Thursday at the White House press briefing while answering questions about President Donald Trump’s “America First Budget,” Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney called climate change research “a waste of your money” regarding proposed cuts in that area.

Mulvaney said “A couple of different messages, when we talk about science and climate change — let’s deal with them separately. On science, we’re going to focus on the core function. There are reductions in the NIH, National Institutes of Health. Why? Because we think there’s been mission creep, we think there are things outside their core function. We think there’s tremendous opportunity for savings. We recommend a couple of facilities can be combined and there is cost savings from that.”

“Again, this comes back to the President’s business person view of government, which is if you took over this as a CEO and you look at this on a spreadsheet, and you go, ‘Why do we have all of these facilities? Why do we have seven when we can do the same job with three? Won’t that save money?'” he continued. “The answer is yes. So the part of your answer is focusing on efficiencies and focusing on doing what we do better. As to climate change, I think the President was fairly straightforward saying we’re not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that. So that is a specific tie to his campaign.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN