At first townhall since pandemic’s start, Malinowski shows infrastructure optimism

Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) acknowledged the difficulties of passing new voting rights legislation through a divided Congress at his first in-person town hall-style event since the start of the pandemic, though he expressed greater optimism about Washington finally getting through infrastructure week.

Malinowski took questions from a crowd of roughly 30 in Bernadsville’s Bernards Café for roughly an hour, fielding broad enquiries that ranged from robocalls to questions over America’s response to foreign cyberattacks.

He laid out an optimistic picture for a bipartisan infrastructure framework agreed to by Senate Republicans and President Joe Biden, not hesitating to burnish his own credentials and role in the process as a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“I worked on the first draft of that soon-to-be piece of legislation,” he said in remarks near the start of the event.

The two-term congressman said he pushed for the bill to include investments in the national electrical grid and charging stations for electric vehicles. Details about the bill, expected to cost a little less than $1 trillion, remain hazy, and Democrats are planning to pass a separate measure funding many of Biden’s priorities through a reconciliation vote.

That maneuver would allow Democrats to pass their plan with only a simple majority in the Senate, instead of the 60-vote threshold used for regular legislation.

It was important, he said, that the bipartisan bill “not just be the same old highway bill that we have been doing in this country since Dwight Eisenhower did it for the highway system.”

The bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, which is co-chaired by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) and of which Malinowski is a member, formally endorsed the bipartisan framework Tuesday.

He was more cautious about a Democratic push to enact new federal voting protections in the face of restrictive bills enacted by Republican-controlled legislatures in several states.

The GOP has balked at all voting measures proposed by Democrats, including a compromise bill introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), a moderate.

Malinowski himself did not support a proposal aired by one attendee that would give citizens who vote tax credits.

He recoiled from such a policy instinctively, saying it evoked vote-buying common in countries with fraught democracies.

The congressman’s mood was better on the repeal of the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions.

“It’s a negotiation between progressive Democrats, more conservative, more middle-of-the-road Democrats,” Malinowski said. “I think we’ve been pretty loud in making clear that SALT should be part of that compromise, so much so that Bernie Sanders … when he put forward his version of the reconciliation bill, he included the SALT deduction.”

Sanders, the Senate Budget Committee chairman, is no fan of repealing the SALT cap, which would disproportionately benefit wealthy residents in predominantly blue states.