President Donald Trump's new healthcare initiative is "fairly limited" unless legislation is passed to give it some bones, former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Friday.
"If we could have fixed healthcare with executive orders alone, we would have done that back in 2017,” Mulvaney, now the U.S. special envoy for Northern Ireland, told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "I’m not sure where they got the authority to do it, but I’m sure the lawyers had vetted this and the president had the executive ability to do this, but, keep in mind, any executive order is going to be fairly limited. You need legislation to do big things."
Trump's executive order declares that it's the policy of the United States that people who have preexisting conditions be protected concerning healthcare and that unexpected medical bills would be prevented. The president also promised that older Americans on Medicare would get a card with $200 toward the cost of their prescription medications.
Mulvaney said that the orders are more of a message about what the administration stands for and that there have already been provisions for preexisting conditions.
"The executive order about preexisting conditions, for example, is entirely consistent with every single budget that I ever wrote for him," said Mulvaney, who previously served as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. "All of our budgets protected preexisting conditions."
Mulvaney also commented on next Tuesday's presidential debate, saying that he thinks the "left-wing press" will accuse Trump of lying and abusing the system and encourage Democrat nominee Joe Biden not to debate him anymore.
"Everybody knows [Biden's] not a good debater and knows the president is," said Mulvaney. "You will look for ways not to do more than one. I'd be surprised that there are three [debates] and someone should press the Biden campaign before Tuesday night."
In addition, Biden will likely make the rest of his campaign about COVID-19, as that's the issue on which he polls higher than Trump, said Mulvaney.
"The president, rightly so, should make it about the economy and recovery," said Mulvaney. "The debates in an ordinary campaign, they are important, but in this campaign, they are extraordinarily important."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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