Mick Mulvaney Bashes ‘Inexcusable’ Coronavirus Testing Issues: ‘We Still Have a Testing Problem in This Country’

Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Monday criticized what he called a coronavirus “testing problem” in the United States, saying it was “simply inexcusable” that his daughter was unable to get a test.

“My son was tested recently; we had to wait 5 to 7 days for results. My daughter wanted to get tested before visiting her grandparents, but was told she didn’t qualify. That is simply inexcusable at this point in the pandemic,” Mulvaney wrote in an op-ed for CNBC.

Mulvaney represented South Carolina in the U.S. House for six years before joining the Trump administration in 2017, first as director of the Office of Management and Budget and later as acting White House chief of staff. He left at the end of March as tensions rose in the White House over the coronavirus pandemic to become the administration’s special envoy for Northern Ireland.

Mulvaney also called in his op-ed for a stimulus package to focus on enhancing resources related to the pandemic, writing, “Any stimulus should be directed at the root cause of our recession: dealing with Covid. I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country.

“We could also direct more money for research,” he added. “Or more temporary hospital beds or therapeutics. If we are going to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars, let’s do it to treat the cause of our economic illness, not just the symptoms.”

As political measures, Mulvaney said, Congress could consider economic measures including a payroll tax cut and tying capital gains to the inflation rate. But he warned against following the model set by Democrats in 2009 when Congress passed a stimulus measure after President Barack Obama’s election — only to see Republicans win subsequent elections.

“Then, the newly empowered Democrats trumpeted their achievement as part of their strategy to create their so-called ‘permanent majority,’” Mulvaney noted. “Yet, as anemic economic growth appeared to be the only thing that was permanent under Democrat control, they lost the House, then the Senate, then the White House in the next three elections.”

An average of 667,000 Americans were tested for coronavirus each day over the last week, according to data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project. Researchers at Harvard have estimated a suggested daily goal of 1.9 million tests.

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