Mick Mulvaney

There isn’t a single dollar of spending, a federal regulation or an executive order that doesn’t cross the desk of Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney. And President Trump listens to Mulvaney’s policy advice, in part because the former South Carolina congressman has government experience that several White House colleagues have lacked.

Not only has Mulvaney kept his powerful job at OMB while many others have cycled out of the White House, but Trump also gave him a second powerful job as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he has been just as vigorous about translating his limited-government principles into corporate-friendly policy. He blocked a proposed rule to rein in payday lenders. He has yet to bring a single enforcement action. He rewrote the CFPB’s mission statement so that the agency’s top priority is now getting rid of “burdensome regulations,” and rebranded it as the BCFP to distance it from its roots as a crusading agency launched by Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, Mulvaney has continued to push conservative policy as Trump’s budget director, proposing severe cuts to nonmilitary spending and a massive reorganization of the federal bureaucracy. With the possible exception of Vice President Mike Pence, there’s no one in Trump’s orbit with a larger footprint in domestic policy. Rumors fly that Mulvaney might become Trump’s next chief of staff. Presumably, he would have to give up his other two jobs, but you never know. He has already proved he can multitask.

—Michael Grunwald