Politics

Newt Gingrich Offers ‘Obvious’ Fix For Congress’ Spending Mess

Newt Gingrich on "Jesse Watters Primetime" discussing Congress spending bill [Screenshot/Fox News/"Jesse Watters Primetime"]

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Wednesday on Fox News, said his solution to Congress’ spending mess would be to kill the bill and instead pass a “short continuing resolution.”

Chaos in Congress erupted Wednesday after Republicans opposed a stopgap measure to keep the government funded until spring, which was introduced late Tuesday. On “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Watters questioned what Gingrich would do if he were the current House speaker, stating how the issue needs to “stop.”

“Well, I think, first of all, the whole idea of the DOGE Committee has already paid for itself by having Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy begin to point out all the dumb things in this bill,” Gingrich said.

“The obvious answer is kill this bill, pass a very short continuing resolution to get the new Republican Senate installed and negotiate a new bill before January 20 that covers the rest of the year and gets the job done,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich went on to highlight two issues with the dilemma Congress faces, noting that one had to do with working with Democrats and the other involved shutting down the government.

WATCH:

“But it also, I would just say two things will be sort of, I think, radical for Washington. One, when you negotiate with Democrats, they’re going to put stupid things in the bill. So there’s a big disadvantage every time you let them help write the bill, because everybody on your side is going to think the bill is stupid,” Gingrich said.

“Second, we closed the government several times while I was Speaker. We would not have gotten to a balanced budget if we had not had the guts to go to the mat and say, ‘No, we’re not going to do dumb things,’ which was a great shock to Bill Clinton and a great shock to the Democrats. But the country thought, you know, it’s good not to do dumb things,” Gingrich added. “So I would hope that Republicans in the House and Senate will take seriously the warnings of President Trump and of Vivek Ramaswamy and of Elon Musk.”

Following the release of the bill Tuesday, Republicans quickly vocalized their concerns about the 1,574-page continuing resolution (CR) that had hoped to avoid a government shutdown. While Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson scrapped the last-minute measure by Wednesday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise also said the bill was dead, with no clear path forward, as there was “no new agreement right now,” according to CBS News.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News/”Jesse Watters Primetime”)