test for America's older people. Then
Congressman Mulvaney comes along and he basically calls the bluff on
the whole thing. He describes the bait and switch in very blunt terms,
where he says: ``I have to imagine the President knew what he was
getting when he asked me to fill this role''--that the President knew
what the Mulvaney record was all about, which was about ending Medicare
as we know it.
So I will just close by way of saying that I see that a big part of
my job, and what Oregonians sent me here to do, is to defend Medicare
and Social Security for generations of Americans to come. That is why I
am a no on the Mulvaney nomination. I urge my colleagues to oppose the
nomination.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, most Americans don't know who the
Director of OMB is, but I want to stand today and explain what an
important position in our government it truly is.

[[Page S1189]]

The Director of OMB is responsible for not only implementing and
articulating the President's budget but also safeguarding the
regulatory process. I would say there is another part of the job
because when you are Director of OMB and you are putting the budget
out, you also have to understand the checks and balances of our
government, including that there are two Houses in Congress and there
are different opinions in Congress. Sometimes, in order to get a
budget, the word ``compromise'' has to be utilized, which, by the way,
was one of the favorite concepts of our Founding Fathers in our
Constitution. That is why they embraced checks and balances, because
they wanted to foster compromises and consensus.
That is why Representative Mulvaney is not the right person for this
job. He is someone who has been a disrupter. There is a place for
disrupters in government. I am not casting aside all disrupters, but I
don't think a disrupter belongs as the head of the OMB.
Some people are going to talk a lot about his career and quote him:
``We have to end Medicare as we know it.'' Others will talk about how
he has agreed with the characterization of Social Security as a Ponzi
scheme; that he has advocated raising the Social Security eligibility
age to 70, even for people who would be as old as 59 right now and
maybe having worked in physical labor all of their lives. Yes, he has
advocated dramatic changes in dismantling Medicare and Social Security
in many ways. I would like to focus on the fact that he thinks it is OK
to default on the debt, that he thinks a government shutdown was good
policy in terms of making a point, and that he has supported
indiscriminate cuts to our defense budget that were a blunt instrument
based on an ideology and not a thoughtful position based on our
national security.
I listened to Mr. Mulvaney as he said to me in a one-on-one meeting
how he would prioritize the debts he would pay if he defaulted on the
debt. Wouldn't that be a great addition to the chaos we are all feeling
right now; that the U.S. Government would be Turkey or Greece or
another country that is having trouble meeting its obligations.
We have been a beacon on the Hill not just for freedom and not just
for liberty but a beacon on the Hill in terms of economic strength. The
notion that we would not rise to our obligations--understanding, as
Congressman Mulvaney does, that this is not a spending issue; this is a
meeting-our-obligations issue. This is like buying a pickup truck and
halfway through the payments you decide you don't want to pay anymore.
This isn't a matter of deciding whether you are going to buy the pickup
truck in the first place. That is the appropriations process. Raising
the debt limit is merely deciding we are going to pay our obligations.
So the fact that he believes brinkmanship is a good thing in terms of
shutting down the government, the fact that defaulting on our debt is
an option for Congressman Mulvaney, the fact that if you look at those
positions, you realize compromise is not part of his vocabulary; that
brinkmanship and rigid ideology is what he would bring to this process,
that is the last thing we need in Washington, DC, right now,
brinkmanship and rigid ideology, especially when it comes to our budget
and prioritizing our funds.
So I cannot support Congressman Mulvaney. As the ranking member on
the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I hope I can
urge my other colleagues to understand that there are many people whom
I could support for Director of OMB, but Congressman Mulvaney is not
one of them.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of
Congressman Mick Mulvaney to serve as the Director of the Office of
Management and Budget.
Under most circumstances, I always give the benefit of the doubt to
the incoming President for obvious reasons; that he is the choice of
the American people. So it is with great reluctance that I come to the
floor of the Senate to rise in opposition to the nomination of
Congressman Mick Mulvaney.
President Trump has committed to ``end the Defense sequester and
rebuild our military.'' Earlier this month, the President promised
troops at CENTCOM headquarters that his administration ``will make an
historic financial investment in the armed forces of the United
States.'' I fully support the President's commitment. I fear that
Congressman Mulvaney, as the Director of the Office of Management and
Budget, does not.
I believe we must rebuild our military while at the same time putting
our Nation on a sustainable, long-term fiscal path. We can and must do
both. Unfortunately, Congressman Mulvaney has spent his last 6 years in
the House of Representatives pitting the national debt against our
military. He offered amendments in support of cutting our national
defense funding year after year after year.
As my colleagues and I sought repeatedly to find legislative
solutions to reverse dangerous defense cuts and eliminate arbitrary
defense spending caps, it was Congressman Mulvaney and his allies who
repeatedly sought to torpedo these efforts.
In 2013, Congressman Mulvaney succeeded in passing an amendment to
cut $3.5 billion from the Defense appropriations bill. His website
featured an article touting the achievement, but when I asked him about
that vote during his confirmation hearing, Congressman Mulvaney said he
didn't remember that amendment. I think anybody who treats our national
defense with the seriousness it deserves would remember a vote like
that.
President Trump has said that defense cuts over the last several
years have depleted our military. Our military leaders have testified
that these cuts have placed the ``lives of'' our military
``servicemembers at greater risk.'' That is an exact quote from our
military leaders, but Congressman Mulvaney has said that in the greater
scheme of things, sequestration cuts were not that big. He also said:
``The only thing worse than those military cuts would be no cuts at
all.''
This is the kind of statement that can only be made by a person
detached from the reality of what these cuts have meant to military
servicemembers. Tell that to the thousands of soldiers who were forced
out of the Army because of these cuts. Tell that to the Marine pilots
who fly fewer hours per month than their Russian and Chinese
counterparts because of these cuts. Tell that to the Air Force
maintainers, stealing parts from retired aircraft and museum pieces to
keep their planes in the air because of sequestration. Tell that to the
crew of the submarine USS Boise who can't deploy because their boat is
no longer qualified to dive and can't receive required upkeep because
of chronic maintenance backlogs. Tell that to the thousands of Navy
sailors who have picked up the slack for an overworked Navy by going on
extended deployments and spending more and more time away from their
families, all because of the defense cuts.
Congressman Mulvaney's beliefs, as revealed by his poor record on
defense spending, are fundamentally at odds with President Trump's
commitment to rebuild our military. This record can't be ignored in
light of the significant authority exercised by the Director of the OMB
over the Federal budget.
Almost every one of my colleagues in this body--all but one--voted
for Jim Mattis to be Secretary of Defense because they knew he was the
right leader to help the Department of Defense confront growing threats
to our national security. I share that same confidence, but I also know
he can't do it alone. Voting in favor of Congressman Mulvaney's
nomination would be asking Secretary Mattis to spend less time fighting
our enemies overseas and more time fighting inside the beltway budget
battles with an OMB Director with a deep ideological commitment to
cutting the resources available to his Department.
Congressman Mulvaney's record is equally troubling when it comes to
foreign policy. Apparently, Congressman Mulvaney shared President
Obama's naive assumptions about Russia's threat to Eastern security
when he voted to require the withdrawal of two Army brigade combat
teams from Europe in 2012. He compounded the error in 2013 when he
voted to withdraw the 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Europe. Congressman
Mulvaney and others

[[Page S1190]]

supported these withdrawals in the name of saving money, but the
shortsighted decision to withdraw troops and capabilities from Europe
ended up costing the taxpayers billions more, not less.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, America's military presence in
Europe was inadequate to the scale and scope of Russia's threat to our
interests and our allies. Addressing this problem has required billions
of dollars in new investments to enhance our deterrent posture in
Europe; in other words, American taxpayers, quite literally, paid the
price for the strategic mistake of withdrawing from Europe, supported
by Congressman Mulvaney.
In 2011, Congressman Mulvaney voted for the immediate withdrawal of
all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. I repeat that. This is not a
typographical error. In 2011, Congressman Mulvaney voted for the
immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Congressman
Mulvaney voting to abandon America's mission to prevent Afghanistan
from becoming a safe haven for terrorists to attack our homeland as
they did on September 11, is disturbing enough, but Congressman
Mulvaney's testimony during his confirmation hearing that he did so at
the urging of a single constituent, with no apparent regard for the
national security consequences, leaves me with serious doubts about his
judgment on matters of national security.
Beyond matters of defense and national security policy, I am also
concerned about Congressman Mulvaney's support for reckless budget
strategies that led to a government shutdown. He made frequent attempts
to diminish the impact of the shutdown by referring to it as a
``government slowdown,'' or the more Orwellian term, ``temporary lapse
in appropriations.'' There are few people whose views and record are
more representative of the dysfunction that has gripped Washington for
the last several years than that attitude.
Over my 30 years in the Senate, I have shown great deference to
Presidents of both parties in selecting members of their Cabinet, but I
cannot on this nominee. My decision to oppose this nomination is not
about one person. It is not about one Cabinet position. This is not
personal. This is not political. This is about principle. This is about
my conviction as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee that
providing for the common defense is our highest constitutional duty and
that rebuilding our military must be the No. 1 priority of the Congress
and the White House.
I will vote to oppose Congressman Mulvaney's nomination because it
would be irresponsible to place the future of the defense budget in the
hands of a person with such a record and judgment on national security.
This is the beginning, not the end, of the fight to rebuild our
military. I will continue to stand on principle as this body considers
a budget resolution for the coming fiscal year and Defense
authorization bill and a Defense appropriations bill, and I will
continue to stand on principle in fighting to bring a full repeal of
the Budget Control Act's discretionary spending caps to the floor of
the Senate.
For 6 years now, Washington dysfunction has imposed very real
consequences on the thousands of Americans serving in uniform and
sacrificing on our behalf all around the Nation and the world.
From Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria, to the heart of Europe, to the
seas of Asia, our troops are doing everything we ask of them. It is
time for those of us in this body to do all we can for them. So long as
I serve as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, it is my pledge to
do just that.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.