President Donald Trump engaged in some "hyperbole" with his pledge to reduce $20 trillion worth of debt in four years, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney admitted Wednesday.
"It's fairly safe to assume that was hyperbole," Mulvaney said in an interview with CNBC's John Harwood airing Wednesday. "I'm not going to be able to pay off $20 trillion worth of debt in four years. I'd be being dishonest with you if I said that I could."
Meanwhile, the president does not want to change mandatory spending items quite yet, as the public is not ready, but instead is ready for economic growth.
However, there were plenty of cuts in Mulvaney's initial budget, and Trump is conscious that some of those cuts hurt his core voters. However, the budget director said that Trump cares "about more than just the Trump voters."
"He wants to know, 'are the folks in Appalachia, are the coal miners in West Virginia going to be better off under my presidency whether or not they voted for me?'" said Mulvaney. "He doesn't care if they voted for him. I think what the president will tell you is, 'the best thing I can do for those folks, whether or not they voted for me, is to figure out a way to get 3.5 percent economic growth.'"
Trump has removed some of the cuts Mulvaney sought, including on Social Security and Medicare, because those went against his campaign promises.
But Mulvaney said it has not been settled if Social Security disability is on the list.
"I continue to look forward to talking to the president about ways to fix that program, because that is one of the fastest growing programs that we have," said Mulvaney. "It's become effectively a long-term unemployment, permanent unemployment program."
Trump this week suggested a proposal of $1 trillion in outlays for infrastructure, said Harwood, but Mulvaney said that would be a good expenditure.
"Infrastructure is sort of that good spending in the middle, where even if you do misallocate resources a little bit, you still have something to show for it," he said.
Meanwhile, Mulvaney said he thinks chances of a government shutdown at the end of April are "very low," as it takes the House, Senate and White House to agree on that.
"If they can't agree, you have a lapse in funding," said Mulvaney. "That's the term that the Congressional Research Service uses for what the media calls a shut-down. It's happened 17 times between 1976 and 1994. Those lapses in funding used to be fairly typical."
Meanwhile, there will need to be steps made to try to resolve national debt, and that could mean entitlement reform eventually, said Mulvaney.
"The discussion we're going to try and drive is, yeah, we're going to raise the debt ceiling" said Mulvaney. "But we're going to have to do it as part and parcel of a larger thing to try and solve and resolve some of our debt problems ... there's a lot of entitlement reform other than just how old do you have to be to get your Social Security benefits."
The White House and Trump will soon have their own tax reform plan to sell to the hill, said Mulvaney.
"We're going to fix the tax system in this country, and that means corporate, that means pass-through, S corporations, that means dealing with deductions, that means individuals, that means everything. It's a go-big or go-home type of attitude," said Mulvaney.
Mulvaney, also appearing on Fox News' "Fox & Friends," has compiled a 14-page memo outlining big cuts as the federal hiring freeze is set to lift.
"The hiring freeze was sort of a way to stop everything from going on while the new management team came in," said Mulvaney. "Now that we have had a couple of months to look at it we have now come out and said this is what we are going to do."
By the end of the day on Wednesday, the White House will also roll out guidance to federal agencies for implementing government restructuring for hiring and firing, Mulvaney told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"We'll start allowing agencies to start hiring in a smart fashion," Mulvaney said. "Some will have to continue to get smaller, some bigger consistent with the president's budget ... we're now transitioning into the smarter, more surgical plans of running the government."
Meanwhile, with the government funding deadline coming up at the end of April, votes are needed across the party, but it is possible to pass a budget with just Republicans as the House majority.
"By the time you get to the Senate, I think the debt ceiling can be raised under reconciliation, which takes 50 votes," said Mulvaney. "The appropriations bills, the funding in April, would need 60."
Mulvaney also commented on Trump's call to focus first on healthcare reform, as a means to help fund tax cuts and reform, saying he thinks that one more than one thing can be done at a time.
"I've got a meeting on tax reform," he said. "We've got a meeting I think later on today or tomorrow on infrastructure. We met yesterday with a group of CEOs about this government restructuring and obviously discussions are continuing all the time about the healthcare bill. It's not just sort of a one off."
But there are advantages for tackling healthcare first, both politically and economically, said Mulvaney, so for many reasons he thinks Trump is "absolutely right."
"We will continue to work on healthcare but that doesn't mean we stop working on other things as well," Mulvaney said.