The House and Senate have both skipped town for a Memorial Day recess – meaning that New Jersey’s House members can get back home to campaign for their seats in the June 4 primary election.
Before everyone left, though, Congress began work on its major annual defense bill, shot down a border security proposal in the Senate, and heard testimony from the president of Rutgers University and the former head of the Atlantic City Housing Authority. Here’s some of what New Jersey’s 13 members of Congress did this week.
Take your Picatinny
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual must-pass defense bill that caused the House to descend into chaos last summer, is back.
On Wednesday, the initial version of the FY2025 NDAA passed the House Armed Services Committee on an overwhelming 57-1 vote, an early sign of bipartisan confidence in the bill. All three New Jerseyans on the committee – Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), and Donald Norcross (D-Camden) – supported it.
For Kim and Sherrill, passage of the NDAA is always a particular win for their districts, which each include major military facilities: Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Kim’s 3rd district, Picatinny Arsenal in Sherrill’s 11th.
“I’m proud to have delivered a deserved pay raise for our troops and to advance a bill that invests in servicemembers and their families,” Kim said in a statement. “This bill makes our country safer and will make the lives of the men and women in uniform at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst and across New Jersey better.”
“As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, one of my chief responsibilities is to craft national defense legislation that strengthens our fighting forces across the globe, bolsters the New Jersey economy by investing in Picatinny Arsenal, and improves the quality of life for service members, veterans and their families,” Sherrill said.
During last year’s NDAA process, the bill became the subject of controversy after House Republicans took what had been a bipartisan bill and loaded it up with conservative culture-war amendments which Democrats despised. Bipartisan negotiations did eventually prevail, but only after several months; it remains to be seen whether this year’s NDAA will be subjected to similar difficulties.
Shutting ‘shutting the border down’ down
Yesterday marked a rare event in New Jersey’s Senate delegation: both of the state’s senators, Cory Booker and Bob Menendez, publicly disagreed with President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on a bill.
The bill in question is a relic of negotiations from earlier this year, when a bipartisan set of senators came up with a compromise that enacted strict new immigration laws while also providing foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel. The compromise fell apart, and Congress ended up passing a standalone foreign aid bill last month anyways – but Schumer decided to bring the border-related components of the original bill up for a vote this week to prove Democrats’ bona fides on the issue.
His effort didn’t get very far; a procedural vote on the bill failed 43-50, with nearly all present Republicans and six Democrats joining together to scuttle it. One of those six Democrats was Booker, who said before the vote that he did not believe the bill meaningfully addressed the real immigration-related issues the country faces.
“I will not vote for the bill coming to the Senate floor this week because it includes several provisions that will violate Americans’ shared values,” he said on Tuesday. “These provisions would not make us safer. This bill also misses key components that can go much further in solving the serious immigration problems facing our nation.”
Menendez was not in Washington for the vote – he’s preoccupied with his ongoing corruption trial – but he said in a statement that he, too, opposes the bill. (That’s far from a surprise, given that he was one of a handful of Democrats to vote against the original compromise bill back in February, even with foreign aid on the line.)
“We have long needed a comprehensive deal that reforms our immigration system and secures our border, but let me be clear when I say that this package will do little more than exacerbate our issues at the border and forever change the fabric of our country,” Menendez said. “Millions of immigrants and asylum seekers that will be harmed if this legislation is signed into law and I’m confident the United States Senate will once again reject this proposal.”
Johnny & B. Good
Late last year, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology testified before a House committee on antisemitism on their campuses – leading to backlash so intense that two of them ended up resigning. Yesterday, Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway appeared before the same committee to discuss a similar topic, but there weren’t quite the same fireworks this time.
Holloway, along with two other university leaders, was called in to testify on his administration’s response to recent pro-Palestinian encampment on Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus. Protesters had issued demands and threatened to disrupt finals if they weren’t met; Holloway negotiated with them and ultimately agreed to most of the demands in exchange for the peaceful dismantling of their encampment.
Holloway told the committee that he stands by the tactics he used, which allowed the university to avoid needing the kind of fraught police involvement seen at other schools.
“We made a choice,” Holloway said. “That choice was to engage with our students through dialogue as a first option instead of police action. We had seen what transpired at other universities and sought a different way. Without compromising on my fundamental stance against divestment and boycotts, we agreed to talk and to listen.”
But that didn’t stop the committee’s Republican members from grilling the president on his negotiations with the protesters, and on other topics. In one tense exchange, Rep. Bob Good (R-Virginia) peppered Holloway with rapid-fire questions about Israel and antisemitism, echoing similar questioning at previous Senate committee hearings on federal judicial nominee Adeel Mangi.
“Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?” Good asked at one point.
“I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself,” Holloway responded.
Rep. Norcross, who has been critical of Holloway in the past, also directed some sharp questions at Holloway during the hearing. Asked after the hearing whether his concerns had been alleviated, Norcross was equivocal.
“I appreciate President Holloway coming in today to testify to the committee about negotiations with anti-Israel protestors,” Norcross said. “I still have concerns about the safety and inclusion of Rutgers’ Jewish students, faculty, and staff. Many in the Jewish community at Rutgers do not feel safe or heard, and I will continue to follow up with President Holloway and university leadership to make certain that steps are being taken to include Jewish voices on campus and ensure the safety and well-being of everyone at Rutgers.”
Atlantic City continues its streak of very positive headlines
Holloway wasn’t the only New Jerseyan to appear in Congress this week. Also coming in to testify before a subcommittee of the Financial Services Committee was Matt Doherty, a former executive director of the Atlantic City Housing Authority (ACHA), which has been plagued with issues in recent years.
“It’s critical to acknowledge that ACHA is not just a housing authority – it’s also the largest slumlord in Atlantic City,” Doherty testified. “If they were a private concern, they would have been put out of business a long time ago.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), who represents Atlantic City in Congress and who has scathingly criticized the ACHA’s practices, was not present at the hearing but submitted a prepared statement that was read into the record.
“The Atlantic City Housing Authority has failed the people of Atlantic City,” Van Drew’s remarks said. “Mr. Doherty’s testimony is a damning indictment of the illegal practices that left our most vulnerable residents in cold, infested, and moldy apartments. We must ensure that this never happens again.”
You’ve got a taxpayer-funded car; I want an NJ Transit ticket to anywhere
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) continued his war against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) this week, teaming up with Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-New York) to introduce a bill that would defund MTA CEO Janno Lieber’s taxpayer-funded car. Gottheimer and D’Esposito have been two of the loudest voices against the MTA’s congestion pricing plan, which will charge cars a toll for driving in lower Manhattan.
“MTA CEO Janno Lieber seems to think he’s above it all: above reproach, above oversight, and frankly, above the law,” Gottheimer said. “Well, Congressman D’Esposito and I are putting a stop to the MTA’s ‘for thee and not for me’ refrain once and for all.”
The MTA isn’t taking Gottheimer’s attack lying down, though. In a statement, MTA spokesperson John McCarthy hit Gottheimer for not taking public transit himself, laying the blame for traffic problems at the congressman’s feet.
“Janno Lieber rides the transit system every single day and everybody knows that, except for Gottheimer, a politician nobody’s ever seen on mass transit,” McCarthy said. “The MTA has soaring reliability and satisfaction ratings, all while balancing its financial plan with a half billion dollars in annual savings from efficiencies. Meanwhile, Gridlock Gottheimer stays in his traffic-congesting chauffeured car doing nothing to improve transit in New Jersey, and instead sticks its riders – who got stranded again on the way home last night – with a 15% fare hike.”
Other Garden State plots
• Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) introduced a bill this week that would require all car manufacturers to install AM radios in the cars they sell to consumers; the bill was approved in a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee just a few days later.
“AM Radio stations play a critical role in our nation’s communications network, which is why I remain concerned that some automakers plan to phase out AM radio from their electric vehicle models,” Pallone said. “As the next generation of cars are developed, it’s critical that AM radio access remains standard equipment offered at no additional cost, and that’s exactly what my legislation does.”
• Senator Booker, who chaired a Senate subcommittee hearing this week on prison labor in America, introduced a bill alongside Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) aimed at eliminating “junk fees” that target incarcerated people and their families.
“It is appalling that incarcerated people and their loved ones are subjected to exploitative, predatory fees with no way to opt out,” Booker said. “Justice-impacted people are trapped in a system where private, monopolistic companies levy exorbitant fees on everything from essential hygiene products to communication with loved ones. The exploitation must end, and the Families Over Fees Act will provide essential protections against predatory practices that target our most vulnerable populations.”
• Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) had an op-ed published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that criticizes former President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy choices in China in the 1990s, and calls for new U.S. policies that better promote Chinese human rights.
“I argued [in 1994] that Mr. Clinton was turning his back on the oppressed in China and that the Communist Party couldn’t be trusted,” Smith wrote. “The party got rich and militarily powerful. The Chinese people, Americans and the world are paying the price. It is time to right past wrongs and rebalance the trade relationship. The first step must be to repeal permanent normal trade relations.”