Providing a remarkably blatant account of how Congress is basically “an extortion racket” and perhaps offering some insight into how he makes decisions at the CFPB, White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney told a gathering of bank executives on Tuesday that as a lawmaker he would only meet with lobbyists who gave him cash.

“A consummate grifter with a penchant for petty, penny-ante bullshit, Mick Mulvaney really is the embodiment of this whole administration.”
—Kevin Kruse

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mulvaney, who previously represented South Carolina in the House, told executives at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

Mulvaney’s comment came as he was advising bankers on how to most effectively pursue their deregulatory agenda with Congress.

Influencing legislators, Mulvaney explained to the audience of ultra-wealthy financiers, is one of the “fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy. And you have to continue to do it.”

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and professor at University of California, Berkeley, offered a simple translation of Mulvaney’s advice on how to sway lawmakers: “Bribe them with even more money.”