Republicans often claim their party has the upper hand with voters when it comes to fiscal responsibility. When a Democrat is in office, one of the chief complaints you can count on from Republican lawmakers is that the President is ballooning the deficit, or sending the federal debt skyward.
This hasn't quite been the case when it's a Republican President occupying the White House.
For instance, few Republicans are willing to talk about how President Donald Trump is on track to grow the deficit by 74% since he took office, surpassing $1 trillion. Few discuss how he's added nearly $3 trillion to the national debt.
Trump's own Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, recently admitted this hypocrisy in a speech covered by the Washington Post.
Mulvaney said:
"My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House. The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we're a lot less interested as a party."
People seized upon Mulvaney's comments.
In addition to pointing out his party's hypocrisy, Mulvaney dismissed the threat imposed by climate change.
When asked why the United States wasn't using more of its resources to curtail the growing threat, Mulvaney said:
"We take the position in my party that asking people to change their lifestyle dramatically, including by paying more taxes, is simply not something we are interested in doing."
It appears Mulvaney's speech was a night of rare brutal honesty from this administration.
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