BUDGET/CONGRESS/CONSUMER PROTECTION/SPENDING/TRUMP PEOPLE: “In his time in the Trump administration, Mick Mulvaney has produced two budgets that slashed federal spending and were heralded as blueprints for the deconstruction of the administrative state. Even Republicans ignored them, and Congress then added billions to the very programs he targeted in what seemed a personal rebuke. But Mr. Mulvaney — President Trump’s exasperated, restless, but deeply determined budget director — has found an alternative path to relevance in Mr. Trump’s Washington. A firebrand fiscal hawk as a congressman from South Carolina, Mr. Mulvaney has seized on his second job as the interim chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as an opportunity to dismantle an Obama-era watchdog agency vilified by Republicans since its inception as an example of government overreach. He is making the most of his opportunity, unapologetically attacking the signature accomplishment of one of Mr. Trump’s most nettlesome enemies, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and taking on the other Democratic legislators outraged by his efforts to gut the bureau.”
-Glenn Thrush and Alan Rappeport, “‘Like a Mosquito in a Nudist Colony.’ How Mick Mulvaney Found Plenty to Target at Consumer Bureau,” The New York Times online, May 7, 2018