Happy Valentine’s Day (Week?), New Jersey! Congress has decided to give the gift of an impeached Homeland Security Secretary and a pending foreign aid bill for Ukraine and Israel, but a SALTy bonus was sunk without a proper vote.
The House has now left for its two-week district work period, while the Senate started its own recess earlier this week. When the full Congress comes back, they’ll immediately be confronted with yet another government funding deadline that arrives on March 1 – so that’s sure to be lots of fun.
Here’s some of what New Jersey’s 14 members of Congress did this week.
The Senate makes lemonaid
On Monday morning, the Senate finally accomplished something it’s been working towards for months: passing a foreign aid bill that provides a collective $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and humanitarian assistance in Gaza and elsewhere. The successful bill came after an earlier attempt to link immigration policy changes with foreign aid died last week.
“After months of Senate Republicans acquiescing to extreme factions of their party and dragging their feet, we were finally able to pass a nearly $100 billion national security package in support of our allies in Ukraine as it fights to defeat Putin, Israel as it battles the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist organization, and Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific as it works to deter China,” said Senator Bob Menendez, who along with fellow Senator Cory Booker was one of 70 senators to support the foreign aid bill.
But, of course, clearing the Senate is only half the battle – arguably the easier half in this Congress, where the House is governed by a razor-thin Republican majority that struggles to pass much of anything.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has thrown cold water on the prospect of the House quickly acquiescing to the Senate’s wishes, especially on Ukraine, which has become an increasingly unpopular issue in the House Republican caucus. And some House members have released an alternate foreign aid deal that adds border security provisions back in while taking humanitarian assistance funding out.
The House provides more lemons
Based on conversations with several New Jersey lawmakers, though, it seems like any foreign aid or immigration-related compromise may face a challenging path through the House. Three different New Jersey House members told the New Jersey Globe they were skeptical of the Senate’s foreign aid package – each for different reasons, in some cases mutually incompatible ones.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) said that he supported the general idea of aid for Ukraine and Israel, but that he’s probably a no on the current Senate bill because it doesn’t do enough to spell out the specifics of how its Ukrainian funds would be used.
“I do believe in some Ukrainian aid, I’m still going through how much,” Smith said. [But] I’m concerned, frankly, that it’s not delineated the way it should be… We need a real, solid explanation as to exactly how the money would be used.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), meanwhile, said that he opposed the Senate’s approach because he wants its various provisions to be separated from one another; Van Drew is the lone New Jersey representative to be a consistent skeptic of any and all Ukraine funding.
“It should be separate bills,” Van Drew said. “Ukraine should be a bill, the border should be a bill, Israel should be a bill, and the Indo-Pacific should be a bill… I’m a strong supporter of Israel, but they’re two different issues.”
And Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), a progressive Democrat, said the exact opposite: while she wants Congress to fund Ukraine in its war against Russia, the bill’s Israel provisions make her hesitant to support it.
“I am so concerned about the fate of Ukraine that I will give it lots of thought and I will give it lots of sleepless nights,” Watson Coleman said in a wide-ranging interview. “I cannot tell you, right now, what I would do with that piece of legislation. That’s a really tough bill for me, but I will pray on it, as I do on everything else, and try to do what I think is the right thing.”
The diverging perspectives of Smith, Van Drew, and Watson Coleman show the difficulty of assembling a bipartisan coalition on an issue as complex as foreign aid. There are still many New Jersey representatives, though, who support the Senate bill; among them is Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), who insisted that the House should not bow to former President Donald Trump on the issue.
“We again see the former president dictating to our Speaker that instead of solving problems, instead of standing for democracy, the extremists in the House are going to take that bill down,” Sherrill said at a House Democratic leadership press conference on Tuesday. “It’s really incomprehensible. It’s really hard to see as we’re fighting tooth-and-nail to make sure our allies thrive.”
UnSALTed peanuts
Earlier this week, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) found the biggest metaphor he could for the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction: a massive pile of road salt in Ridgewood. The House was scheduled to vote on a bill doubling the SALT deduction cap for married couples, a policy that Gottheimer said would go a long way for over-taxed New Jerseyans.
“With the tax man coming in April, there would be no better way to lower taxes for Jersey families than to restore the State and Local Tax Deduction,” the congressman said in a statement. “And it starts with a vote this week on legislation in Congress.”
But when the bill – which listed Reps. Sherrill and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) among its co-sponsors – came up for a procedural vote on Wednesday, House Democrats (joined by 18 Republicans) scuttled it. Most New Jersey Democrats outright voted no, preventing the bill from being considered on the floor; Gottheimer and Sherrill didn’t cast a vote at all.
After the vote failed, Kean accused his Democratic colleagues of “standing in the way” of progress on the SALT cap, which has frustrated New Jersey politicians ever since it was implemented under President Donald Trump in 2018. But Democrats hit back that the procedural vote was combined with another controversial resolution condemning the Biden administration’s energy policies, dooming it from the beginning.
“Rep. Sherrill has been fighting to repeal Trump’s SALT deduction cap since she was elected to Congress and House Democrats passed SALT relief twice while in the majority – it’s a shame that Speaker Johnson set this legislation up to fail procedurally, all to protect Trump’s tax increase on New Jerseyans,” a spokesperson for Sherrill said.
If at first you don’t impeach, try, try again
Last week, House Republicans rather dramatically failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas after miscalculating how many Democrats would show up to vote. This week, they got their ducks in a row, passing articles of impeachment on a bitter 214-213 party-line vote.
Van Drew, Smith, and Kean all supported the impeachment articles, just like last time; in fact, Kean’s statement explaining his “yes” vote was the same as last time, too.
“I believe [Mayorkas’s] actions, from the very moment he took office, were a willful and systemic refusal to comply with federal law and a clear breach of public trust,” Kean said. “The Secretary has led the complete failure to address the challenges at the border in a manner consistent with the laws governing immigration and border security. Our constituents and the American people deserve a more effective and secure border.”
The impeachment articles will now head to the Democratic-controlled Senate where, according to the New York Times, Democratic senators are seeking to quickly dismiss the charges or hold as brief of a trial as possible.
“We’ve known from day one that this is a baseless sham impeachment,” said Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. “This is going to go die in the Senate, and nothing will have come from it – except we’ll have wasted an immense amount of time and opportunity to focus on the real issues we should be dealing with as a country.”
Should I stay or should IGO
The House approved two pieces of legislation sponsored by New Jerseyans this week, one from Rep. Smith and the other from Rep. Gottheimer.
The Smith bill was the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act, which reauthorizes the original Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act that Smith got signed into law in 2000. It passed on a 414-11 vote, with all New Jersey House members supporting it.
“This critical legislation reauthorizes funding for FY2024 through 2028 – a total of five years – to continue current year enacted appropriation and authorization levels to enhance [anti-trafficking] programs, strengthen laws, and add accountability,” Smith said in a statement.
Gottheimer, meanwhile, joined with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-New York) to pass the IGO Anti-Boycott Act, which would protect American businesses from being forced by international organizations to support boycotts.
“I’m proud that this bipartisan legislation has passed the House to help put an end to the antisemitic [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movements strung along by enemies of our nation present in the international playing field such as at the United Nations,” Gottheimer said of his bill, which passed on a voice vote.
Other Garden State plots
• Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), along with his fellow House Labor Caucus co-chairs, penned a letter to Delta Airlines this week encouraging the airline to recognize its employees’ right to unionize.
“All workers should have the free and fair choice to join a union, as is required by law,” reads the letter, which was signed by Norcross and every other New Jersey House Democrat. “We strongly urge you to adopt a neutrality agreement with regards to any efforts by your employees to unionize and to commit to negotiating in good faith if your employees do choose to form a union.”
• Up in the Senate, Booker joined 24 of his Senate colleagues on a letter to the Biden administration in support of its diplomatic efforts to free Israeli hostages and negotiate a mutual ceasefire in Israel and Palestine.
“[We] write to express our urgent support for your Administration’s ongoing diplomatic efforts to secure the release of hostages in tandem with a restored mutual ceasefire in Gaza,” the letter reads. “Without the space created for regional diplomacy by a restored ceasefire, the political conditions for durable peace and security will remain unreachable, and escalating regional conflict will continue to threaten U.S. national security.”
• President Joe Biden signed Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson)’s Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act into law at the end of last week; the new law mandates that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol remove sensitive personal information from publicly disclosed cargo manifests.
“Our commonsense plan will protect Americans from having their personal information compromised and I am delighted it is now law,” Pascrell said. “I thank my colleague Rep. [Michael] Waltz, and our Senate partners, for helping bring this change over the finish line. Protecting Americans’ privacy, especially servicemembers and their families serving abroad is a no-brainer.”
• This morning’s reports that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has died in prison brought recriminations from many New Jersey members of Congress, who said his death shows the importance of opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“This Congress has failed to do everything we can to stand up to Putin,” Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) said. “Ukrainian soldiers fight bravely on the front lines against Putin’s illegal invasion without the resources they need to win; we must give them the resources to fight. Pro-democracy activists in and outside of Russia are struggling to give people a voice; we must show that they are not alone.”