Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told Newsmax on Tuesday afternoon the administration was committed to the president's signature campaign promise of getting Mexico to pay for the proposed wall along the Mexican border.
"We're already working on ways to get Mexico to pay for it . . . that's not my concern," Mulvaney said. "I'm trying to get this thing built."
Mulvaney made this comment to us at a briefing for White House reporters on the sure-to-be-approved bipartisan budget deal.
Last month, a prominent Mexican politician declared a "first victory" because President Trump is asking American taxpayers to fund the wall and not offering any plan to make good on his signature campaign promise to "make Mexico pay for it."
"He's asking your citizens to pay for the wall," Graco Ramírez governor of the Mexican state of Morelos, told Newsmax. "And that provided our first victory."
Mulvaney said that is not true, nor are Democratic claims they have kept Trump's proposed wall out of the budget. He underscored the administration will use several hundred million dollars of a $1.5 billion border security spending increase to begin work on the wall.
"We had an opportunity to move quicker than expected," Mulvaney explained, pointing to a picture of 20-foot high steel wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. "Because President Obama was not able to sign a full-time C.R. [Continuing Resolution] in October of last year, we actually got a bite at the 2017 apple."
Had President Obama been able to pass a C.R. for twelve months, he added, "all of this would have been dealt with and none of this would have been available. None of the additional money for defense, for school choice, for the border — none of this would have been there because President Obama never would have signed that. We got an unexpected second bite at the 2017 apple. And we were happy to get it in order start things moving quicker."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.