Mick Mulvaney

“To a certain extent, I have to be the president's bad cop from time to time. I have to look people in the eye and tell them, 'No, we don't have enough money for that.' That is not a very popular thing to do in Washington.”

“I really do feel like I'm doing what the people that elected me in the first place wanted me to do. I'm not doing it in the same fashion they thought, or that I thought, when I ran for office in 2010. But I will be doing what they wanted me to do, and that is to try to fix Washington.”

“Remember what Obamacare gave you. Obamacare gave you insurance but not health care. A lot of folks who were technically insured either couldn't afford the premiums or couldn't afford the copay.”

“You can provide better services for less if you get the federal government out of the way.”

“We need people to go to work. If you're on food stamps, and you're able-bodied, we need you to go to work. If you're on disability insurance and you're not supposed to be, you're not truly disabled; we need you to go back to work.”

“There are jobs that American citizens will not do. We can talk about why that is. We can talk about how our welfare state is broken, how we encourage people not to work, but that doesn't help the farmer pick his peaches this summer.”

“We cannot have another experience like we've had in my freshman class, of people saying one thing and doing another.”

“Bad spending, to me, in terms of its economic benefit, would be wealth transfer payments. It's a misallocation of resources.”

“The White House would love to see Obamacare taken apart all at once, bit by bit, however we can do it.”

“I would be embarrassed to tell you how many folks ran saying that they weren't going to spend a bunch of money, they weren't going to raise the debt ceiling, and then they went to Washington, D.C., and did exactly that.”

“There is absolutely no way that the U.S. will ever default on its debt. We are not going to do that.”

“We have to get the tax revenues up. That means we have to get back to a healthy American economy, grow the economy so that you make more money. I make more money, ordinary Americans make more money, and so does the government. That helps lessen the deficit.”

“I don't like the fact that C.F.P.B. exists, I will be perfectly honest with you.”

“Do you really think that Social Security disability insurance is part of what people think of when they think of Social Security? I don't think so. It's the fastest-growing program. It grew tremendously under President Obama. It's a very wasteful program, and we want to try and fix that.”

“When you grew up in a household where mom would keep the extra ketchup packets from McDonald's and keep them in a drawer just in case there came a day when you couldn't afford to buy ketchup anymore, that gets ingrained in you.”

“Too often in Washington, we only look at the recipient side: How does the budget affect either those who receive or don't receive benefits.”

“My reputation is as a fiscal hawk. At least, I hope that it is.”

“We have to end Medicare as we know it. We have to fix it.”

“My dad told me something long before I was in politics, and when your dad gives you advice every single day, eventually one or two of the things stick in your mind. And he said, don't believe what people say, believe what they do.”

“The O.M.B. director puts together the budget. It handles every executive order. It is the clearing house for every single federal regulation. It has input into all the management of all of the federal agencies... It is involved with everything. And I thought, 'That's where I want to be.'”