On Friday, Congress passed a bill that does three crucial things: it keeps the government running through December 8, rather than allowing it to shut down on October 1; it raises the debt limit so that the U.S. doesn’t default within the next month and send the markets into a panic; and it provides $15.25 billion in aid to victims affected by Hurricane Harvey in Texas and other areas of the Gulf Coast. Naturally, conservatives hated it. And they didn’t hesitate to express their displeasure Thursday with Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, for asking them to vote for it:
Republicans, who have made a pastime of kvetching every time the debt ceiling needs to be increased and attempting to extract sharp cuts to “entitlements” like health care for the poor, “hissed and groaned” at Mnuchin as he begged them yesterday to vote for the bill, Bloomberg reports. While party members were always going to put up a fight on any deal that had a debt-ceiling measure attached to it—especially one Trump made with Democrats—they were apparently extra ornery about Mnuchin’s inability to provide answers to any of their questions, which is ostensibly part of his job. “There were probably a lot of members in there in disbelief,” Rep. Ryan Costello told The Washington Post. “I do know that there is a lot of frustration with the deal that was cut by the president, and I think it’s a very difficult pill for many in there to swallow.”
Mnuchin, who has donated to Democrats in the past, was clearly not among friends. But for Republicans who used to work with Mulvaney, a former congressman who was once among the most conservative members of the House, the hypocrisy was personal. Per Politico:
The breaking point for the caucus was apparently when Mnuchin made his closing argument all about himself. “His last words, and I quote, was, ‘Vote for the debt ceiling for me,’” Walker said. “That did not go over well in the room at all. . . . His performance was incredibly poor.” Rep. Ted Yoho snapped, “He’s not one of my constituents.” Rep. Dave Brat was even more incensed: “The comments from the Treasury secretary today were not helpful,” he said. “I found them to be intellectually insulting.” Still fuming after the vote ultimately passed, Walker told reporters that the meeting was “very uncomfortable” and that any “yes” votes were in spite of Mnuchin’s pitch, not because of it. “If any votes were gathered it was [House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy doing a great job to bring it back together at the end of it because it got very loose with Mulvaney and Mnuchin.”
But the most savage burn came from Costello, who told The Hill that Mnuchin’s pitch was “about as well received as his wife’s Instagram post.”