[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nominee for Secretary of Labor, who has now withdrawn, was a clear 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.