Election. The ranking democrat on that Committee Adam Schiff of california joins me this morning. Plus, that budget blueprint. Sharp increases in spending for the military. Sharp decreases in domestic programs for the poor. Look, we want to give you money for programs that dont work. I cant defend that anymore. President trumps budget director Mick Mulvaney is here this morning. Health care fight. Can President Trump win over enough republicans to get his bill through congress . I will talk to a republican no vote this morning, senator Susan Collins of maine. Joining me are syndicated columnist george will, Yamiche Alcindor of the New York Times, robert costa of the Washington Post and anchor of bbc world news america, katty kay. Welcome to sunday. Its meet the press. Announcer from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, celebrating its 70th year this is meet the press with chuck todd. Good sunday morning. It was in the late 60s that the term credibility gap gained currency as people grew skeptical of president johnsons claim of u. S. Progress in vietnam. Now donald trump is facing similar growing disthe u. S. What began with claims on trivial matters as whether his inauguration crowds were bigger than president obamas they werent have turned into something more koconsequential. They have been redefining President Trumps insistence president obama had him surveilled or wiretapped. He took a swipe at the National Security agency for listening in on german chancellor Angela Merkels phone week the adminis policy of ready, fire, aim, cause an incident with the uk when the u. S. Peddled a claim that they spied on mr. Trump. James comey will testify today before the House Intelligence Committee where hell be asked about meddling in the election. The president s credibility issues are growing as hes struggling to sell his agenda to congress. As far as wiretapping, i guess by you know, this past administration at least we have something in common perhaps. President trump claiming yet again on friday that president obama had him wiretapped despite unambiguous statements from Republican Leaders wholed who would know. There is no evidence of this. I havent seen evidence of this. Now the british are livid after sean spicer used the white house podium to traffic an unverified claim by a fox news commentator that it was britains spy agency that monitored mr. Trump on mr. Obamas behalf. Hes able to get it. There is no american fingerprints on this. Hes able to get it and there are no american fingerprints on this. The British Agency calls it nonsense, utterly ridiculous. The white house is refusing to apologize, quote, i dont think we regret anything. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. Hes referring to fox commentator Andrew Napalitano but fox news distanced itself. In the two weeks since mr. Trump tweeted the allegations the president and aides cant let it go. The president has been clear he didnt mean specifically wiretapping. He had it in quotes. Lets see if i prove it. I dont choose to do it now. The claims are straining his credibility with republicans just at the time he needs a united party to push his agenda through congress. Two months into the presidency, that agenda looks stuck in the mud. The president s revised travel ban, blocked again. This time by federal judges in hawaii and maryland. We ought to go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what i wanted to do in the first place. Health care legislation, on the rocks with a house vote scheduled for thursday. The president promises hes getting republicans to yes. Every singling person sitting in this room is now a yes. We made certain changes. The changes recommended by the House Budget Committee giving states the option to require ablebodied medicaid recipients to work in order to get medical care. And further limiting medicaid spending. Freedom caucus can i haonservaty they need further changes before they support the bill. I have been fully articulating my problems for about two weeks. I dont know that those have changed. Every time the bill is changed to placate conservatives they risk losing another moderate in the senate. We want to be there for constituents who received the benefit of Medicaid Expansion. In addition to health care there is President Trumps budget, the budget blueprint calls for significant increases for the defense department, Homeland Security and the department of veterans afi firf while making cuts in the epa, the state Agricultural Labor departments all taking big hits in the budget. Joining me now is the director of the office of management and budget Mick Mulvaney. Good morning. Thanks for having me. On the surveilling do you take the president at his word he or associates were wiretapped . I thought it was tongue in cheek. Im the numbers guy, doing the budget. Im not involved in the wire thatting issue. On one hand are you concerned that eroding credibility on that issue makes your job harder in congress . No, no. Those of us who see and work with the president believe him, trust him have no difficulties like those in the press do. You dont think this is a difficulty for folks that they can take the president at his word on health care. Hes said, hey, take my word for it. Some of these folks are out on a limb. I was in the meeting thursday or friday in the oval office. The president had a clear argument, got folks to commit to the bill. It was a credible discussion. I dont have concerns. I want to start on the budget with something you said in 2013. You said and youre not the first to Say Something like this, remember, a budget is more than just a spending document. It is also a vision document. Explain the vision behind this budget that does whack a lot of domestic program, some which a lot of people benefit from and puts all the emphasis on security. The vision is that this is what the president ran on. Hes trying to do something that politicians arent famous for which is following through on his promises. If you go back which is what we did look at his speeches, interviews, talk to him and say whats important to you . Look for the message the president was trying to deliver. That meant more money for defense, more money to security the border. More money for Law Enforcement generally and more money for things like veterans affairs, Veterans Health care and private and Public School choice. Thats where we spent more money. The president didnt want this to add to the deficit this year. When we added the 54 billion for defense we took that money from other places. Thats the vision. More money for what the president said without adding to the deficit. He said well take care of those people, wont let people go untaken care of. You have seen story after story of specific programs that benefit his voters and hes taking a whack at here. Why do that . Some of the stories are just either grossly wrong or nearly wrong about how we cut meals on wheels. The program we proposed to eliminate accounts for 3 of the meals on wheels funding across the nation. Step back but you are getting rid of the block grant that it provides. It ontarly provides 3 of me on wheels money. That wasnt broadly reported. You asked about the trump taxes. For the first time in a long time you have an administration looking at the compassion of both sides of the equation. Not just the compassion in terms of where the money go bus in terms of where the money comes from. Could we as administration, could i as a budget director look at a coal miner in West Virginia and say i want you to give money to the federal government so i can give toyota the National Endowment for the arts. We finally got to the point in the administration where we couldnt do that. You owe 60,000 to the government. So do i in terms of the debt. The president said lets take care of both sides of the equation. Some cuts seem counter productive to the president s message on infrastructure. You want to do a bunch of spending on infrastructure at some point. You are cutting advanced technology, vehicle manufacturing, Manufacturing Extension Partnership which provides assistance to small and mid sized manufacturers to get off the ground to create jobs in these very counties that need jobs created. Why cut the programs and why do it before you have come up with the infrastructure plan . Sure. When we looked at the infrastructure we know we are working on a plan for later in the year. Well do Health Reform i think this week in the house. Then tax reform. So that moves infrastructure to summer or early fall. We tried to find out where we thought the infrastructure money wasnt being spent as efficiently as it could and said lets take it out of the discretionary budget to put it back in the infrastructure bill. We think it is a better use of american resources. I want to talk about the issue. You said one of the president s goals wasnt to add to the deficit as it is. But this budget will have a deficit. Is that fair to say . Sure. The deficit before we came into office would be 488 billion. This year according to the Congressional Budget Office. After we spend all of the additional money on defense, border enforcement, Law Enforcement, veterans, the deficit will be the same. We did as we plussed up, increased spending on the president priorities without adding to the number. I want to play something. Candidate donald trump throughout the last year. I do want a balanced budget. We owe 19 trillion. Weve got to start paying it down, balancing budgets. These people are talking about balancing budgets in 35 years from now . We can do it believe me much quicker. We can do it quickly. Heav even made a pledge to g rid of the debt in eight years. If you are doing this quickly, nothing in this budget is close to balanced. The fact that you are doing neutral to the deficit last year isnt congress. Keep in mind what a budget blueprint is and this is traditional for the first year of a new administration. Obama did it, bush did it. What this is is a spending outline. All it is as you mentioned is the Discretionary Spending part of the budget. Thats only 25 of what the government spends. The other 75 roughly is the mandatory, what some people call entitlement spending. In may well introduce the full budget to address the tenyear budget window, tax flows, larger policy changes, Health Care Reforms. Are you pledging a balanced budget in may . Not this year but trying to get it balanced within the tenyear budget window which is what republicans in the house and senate have done. The goal is a balanced budget within ten years but that means you will add to the debt every single year in the next ten years. Thats correct. Its difficult. We have been thats not what candidate trump said. He said it would be easy. Does it turn out this is complicated, too . It is a very complicated budget process when your mandatory spending is driving most of your budget deficit. For example, you could cut the Agriculture Department to zero. Hhs to zero. Hud to zero. The fbi to zero. You would still have a deficit this year. Over the course of the next decade we have to look at the mandatory spending side to figure out a way to make changes to the way we spend money. Have you figured out how to pay for the trillion dollar infrastructure yet . No. One of the neat things about having a businessman in office and all of the folks come from the private sector is they have brought ideas that i dont think government has contemplated before. Public private partnerships, ways to capitalize future revenue flows, creative ideas. Im a deficit hawk. I think its why i got the job. But the more i hear about the infrastructure plan the more comfortable im getting. Speaking of the debt ceiling we hit it on friday. Extraordinary measures by the treasury secretary mean a couple more months. You were a tough nut to crack when you were congressman mulvaney. Why should people likeminded with you who said i will give you the debt ceiling but i want real cuts, real deficit reduction. At one point you said i will raise the ceiling in exchange for a balanced budget. You arent making that ask this time, are you . I voted to raise the debt ceiling as most people in congress have. Go back to the 1920s, 30s and 40s, the debt ceiling debate has been used to try to step back and say, okay, why do we have a definite problem . Why do we have a debt problem . How can we fix it . Well come forward with the ideas to raise the debt ceiling but at the same time try to address long term reasons we have a debt. You are not somebody that voted for a lot of budgets in congress. Why this doesnt look like a budget congressman mulvaney would have supported. Why would you support keeping the deficit . I feel congressman mulvaney would not support the numbers that this budget shows. Its a fair question. Keep in mind the administration is different than members of the hill, members of the house and senate. Every house member as i used to be has a constituency, a group of people at home we represent. Senators represent the state. There are a lot of special interest, lobbying involved. The president isnt beholden to that. The president represents everybody. Consultants werent consulted on this, lobbyists, special interests were not. This is a budget for the nation because thats who he represents. As you put together the budget did you look at your votes and go, hmm, maybe i shouldnt have voted that way . No. I did the best job i could to represent south carolina. Now im the president s budget director and we put out a good budget. When will you be able to propose a balanced budget . What year . I dont know yet. We are getting into it now. By mid may, we are shooting for, well have a larger budget first term . I dont know yet. We dont know what Health Care Reform will look like, tax reform, the infrastructure program. Those are the really big picture items we wont know about for a couple of months. Well have to leave it there. Mick mulvaney, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. On health care President Trump is working to get the republican support in the house and the plan to get through the house but the obamacare replacement faces tough on session in the senate as well. If all 48 senators vote no as ex3ek9ed the president can only afford to lose two republicans. Now there are four republican nos. Rand paul, mike lee who say the bill is too generous and dean heller and Susan Collins who argue the bill is too harsh. Senator collins of maine joins me now. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. You were very tough on the house bill. You were unambiguous when it came to the no vote on the bill. So very simply, what would it take to get you from no to yes . We have to deal with three issues. The first is coverage. Under the house bill, 14 million americans would lose coverage next year. That rises to 24 million over the next decade. Second, we have to do something about the fact that the house bill disproportionately affects older rural americans. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a 64yearold earning 26,500 a year would see an increase in his or her costs from 1700 to 14,600. Thats unaffordable. Third, we have to do something about the medicaid changes which ship billions of dollars of costs to the states, to hospitals and other people who are insured. Do you evand, if so, that ita right the government is responsible for fulfilling . I believe that as a practical matter people have a right to health care in that if theyre sick and they go to notoing to away. In fact, federal law requires a hospital to treat someone who comes to an emergency room. But thats the least Cost Effective way to treat an individual who doesnt need emergency room care. So there is a lot that we can do to reduce the cost of health care by, for example, using managed care for the medicaid program. Let me ask you a couple of questions on the president s budget. Is there any part of the president s budget you support . Yes. I do think we need an increase for our veterans and that we need an increase in military spending because readiness has suffered. But i think we have to do a more gradual increase. One of the most disturbing parts of the president s budget is his slashing the funding for the National Institutes of health. We have been making tremendous progress in the increasing nihs budget and that has helped us to develop effective treatments, new cures for expensive diseases. If we are serious about reducing Health Care Costs the last thing we should be doing is cutting the budget for biomedical research. Where do you get the money though . Thats going to be the there are a lot of programs i think a lot of people can individually make a case for. Think what the white house would say is, hey, maybe these are good programs that could be done better. We have a financial problem in this country. We have a Rising National debt. We cant seem to get out from under an annual deficit. Where do we find the money . For instance, can we afford a massive tax cut . We do have to scour the budget. And tax reform does not necessarily mean that we are going to have a significant reduction in rev n revenues. It is possible to come up with one thats more pro growth, simpler and fairer and doesnt substantially reduce revenues. Senator bill