Mulvaney can't say if Trump would accept less than $5.7 billion for border security
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney declined to say Sunday whether President Trump would accept less than the $5.7 billion he has demanded for a border wall in negotiations with Democrats.
"I'm not going to debate on TV, you know that," Mulvaney said on "Face the Nation." "I'm not going to negotiate, and certainly I'm not in a position to, because the president's in charge of this."
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- Transcript: Mick Mulvaney on "Face the Nation," January 27, 2019
"As to whether or not the $5.7 [billion] will get smaller or not, the president will do everything he can to secure the border," Mulvaney added. "And there are other moneys available to him if Congress decides that they're not willing to give him enough money to do the job."
Asked about the 2018 White House budget proposal, which requested only $1.6 billion for the border wall, Mulvaney disputed the premise of the question.
"What actually happened in last year's budget was that we proposed that $1.6 billion at a much lower level of government spending," Mulvaney argued.
Congress "did spend an additional $130-odd billion dollars above that low number," he continued. "And we told them at that time if you spend the extra $130 billion, we actually want $25 billion of it for the wall. So Congress is sort of conveniently forgetting those parts of the discussion."