A debt-ceiling crisis is on its way. Yes, again.

Mnuchin is a beseecher. A commanding figure is needed on the scene. Where has the Trump administration been all this time? Getting clean debt-ceiling legislation requires a herculean effort, especially out of those congressional Republicans who believe sabotaging the government is good for the country. The greatest threat to raising the ceiling unconditionally is found within Trump’s own party.

.. And it looks even worse when the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, has acted as a public cheerleader for tying a debt-limit increase to fiscal reforms favored by hawks in the House Freedom Caucus, where Mulvaney once held forth. That Trump was so cavalier about his treasury secretary getting stabbed in the back by his OMB director only underscores the magnitude of the problem caused by his inattention. Fortunately, after getting the word from the White House that Mnuchin “speaks for the administration” on the debt ceiling, Mulvaney this week saluted, silenced his foghorn and executed an about-face. At least in public.

.. Yet we are once again, as a country, about to be subjected to another “Perils of Pauline” debt-ceiling cliffhanger in which the financial system is placed at the point of death to only, I hope, escape at the end. That is, if this president, who takes apparent maniacal delight in pulling wings off butterflies in the form of

  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions,
  • former chief of staff Reince Preibus and
  • former press secretary Sean Spicer,

awakes to his obligation to protect the full faith and credit of the United States, and gets to work. We live in hope.

Name Your Pick for TrumpWorld’s Worst Cabinet Member

Who do you think is Donald Trump’s worst cabinet member?

In a normal world we would never be asking this question because, of course, you would have no idea. In a normal world, an American who could come up with two cabinet names besides the secretary of state’s would be regarded as an unusually dedicated citizen.

.. Under normal circumstances we do not talk a whole lot about, say, the secretary of housing and urban development. You would be forgiven for forgetting that this one is Ben Carson. Until you heard that the new head of the department’s massive New York-New Jersey office is going to be the woman who planned Eric Trump’s wedding.

.. Tom Price, secretary of health and human services — he of the “Mr. President, what an incredible honor …” quote. This is the guy who’s got a woman who doesn’t believe in contraception in charge of a government program on family planning.

Price also has a sleazy history of advocating legislation that could boost profits for health care companies whose stocks he was betting on. And I haven’t even mentioned that he’s supposed to be the administration’s titan of Trumpcare.

.. she froze Obama-era reforms aimed at protecting students who enroll in for-profit schools, an area in which her family happens to have significant investments.
.. You have to give extra attention to the people who actually appear capable of getting a load of terrible things done, like Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection Agency. “The problem is that Pruitt knows what he’s doing,”
.. [Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney by a nose.” You may remember that when Mulvaney introduced his first budget, observers discovered he had counted the same $2 trillion twice.
.. Jeff Sessions. (“Racist on voting rights and more, bringing back mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, promoting the cancer of private prisons.”)

Why Trump Could Use More Economists

Better, Mick Mulvaney said, for opponents of legislation to supply their studies and advocates to supply their own. “And if it works, they would get re-elected and if it doesn’t, they don’t.”

 Mr. Mulvaney’s critique would be more convincing if the administration had in fact put forth its own estimates of the economic effects of its proposals. It hasn’t. Its failure to account for the trade-offs of tax cuts (bigger deficits) or reduced subsidies for health care (more uninsured) are one reason Mr. Trump’s agenda is moving so slowly.
.. Forecasts will be wrong more often than right. But they provide a benchmark against which to test proposals based on theory and evidence rather than instinct or unproven ideological priors.
..That discipline has been lacking in Mr. Trump’s administration. When Mr. Trump announced last week he was pulling out of the Paris climate accord, he cited not internal research on the economic harms of the deal, but a private study commissioned by two groups critical of greenhouse gas regulation. His budget two weeks ago was noteworthy for both forecasting 3% growth, much faster than what independent analysts think plausible, and the absence of any detailed analysis of how it will be achieved. Administration officials then contradicted each other on whether tax cuts would be financed with other tax increases.
.. This may reflect the absence of economists in its hallways, a result of Mr. Trump’s apparent early disdain for experts in general.
.. “I sleep better knowing James Mattis is defense secretary and I will sleep better if Kevin Hassett is confirmed as CEA chair.”

Making Ignorance Great Again

Donald Trump just took us out of the Paris climate accord for no good reason. I don’t mean that his decision was wrong. I mean, literally, that he didn’t offer any substantive justification for that decision. Oh, he threw around a few numbers about supposed job losses, but nobody believes that he knows or cares where those numbers came from. It was just what he felt like doing.

.. today’s G.O.P. doesn’t do substance; it doesn’t assemble evidence, or do analysis to formulate or even to justify its policy positions. Facts and hard thinking aren’t wanted, and anyone who tries to bring such things into the discussion is the enemy.

.. So how did the administration respond? By trying to shoot the messenger. Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, attacked the C.B.O.

.. He also accused the office — headed by a former Bush administration economist chosen by Republicans — of political bias, and smeared its top health expert in particular.

.. Mulvaney and his party don’t study issues, they just decide, and attack the motives of anyone who questions their decisions.

.. they insist that the private sector is infinitely flexible and innovative; the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. But then they claim that these magical markets would roll over and die if we put a modest price on carbon emissions

.. Can you think of any major policy area where the G.O.P. hasn’t gone post-truth?

.. bear in mind that so far Trump hasn’t faced a single crisis not of his own making. As George Orwell noted many years ago in his essay “In Front of Your Nose,” people can indeed talk nonsense for a very long time, without paying an obvious price. But “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”