Visual aids are usually designed to be, well, visible.
The White House did two of its favorite things on Thursday. It displayed props at a media briefing. And it held the briefing off-camera.
Doing those things at the same time was a bit confusing, since visual aids are usually designed to be, well, visible.
Nevertheless, the White House extended its televised briefing drought to three weeks and also banned live audio broadcasts. The Fix has annotated a transcript of the session, using Genius, since it could not be seen on TV. We’ll continue the practice whenever White House spokesmen go off camera. To view an annotation, click on the yellow, highlighted text.
MR. SANDERS: Good afternoon. Before we get into the briefing today, I wanted to reiterate the President’s statement from last night and say that the thoughts and prayers of the entire administration are with Senator John McCain, his wife Cindy, and their entire family.
As the President said, throughout his life, a distinguished career in public service, Senator McCain has always been a fighter, and we know that he will bring that unflappable spirit to his latest challenge.
This morning, the Office of Management and Budget released the first unified agenda update of the Trump administration, which shows that we are blowing away our initial one in and two out goal for regulatory reform.
And with that, I’d like to bring out Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, to talk more about the administration’s war on waste, and how it’s helping our economy grow.
Also, as a few of you may know, tomorrow is the Director’s birthday. While I don’ t want to insult him by getting into too many specifics, I can tell you that the CBO estimates that this will be his 75th birthday. But actually — (laughter) — took a couple of you a little longer to pick up on that. But actually, it’s just the last day he can answer questions as a man in his forties. So please do a favor and speak really loudly so you can make sure that he can hear you.
And with that, Director Mulvaney.
MR. MULVANEY: Thank you. That’s absolutely lovely. Thank you.
Q Before you begin, Director, the visual aids, is it still off-camera given that you guys have this? I just had to ask.
MS. SANDERS: Yes.
MR. MULVANEY: Good. I’m glad we got that out of the way. Yes, happy birthday to me. This is a great way to spend my birthday. We actually started a Twitter account this morning for the sole purpose of getting into a Twitter war with my good friend, Congressman Gowdy, who tweeted out this morning that he thought I had turned 50 a long time ago. I tweeted back that he had two deep, dark secrets; one of which was that he’s a lot older than I am — which is true — and also that he needs help counting to 50 — which is also true.
I’m going to talk a little bit about MAGAnomics, talk a little bit about what used to be called the unified agenda, which is a terrible name. And we’ll talk about that in a second, and then take your questions.
Thirty-five years ago, the situation the country was in had some similarities to where we were as we ended the Obama administration. Things were kind of rough. I was in the homebuilding business. My dad was; I was only 13 at the time. And I remember what it was like. We had stagflation, we had malaise, we had all these challenges that the country faced economically.
And in response to that, Ronald Reagan came out with Reaganomics — a term, by the way, that I’m not even sure he created. I think his opposition used that as a derogatory term to begin with, but it came to be associated with his presidency.
And I think if we look back on it, we know what its basic, fundamental tenets were. It was a monetary policy to fix inflation, tax cuts, spending restraints, and a little bit of regulatory relief.
Fast-forward to where we are today, here we are. It’s been more than 10 years since our last year of a really healthy American economy, which we define as greater than 3 percent — or 3 percent growth. And we think it’s time for the next iteration of that, the next plan. And that is what we’ve put together as MAGAnomics. It’s supposed to be this unifying theme of just about everything that we do.
You all have seen me up here before, when we walk through the budget. You say, “Mulvaney, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that?” And I talked about the importance of getting back to 3 percent growth.
I talked about the historical importance of that, the historical achievability of that — about how if you’re 30 years old in this country, you’ve never had a job during your adult lifetime, in a healthy American economy, and you think that 1.9 or 2.1 or 2.5 percent growth is typical, and it doesn’ t have to be. It’s not.
I remember in the mid-1990s, when I had my first real job — if I had been fired, it wouldn’ t have been that big a deal because I knew I could go find something else, because you could do that in a healthy economy. I actually ended up quitting my job so that I could start my own business, because you know you can do that in a healthy economy.
It’s been a long time since we’ve been there. And our fear is that if we don’ t get back there quickly, there will be people who never know what 3 percent means. There will be people who have forgotten what 3 percent can be like. And I don’ t think it should come as a surprise that there are some people who don’ t want you to remember what 3 percent growth would be like, because it would be a tremendous sort of damnation of what happened in the previous administration.
So, what is MAGAnomics? It is tax reform. It is, what we’re calling the “regulatory accountability project” — regulatory accountability project. It’s longer, but it’s at least a little bit more descriptive than “unified agenda.” Took me about six months here to figure out what the unified agenda was. And they told me, and I said, what is it really? And they said, well, it’s a way to bring to some accountability to regulations. I said, great, it’s now the regulatory accountability project.
Energy dominance is part of this. Welfare reform is part of this. Infrastructure is part of this. Our trade policies is part of this. Even the spending restraint that we tried to introduce in the budget is part of this. All of those things are designed towards one common end, and that is 3 percent sustained economic growth in this country again. We’ve done it before. In fact, we’ve always done it. The last 10 years was the first time we have not been able to do it, I think, ever. We can do it again. We absolutely fully believe that.
And I want to talk a little bit today about one piece of that, which is our deregulatory agenda. The regulatory accountability project — used to be called the unified agenda — released — last night? Today?
MR. CZWARTACKI: This morning.
MR. MULVANEY: This morning. When the President came into office, he gave me some pretty specific instructions over the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — what we call OIRA — O-I-R-A — part of OMB. In fact, I still think OMB should be called OMBRA — the Office of Management and Budget and Regulatory Affairs. That’s how important it is to us. That’s the priority that the President has set for it over at OMB. He said, look, get over there and tell everybody at all the agencies that we’re on a two-for-one policy on new regs.
You cannot put out a new reg until you get two old regs off the books. That was our two-for-one policy. He also said — and no new burden. No new financial burden. If you come out with a new reg that raises the burdens on the private sector by a dollar, you got to go find me a reg you get rid of to reduce that burden by a dollar. So, zero net impact on the regulatory financial burden in this country.
This is our first chance today to sort of get a temperature check on how we are doing on that. So the goal is two-for-one. When it comes to major actions — we’re at 16 to 1. Sixteen major deregulatory actions in the first six months of this administration. There’s one new one. Is anybody going to guess what it is? Does somebody know? No dentists here? You know what it is? Yes. The dental amalgam rule. Apparently we’re now regulating something to do with the stuff we put in our teeth when we get —
Q Mercury and waste water.
MR. MULVANEY: There you go. All right? So that’s the only significant new reg we put out in the first six months. We’ve gotten rid of 16. Twelve of those are CRAs you’re probably familiar with, and four of them have gone through the agency process and so forth.
But it doesn’t — it’s not just those big ones, okay? The number that I use — 860 regulatory actions removed or withdrawn — 860.
By the way, I asked for a list of them, and I got news for you: None of them are very sexy. None of them are very glamorous. None of them really rise to the level of getting national attention. But think about that — 860 of them. I describe it as that — sort of that slow accretion, that slow cancer that can come from regulatory burdens that we put on our people.
Ryan Zinke, over at the Department of Interior, has already made some changes on how they streamline the paperwork for outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen — people who want to go out in our national parks. That’s really small. We know that. It’s not going to change the world. But when you do that 860 times in the first six months, it can have a benefit. Plus, if you’re a citizen and you’re not out there and it’s now easier for you to use the national parks, to use our public lands, that’s got to have a positive impact on you. We think that it does.
By the way, of the 860, and this is one that I think — I don’t think anybody knows about this because I didn’t know about it until about 24 hours ago. The Obama administration had a secret list of regs. Back in 2011, they were doing their unified agenda. They had a bunch of things that they wanted to regulate. And what we’re hearing is that they just didn’t want to tell you about it. They thought it would be bad for their reelection prospects in 2012, so they created a secret list of regs that were not disclosed to you folks, and we are disclosing it.
And by the way, when we threatened to disclose it, a lot of the agencies came up with those 860 things that we got rid of. So there will be no more of that, by the way. There will be none of that in this administration. We will not have a secret list. We will not have a hidden list of regulations that we’re thinking about doing but we’re not going to tell you about. That’s going to end effective immediately. In fact, it has already ended. We’re not going to do that anymore.
By the way, where’s my stack? So I’d love a little graphics. This is the last week of the Obama administration — the regs put out by the Obama administration in their last week in office. This is ours from our first week in office. I can’t lift both of those together, can I? I don’ t think I can.
In the last six months here, the Obama administration put on over $6 billion in new regulatory burden. The last six months, just over $6 billion. We had zero. In the first five months in their administration back in 2009, they had over $3 billion of new regs. We cleared the decks of $22 million of regs. So we actually went the other way.
So I cannot express to you enough how much things have changed when it comes to the regulatory burden, the attitudes towards regulations in this country, and you’re just going to see more of that for the next eight years.
So I think that’s everything I wanted to cover. Is it? I forget. So if I got any questions — yes, sir. Right there.
Q Thank you, Director. You talked about regulations in terms of the cost to business. Is there any other metric that you think is appropriate for measuring the effectiveness or necessity of regulations, such as whether they improve people’s — improve quality of life, improve safety in products, improve any sort of thing? Because it seems like all you talk about is how much this costs business. So is there any other metric that you look at?
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: Yeah, in fact, we’re required by law to do exactly that. We’re required by law to do cost-benefit analyses before we put on new regs or take off old regs. It’s what we’re supposed to do. Our attitude has been, and our philosophy has been that the previous administration fudged the numbers, that they either overstated the benefits to people or understated the costs. And we’re going to look at it in a much more pragmatic perspective.
Q I mean, the reason I ask is because, you know, you just talked about the previous administration overstating the benefits. Are there benefits? I mean, talk about the regulations —
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: Were you healthy and safe before this came out? Yes, you were. And you’ll be healthy and safe with this gone.
Q I don’t know what’s in those, Director. What I’m asking you is — and you just said it; you talked about benefits to people. Is there any other measure? Because all you do is talk about the cost. And you talked about what your first week in office — you know, what the benefit to the ones that you held up for you all’s first week?
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: I think I answered that question. Yes, we are going through a cost-benefit analysis. We are obligated by law to do that and we continue to do that.
Yes, ma’am.
Q Can you tell us more about the secret list from the Obama administration? (Laughter.) What it was and what was in it?
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: I don’t know. John, have we got details on that? You want to push that? MR. CZWARTACKI: They called it a “pending list.”
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: They called it the “pending list” or something like that — previously undisclosed. We can get you a list of the examples that came off of it.
Q So it wasn’t available anywhere? It was completely secret?
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: 2011 — I think they did a unified agenda in the spring of 2011?
MR. CZWARTACKI: Yeah, in the fall, they did 2011. But the ’12 spring agenda, they didn’t do.
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: They didn’t do it.
MR. CZWARTACKI: And instead, they put things they wanted to advance — they kind of parked them on something they called the “pending agenda” and they kind of just went with that. And so when the fall full agenda came out, conveniently after the election, it was missing some things. So it was a trigger to a lot of academics who said, something’s not right here, because there was this secret list being held back that was filled with all this.
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: Fast forward to when we started this process and we started asking the agencies to send us their ideas about de-reg. Listen, it’s been a challenge. Start to think about the last time that the federal government has engaged in a full board deregulatory type of action and attitude. There’s a lot of folks who work for the federal government who have never been asked to do this.
In fact, one of the anecdotes we’ve got is that — I can’t remember which agency it was — but there was actually — there was no box they could check on whether or not an action was deregulatory or regulatory. There was no column for deregulation. We’re asking the federal government to use muscles it hasn’t used in a long time, and it’s hard to do.
But I will tell you this, when we first started looking at this a couple months back, and we noticed there wasn’t — we had done a pretty good job at all the agencies of slowing new stuff, but we hadn’t done a very good job of clearing the decks of the old stuff — the stuff that was already in the pipeline — getting rid of it until we found this secret list and threatened to go ahead and expose it. And then they said, well, you know what, maybe we’ ll get rid of those. And that’s how we ended up with our 860 here —
Q Can you assure us — on one side of the ledger, then, you have secret lists from the Obama administration of potential new regulations. Can you assure us that there are no secret lists and will be no secret lists in this administration of regulations you want to do away with? Is all that public?
MR. MULVANEY: Yes.
Q You have no secret lists anywhere?
MR. MULVANEY: I like questions like that. That’s an easy one.
Q When you went back up on the Hill — last time you were on the Hill — some of your critics had said that 3 percent —
MR. MULVANEY: I have critics on the Hill? Really?
Q Yeah, can you believe it? (Laughter.) They were saying that you had — that it’s a pie-in-the-sky to believe that we can reach 3 percent. What is your response to those critics who say that you’ ll never reach 3 percent?
MR. MULVANEY: It’s outrageously pessimistic. You guys have heard my answer on that before.
Q Specifically.
MR. MULVANEY: Specifically is this — is that, yeah, you can get there again. They say, oh well, there’s not enough people here anymore, all right. We’ re a graying population. There’s almost 7 million people right now in between — and I hate to get too technical — U3 and U6. U3 is the general broad measure of unemployment. U6 are the folks who are working part-time or temporarily against the — they want to work full-time but they can’ t find it. Almost 7 million people in that gap between U3 and U6 who could move into the full-time workforce tomorrow if they had the opportunity to do that. They want to do that, we just haven’ t given them the chance to do that. There’s a big part of your workforce base — move to productivity, okay. We also need productivity to be higher than it has been in the past couple years.
Look at our tax plan. That’s why the whole thing has worked together. That first answer, by the way, was welfare reform. How do you get people from U6 to U3? Economic opportunity plus welfare reform. Now we look at tax reform and its impact on productivity. We have to have the capital investment necessary to boost productivity, and we have to get that — we can get that — through our tax reform.
