Friday at the White House press briefing, CNN’s Jim Acosta had a heated back and forth with White House budget director Mick Mulvaney over which party would be blamed by voters for a potential government shutdown.
Partial transcript as follows:
ACOSTA: You said this was the Schumer shutdown. How can it be the Schumer shutdown when Republicans control the White House, the House and the Senate?
MULVANEY: Come on, you know the answer as well as anybody. I have to laugh when people say that. We control everything.
ACOSTA: You do.
MULVANEY: You know as well as anybody that it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass an appropriations bill.
ACOSTA: I know that.
MULVANEY: If you have 51 votes in the Senate, then you have to have Democrat support in order to keep the government, to fund the government. That’s the answer.
ACOSTA: The president asked Congress to come up with a solution for the DREAMers. Congress was in the room, members of Congress were in the room with the President last week, seemed to be a fairly productive meeting, and the whole process got blown up —
MULVANEY: When Republicans —
ACOSTA: If I may, it seems that the whole process was blown up by the president’s comments.
MULVANEY: When Republicans tried to add a discussion about Obamacare to the funding process in 2013, we were accused by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer of inserting a non-fiscal, non-financial issue into the spending process in order to shut the government down. How is that not exactly what is happening today? There is no reason you have to deal with DACA this week. No reason you have to deal with DACA before the middle of February. DACA doesn’t expire until March 5. This is purely an attempt by the Senate Democrats, led by Mr. Schumer—that’s why we call it the Schumer Shutdown—in order to try and get a shutdown they think this president gets blamed for.
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