Action conference is meeting just outside of washington d. C. This week at chief of staff Mick Mulvaney spoke to the Group Earlier today. [applause] good morning. Good morning folks thank you for getting up so early. Its good to see so many people. We are going to have a little bit of fun this morning. We are so honored to have Mick Mulvaney. As you all know he is the chief of staff for one of the greatest president s we have ever had in this country donald j. Trump so thank you mick for everything you do. Hes a South Carolina in. I served three and buy one for. Its been an amazing. Dont you think this guy is an incredible asset to the white house . Lets get into it. When i give a lot of talks around the country about the economy people asked me what is the single most important thing that donald trump has done to create this lackluster economy and i struggle with that myself. I want your thoughts about what has made trump so successful and just in case you are wondering this is stephens ordinary breakfast conversation. I havent had any coffee yet. Its unbelievable. Its so near and dear to my heart. I think that the regulatory, i know its not and people are going yea dereg but its one of those things we talk about with structural changes. I can lower your Corporate Tax rates and lower your individual rate and that kind of stuff and somebody else comes and takes it away or something happens. When you change it the rag when you change regulations it stays for a really long time. We are still doing things now that we worked on in the first weeks of the administration. Once you change it it has lasting benefits. Plus they really do add up. I ran a small business, ran a restaurant. You walk in the door and there are regulations on the side of the door. Walk on the counter and there are regulations on how the food has to be maintained and even the size of the. On the menu board which is one of the reasons so many restaurants on the video board the regulations keep changing all the time so they change the size of the fonts and things like that. It adds up, really adds up and when you change that it has this tremendous momentum in the economy at the Grassroots Level plus and if i could. One thing y. Dereg is so important its the attitude of government for business. We want to business we did not see business as a way to serve our social agenda. Democrats want the world to look like this and who can help us make the world look like this . Certainly we have a government and the Education System will help make the world look like this. Lets take business and make business look the way we wanted to. Thats not how conservatives look at it. Thats the biggest thing. I agree with that. I worked on a transition for you handed the ball up to the Outgoing Administration in the obama people they do business at as the enemy and it seems to me in this administration you are the regulatory agencies and the cabinet agencies filled with people who are probusiness. When i talk to businessmen and women around the country its not any one regulation. They know the governments are going to hit them over the head. I briefly renamed the bureau which is now this cfpb which is very important. We have our Big Supreme Court case next year. That is the attitude we were trying to change. We are not we are going to enforce the law. Thats what the executive branches. Thats what you want to do you want to enforce the law but the same time you dont want them coming into your home and saying what are you doing ron . We are trying to figure out a way to make what you are doing e. Legal so we have control over you. Thats a different attitude between leftwing government and rightwing. One of the issues that i disagreed with donald j. Trump when i first met him was on trade policy. Im a free trader and i used to get in arguments with then candidate donald trump might say it looks mick like this is actually working. Can you explain and would you agree with me that trump is winning . One of my favorite stories about the administration is if you see the criticisms of the administration on tv which were led to believe by the other side theres this group of sycophants that do nothing to say oh mr. President what you want to do today, lets do that. If you see them in the oval office and i have talking with donald trump about trade policy you are quickly disabuse that. He does like to argue and trade is one of those things i used to joke wed have a trade meeting seriously. You can come and watch the trade reading and watch people like you and larry kudlow in Steve Mnuchin make one side of the trade argument in lighthizer on the other and physically almost sometimes come to blows over trade policy. Thats how the president manages. Want to hear your side of things at his side of things. You are saying here i would like this out of your thing and this out of your thing and make a policy that makes sense and thats exactly what you would want for president. As a result you end up with what you got. Does everybody think the tariffs were a great thing in the administration . I could convince you in 15 minutes that trading linen for wine in portugal and england which is the example we were taught in school is good for everybody but thats not the real world. It makes a big difference when you trade as a Community Organizer with someone who is run a successful business. [applause] one of the things i find so troubling in the ways of the left and the media portraying trump he cares about rich people and incorporates and i found almost every meeting and even in so many more with him is how will this affect the middleclass workers . We call them the bluecollar president. Ive used this term before brady said ilya near mint and which strikes me when i hear those things the first time i saw it, you know i play golf and i remarked the first time i played golf with him the people we would consider ordinary people the caddies on the golf course and folks who worked in restaurants and worked in the locker rooms adore this guy. He treats them so well and so respectfully. For better or for worse when you do what i do for a living you hang out with a lot of rich and famous people. Most of them have the same sort of interaction you would expect. You have disdainful people who are beneath them and society. Donald trump doesnt believe in any of that. He goes out of his way to be nice to the folks that work for him and we did a trip out to the wall in san diego. We had a schedule and im still believing in schedules at that time. We have a rule in the office of president is never early and nor is the president ever early. The president size on time. We are sitting there and we were going to take some pictures and he said we need the leaders of the Border Patrol and all that kind of stuff. We were 25 minutes late leaving because he wanted to shake the hand of every rankandfile Border Patrol. It was just great to watch. He went down the line and im like okay i get it. Im not sure how you get to be a man of the people but he sure is. What is the most, you had some inside baseball here so what is the most surprising thing that you learned about this president . When people used to ask about that id say one thing that shocked me about donald trump is fast food dominos pizza. His style and are there things about him that people dont know about . I dont know how much personal stuff i want to give give away. Ive been struck by no, i will. I dont think hed mind me telling you. Ive been working in the office of management and budget and i dont know the president that well and you might watch latenight television or see eclipse of it on tv on saturday night live about relationships with his family. I dont know anything about his relationships with his family. The first trip i went on with him i cant remember where it was new orleans or someplace like that. Ill bet he called his son three or four times including to have dad is coming home on the helicopter did people forget that barron is only 13 years old he is 6 feet 4 inches or 6 feet 5 inches. Im not making that up either way. He is still very young. I think he was 10 when the president was elected and the president is a really caring father. You dont see that. The president would never show you that because it doesnt fit the image of him. The press wants them to be a terrible monster. I dont think that comes across. Thats a great point. How many agree when they were first introduced the donald j. Trump. I have so many people say anybody who could bring up like that, isnt that true . [applause] we are now obviously people are in a bit of a panic about the coronavirus and i was watching fake news last night and they were saying this man isnt in charge and he doesnt know what hes doing. Can you disabuse us of that . Sure and if theres one thing peoples, someone stops when the hallway and one im leaving in the same neck you need to say this and tell them what youre thinking. To give that but theres only one tv that will cover you and get your message out. In the last 24 to 48 hours that the administration is caught we are scrambling and dont know what to do. We were caught unprepared and we have no idea whats going on. My first meeting with congress facetoface with was six weeks ago on the coronavirus. We had a chance, we went to the senate and down to the house the same day. Dr. Fauci dr. Kadlec the cdc the hhs and all the experts. We are controlling the message and its a political issue not a medical issue is completely false. We take the medical experts and put them out five or six weeks ago. Five senator show up, 10 or 15 members of the house of representatives show up. We were accused and i lose track of time. I dont know for was yesterday or six weeks ago but several weeks ago we put restrictions on travelers coming in from china. We were accused of being [applause] accused by some on the left of being racist. Im not taking that up. This was an antiasian policy that we were doing this. Its just bizarre. The president took by the way the last time we enforced the federal quarantine was 1959 for smallpox. We did it over a month ago with this administration in order to to prevent the further outbreak in this country. We took extraordinary steps for five weeks ago. Why didnt you hear about it . What was going on for five weeks ago . Impeachment and thats all the feds wanted to talk about. The real news was happening and we were dealing with it in a way that i think you folks would be extraordinarily proud of and serving the nation extraordinarily well. [applause] the press was covering it because they thought would bring down the president. The reason they pay so much attention today its because this will bring down the president. Thats what its all about. That report asking what you going to do about the market . Is it real . It absolute israel. Theres no question about it. So the president the other day. 20 Million People in this country will have the flu. Flu kills people. This is not ebola. Its not sars. Why do we say that . When you look at the severity of diseases one of the ways you can look at it by looking at the percentage of people who get it. I know thats hardhearted. If i get a cold am i going to die . No, k. If you get the flu theres a less than 1 chance you will die from it but a lot of people get it. In the last 10 years. 50,000 americans of guide from the ordinary flu. Ebola is think is 50 or 60 fatal land the eastern respiratory flu which we had one or two cases in the india is 30 fatal. Sars was 15 fatal. It looks like this disease is someplace between one and 2 fatal. There is no question about it but its not a death sentence. Mutts easier to get than ebola and thats one thing that is a concern. This is something we deal with. This is something we know how to deal with. Thats where we sit and watch the market going into panic. Why isnt this panic every single year of the flu . So many people together. We are the best country in the world prepared to do this. We have been preparing for this for years. We go through it every couple of years. Their young people here you may remember a couple of years ago we sent you home from school for a couple of days. We do it on a regular basis. Will you see impacts on public but we do this. We know how to handle this. Thats the message you are trying to get out. They are professionals who know how to handle it and they are professionals handling it. By the way thank god we dont have a socialized Health Care System in the United States that we have a Free Enterprise system. [applause] Something Like 40 of the last if these wonder drugs and vaccines have come from the great usa. We are ahead of the curve on vaccines and yes it takes a while to get a vaccine to market. Why . Who want to make sure its safe. Thats a really good idea but again we know how to do this. We look at the European Countries and if you are already waiting in line now five weeks, six weeks or something and a couple hundred people get in front of you in line or 1000 people get in front of you in line for coronavirus there already strained. Socialized medicine does not work and it especially didnt work im going to ask a tough question. The first job for this president was a deficit question. I talk all the time about this. Isnt this an incredible economy we have these deficits and an equal amount of conservatives come up to me and say he does this president care about the deficits . What your response . In the first place talking about how the government spends money. We dont budget the way you do. Thats a problem. If you want to know how a president feels about deficit spending, Spending Priorities things that are lower priority to get his budget. Thats what it is a messaging document. Its essentially if the president than it saves was in charge of all three branches of government this is what spending and priorities would look like. Thats what we do. Its a messaging document. This is how we feel about the deficit and the annual debt. The budget does present has put forward is responsible. They are ones you would expect to see for a conservative government. If they dont balance right awaits difficult but they do balance. They also reduce entitlement spending without changing Social Security and medicare. By the way the four budgets we goffard has been the largest reduction in mandatory spending in history yet we didnt touch Social Security or medicare. How is that possible . Its possible because so much of the government is on automatic pilot in mandatory spending. Did you know your medicare packages paid graduate medical school tuition. What happened was over the course of the last 60 years medicare and Social Security are in a huge trust fund in politicians said we have so much money we dont need that much and lets take that money dedicated to other things. Over the course of your medicare money does more than providing older people with care. We do that throughout the entire budget. Why do i say does make a difference . Congress takes it and immediately throws it into the trashcan. I know that because i took obamas budget and immediately threw it into the trashcan. And theres a timer in the omb office where we deliver the budget. Dead on arrival. It takes 12 to 14 minutes. I want to challenge you on this. The president does have one of the most colorful tools the president has is and how many of you would like to see the president vetoed the big spending bills . [applause] congresses broke in. It used to be spending in the federal government they passed 12 different spending bills every single year. The Defense Department here department of health and Human Services to ai, 12 of those. Used to be the president could go back and say im okay with that and im okay with that im going to veto that, okay . The government would continue and it would technically shut down. I think there were 17 government shutdowns between 1976 and 1994 including five government shutdowns during the four years of the Carter Administration even though the democrats control the house and the white house. Why didnt you hear about it . Congress has not been able to pass those bills since i think 1999. They are too lazy to the government is too big for them to manage so instead of doing 12 they do one and then they say here it is picked sometimes is called the omnibus and sometimes its called a cr. One giant will every year and now the president has to make a binary choice. I dont like this and this but its contained of this one thing and if i want to fund it i have to fund that will or the entire government shuts down, thats it on or off. Its not proper management of spending because the congress is broken and thats why you hear this annual discussion about whether the congress will shut down. When congress functioned it wasnt relevant in out as and thats why we have a choice. Its not like we need to we are running out of time. Some people think you have the coolest job in the world. It is a cool job. Having worked with trump on the Campaign Donald trumps a freak of nature. As the guy of her sleek . Is the most energizer bunny guy ive ever met. I cant imagine being his chief of staff because of three in the morning the phonecall calls started about 6 00 a. M. And they go until midnight. I miss the india trip. The india trip was 38 hours on the ground in 48 hours in the air. I am there when he got back wednesday morning. He lands in the helicopter. He flew to india and a day and a half of work, flew back and did not sleep on the flight home. I know that because he is emailing and taking phonecalls. They land about 7 30 in the morning on wednesday. He did that press Conference Wednesday night. The thing that you saw for an hour he had not slept for a day and a half. At the end of the day he was sitting in the oval office. He said im going to work for a little bit. I said i have 25 or 30yearold people who work for you who havent shown up today. He said yeah i have to get as much out of it as i possibly can. [applause] only do those trips somebody is always up. The man never sleeps. Donald trump is going to be reelected president in november of 2020 so what is, what are the top things you havent done that need to get done . We need to do the second part of the tax. Tax 2. 0. What is that going to be . Theres an bunch of stuff in the first package. I know you and i have looked closely at indexing. He never liked the Corporate Tax of 21 . He thinks 20 is better number than 21. Im sorry to interrupt ptomey put a plan together he and larry worked on the campaign. The rest of the world is down here and we are up here. We are at 40 and at that time we called and donald and now we colin mr. President. We recommend you cut that rate. Its so interesting and he sat back and said same as the first time but whats so interesting about this because this is really interesting example about trying to understand donald trump you have to read the book. Thank god he didnt listen to our device because to me if you think im wrong about this. We would have ended up at a 20 or 25 index. What about illegal immigration . I really tried to get folks to sink her teeth into it the first time first term about almost four years of the first term in the president people are trying to realize there is something thats there that no one wants to talk about. We know its there. We dont know what to call it. Its real. Its absolutely real. There are men and women who work in this government every single day. You want bureaucrats who work just as hard for Donald Trumps they did for barack obama. Thats only fair. Your tax dollars, they have to be different than they have to work hard to get the Obama Policies in and they have to work just as hard for donald trump and that has not happened. The chief executive officer of this country who almost literally cannot hire or fire people. Im talking about Civil Service. Spent the president tried to do Something Like that but he got shot down. We need to get the house back you said you think theyll be impeached again and . I said depends on whos the head of the house and if its nancy pelosi sure. He talk about the Civil Service requirement i agree with you. Having worked for one year the government the Civil Service is mediocrity and its unfair to the people who are high energy and the people who dont achieve should be out. Its not underachieving its actively undermining. People would say okay listen ur career staffer and this is important thing in this is part of our policy process. What do you do . You invest your time. Just to undermine the administration, it happens every single day. Every president of host parties run the executive branch of government as a check and balance. The president is a superstar and dont you love this guys judicial appointment . [applause] how involved is donald trump in not just necessary the Supreme Court nominee but hundreds of new judges. I dont know how many times youve been in there but every single day theres another. That he signs for judges. We will finish where we started. One of the most important things the president has done, we talked about that and we talked about dereg and things that will last. He will be here for eight years. What happens after that talking about putting young people, young bright conservative men and women on the bench who are going to serve this country for 20, 30, 40 years. Those are the legacies. Ladies and gentlemen our time is up. Arent you happy and are you thrilled that this man is Donald Trumps right arm . Lets give this guy a standing ovation. [applause] thank you