The passage of the continuing resolution to keep the government open was a remarkable example of the revolutionary movement through which we are living.
Traditionally, a continuing resolution requires a bipartisan agreement to get through the Senate.
Republican leaders meet with Democratic leaders to discuss it. And the continuing resolution becomes far more expensive – and gains a lot more ideological language.
After the 2024 election, many supposed experts said that President Donald Trump would have a hard time getting legislation through the extraordinarily narrow House Republican majority – or past the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
The House Republicans have been in turmoil for a decade. Speaker John Boehner retired early in October 2015. His successor, Speaker Paul Ryan announced he would not run again in the middle of 2018. There was a 40-seat defeat in that mid-term election. Then Speaker Kevin McCarthy worked for four years to regrow a Republican majority, but a small, embittered faction simply made his speakership unsustainable. It took 15 ballots for McCarthy to win the Speakership. Then, he was forced out by the same embittered dissidents on Oct. 3, 2023.
Finally, Speaker Mike Johnson emerged as the consensus candidate for Speaker after three high-profile members failed to win 218 votes. Since Johnson had not been in leadership, it represented an enormous jump in responsibility. This led many to believe he would not be able to control the office, which had ultimately forced out Boehner, Ryan, and McCarthy.
Speaker Johnson has turned out to be far more successful – and a lot more strategic – than anyone expected. He also decided early that he could only be effective as President Trump’s ally.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune was a House veteran who has served 20 years in the Senate. At 64, he is a generation younger than former Leader Mitch McConnell. Thune has proven to be a good partner for President Trump and Speaker Johnson. The three have worked hard to get on the same page and to work together to get things done.
If you had told any so-called expert on Jan. 20 that Republicans could get a seven-month continuing resolution to keep the government open for the rest of the fiscal year through the House with only Republican votes, he or she probably would not have believed you. If you had then told them the bill would be difficult for Senate Democrats to undermine, they would have thought you were dreaming. Finally, if you told them that Speaker Johnson, President Trump, and Majority Leader Thune would out-maneuver the Democrats and give them no choice but to pass the continuing resolution or close the government, the experts would have dismissed you out of hand.
Yet, with help from Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, President Trump executed what would have been called in chess a fork.
A fork is a setting where your opponent has two chess pieces at risk. Both cannot be saved. The only choice is which one to sacrifice.
The continuing resolution coming out of the House was entirely Republican. It cut spending. It shifted spending from domestic policies Republicans opposed to into immigration enforcement and defense. More importantly, it rewrote current law to give President Trump and Elon Musk greater flexibility to cut spending and waste.
The Democrats were furious that they were being cut out of the process. They were desperate to defeat the Republican effort, so they could then offer to work with them and develop a much more liberal and anti-change bill.
When the Democrats failed to stop Speaker Johnson, they had only two choices. Both were painful.
They could all vote no. If the Senate Democrats did this, the Republicans would not be able to get past the filibuster, and so the government would shut down. In this case, standing up to President Trump might have been a political victory for their base. But it wouldn’t play well with the rest of the country.
Then the Democrats realized President Trump could cut more programs and reshape the bureaucracy even more under a shutdown scenario than he could if they passed the bill, which they thought already granted him too much power.
So, the choice for the Democrats became to pass a bill that gave President Trump more authority to cut government – or stop the bill and give him even more authority.
President Trump, Speaker Johnson, and Majority Leader Thune played this round brilliantly and won a huge victory.
They also proved that they could pass tax cuts, deregulation, and the other priorities on which President Trump and the Republicans campaigned on in 2024.
This was a big victory with huge implications for the future.