It is a sign of our times that the strongest calls for shutting down the federal government, its offices and its programs and to hell with the citizenry for the duration is coming from the current residents of the White House. After Trump tweeted that "our country needs a good shutdown in September," he got backup this morning from his own budget chief. That's right, now Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney is mewing that shutting down the government in September rather than funding things Trump doesn't want to fund is a "defensible position." Not just that, but:
It's entirely probable that Trump himself was bluffing. He doesn't care about the budget, and he doesn't care whether the government shuts down or not. He just wants to do whatever makes him, personally, look good and as usual that means taking to Twitter to carp about how he didn't really get his ass handed to him by the negotiators of the present budget deal, and even if he did just you wait because next time he'll win for sure.
But we should presume Mick Mulvaney, for his part, means it. The administration's top budget voice indeed sounds pretty comfortable with the notion of yet another government shutdown, for the sake of the same far-right budget demands that caused the last one.
We've gotten used to the notion that a sitting presidential administration would, regardless of any other faults, at least treat the job of managing the United States government as a serious endeavor. Now that, too, has changed. The arsonists are now staffing the fire department.