How Trump, GOP won the spending bill battle

Wednesday

Newt Gingrich Former House Speaker; Chairman of Gingrich 360

By Straight Arrow News

On March 15, 2025, President Trump signed a Republican-led stopgap measure to keep the government funded, preventing a potential shutdown. The signing followed a Senate vote of 54 to 46, with one of the key Democratic votes coming from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Initially, Schumer indicated that Democrats would resist the partisan continuing resolution. However, he later softened his stance, committing to support the GOP budget, and warning that a government shutdown would pose a far greater risk to the American public.

In the video above, Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich explains how the GOP strategically boxed Democrats into a corner, leaving them with little choice but to back the measure.

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The following is an excerpt from the above video:

On the one hand, they could stop the House-passed, very Republican, very conservative continuing resolution, but if they did, that actually technically gave the president greater ability to reorganize the government. Because in the absence of the continuing resolution, the Office of Management and Budget can decide which programs to pay for and which programs to shut down because there is no money. So all of a sudden, the Democrats had this problem.

The House, with tremendous help from President Trump and extraordinary leadership by Speaker Johnson, had passed an entirely Republican, very conservative continuing resolution for seven months on Republican terms, which meant less spending domestically, some spending for defense, some spending to control the border, but really set the stage for the reconciliation bill later in the spring. Once the House passed that, they went home, leaving the Senate with two choices: pass what the House did or close the government.

Well, the first reaction to Democrats was, we’ll show you. We’ll close the government. And then somebody came to him [Sen. Schumer] and said, “You do realize that if you fail to pass this, that you actually increase the ability of President Trump and his deputy, Elon Musk, to decide what it is they’re not going to pay for. So you’re actually increasing their power to break up the government you’re trying to protect.”

The remarkable victory of the team of President Trump, Speaker Johnson and majority leader Thune in the Senate in passing a continuing resolution which extends the government for seven months on entirely Republican terms, is really something worth studying. You know, in chess, there’s a situation called a fork, and in a fork, your opponent is going to lose a piece. They get to choose which piece, but both, they have two pieces that are in danger. They can only save one. Well, in a sense, with really brilliant leadership from the Trump administration, and particularly from Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management Budget, who had been there before, had thought about it for four years, knew what he was doing.

They set the Democrats up with a very interesting fork. On the one hand, they could stop the House passed very Republican, very conservative continuing resolution, but if they did that actually, technically gave the president greater ability to reorganize the government, because in the absence of the continuing resolution, the Office of Management and Budget can decide which programs to pay for and which programs to shut down because there is no money. So all of a sudden, the Democrats had this problem. The house, with tremendous help from President Trump and extraordinary leadership by Speaker Johnson, had passed an entirely Republican, very conservative continuing resolution for seven months on Republican terms, which meant less spending domestically, some spending for defense, some spending to control the border, but really set the stage for the reconciliation bill later in the spring, once the House passed that they went home, leaving the Senate with two choices, pass what the House did, or close the government. Well, the first reaction to Democrats was, we’ll show you.

We’ll close the government. And then somebody came to him and said, You do realize that if you fail to pass this, that you actually increase the ability of President Trump and his deputy, Elon Musk, to decide what it is they’re not going to pay for. So you’re actually increasing their power to break up the government you’re trying to protect. The result was the Democrats were in turmoil. Their left was very clear in the house, only one Democrat voted for the bill, all the rest voted no, 213, to one. Now they’re putting pressure on the Senate Democrats to stick with them, but the Senate Democrats began to realize this was, in fact, a trap. What I mentioned earlier, it’s a fork.

If they vote to kill the bill, they increase Trump’s power to reshape the federal government. On the other hand, if they vote for the bill, they make every ally on the left furious and feeling like they’ve been betrayed. And that’s why initially, the Senate Democratic leader Schumer said he was not going to vote for it. And then when Bush came to shove and he realized what the consequence was, he said yes, he’d vote for it, even though he didn’t like it, he liked the alternative. Even worse,