It’s only June, but Congress is already looking at a limited window of time to get things done before election season arrives in earnest. Both chambers are scheduled to be in session for most of July and most of September, leaving only around seven legislative weeks total before the November election. (There will also be a lame duck session after the election and before the 2024 winners are sworn in.)
Recognizing that limited schedule, the House worked this week to push three annual appropriations bills through the chamber – but given that the bills are loaded with partisan GOP provisions, a lot more negotiation will likely have to happen before they’re signed into law. Also on the docket this week were broadsides over Amtrak breakdowns, debates over doping at the Olympics, reminiscences on the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, and more.
Here’s what New Jersey’s 13 members of Congress did in Washington this week.
State, Defense, Homeland Security, oh my!
After dozens of votes on a variety of controversial amendments, the House approved three appropriations bills this morning funding the Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security.
All three included conservative culture-war provisions that most Democrats found unacceptable, and all three passed on largely party-line votes; New Jersey’s three Republican House members voted in favor, and its seven present Democrats were opposed. As they’re written now, the bills have virtually no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate or being signed by President Joe Biden.
If this is all sounding familiar, the exact same process happened last year, with many of the same battles over the same controversial policies. The end result was ultimately that, after repeatedly pushing back the funding deadline, the Senate and House came together and passed a bipartisan version of the appropriations package.
You’ve Got Rail
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for NJ Transit commuters, and there seems to be a clear culprit: Amtrak, which owns many crucial tracks going into New York City and which has recently experienced a number of breakdowns that have led to widespread NJ Transit delays.
On Tuesday, the entire New Jersey House delegation, both Democrats and Republicans, sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg insisting that his department begin an investigation into what led to the delays and what can be done to improve things in the future.
“NJ TRANSIT is merely a tenant on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor; NJ TRANSIT neither owns nor maintains the Corridor,” the letter states. “Amtrak does, and Amtrak’s troubles leave NJ TRANSIT in an impossible position – unable to direct repairs on Amtrak property and unable to provide proper, reliable service to paying customers who depend on them… Needless to say, this situation is completely unacceptable.”
U.S. Senator Cory Booker, too, penned a letter to Buttigieg calling on him to address the infrastructural and workforce issues that have worsened service along the Northeast Corridor. And Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, got to question Buttigieg in person yesterday on what steps his agency is taking.
“Over the course of the last six weeks, Amtrak delays have caused delays for NJ Transit riders over 20 times, including serious incidents last week that resulted in cancellations and suspension of service along the Northeast Corridor,” Menendez said. “Imagine walking out your door and not knowing when you will be able to get back home. In your words, what is the department doing to partner with Amtrak to ensure that breakdowns like this never happen again?”
“We know that commuters on NJ Transit have been subject to infuriating delays, as you have described,” Buttigieg responded. “We’re working to support both NJ Transit and Amtrak with the capital funding they need – it’s too soon to know exactly which issues contributed to this, but I think it’s safe to expect that, more broadly, reliability depends on a good state of repair.”
Yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded Senate chamber
The Senate wasn’t in session this week, but last week, it overwhelmingly passed a bill near and dear to two New Jersey congressmen: the Fire Grants and Safety Act.
The bill, which reauthorizes a number of key federal grant programs for firefighters and first responders, was sponsored in the House by Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) and co-sponsored by Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson). Pascrell, a co-chair of the Congressional Fire Services Caucus, originally authored the bill that created one of the core firefighter grants back in 1999.
Senators approved the bill, which was combined with another bill regarding nuclear energy, on an 88-2 vote, with Senator Booker voting in favor (Senator Bob Menendez remains absent due to his federal corruption trial); it now heads to the president’s desk.
“As a former volunteer firefighter, I know the sacrifices firefighters and EMTs make daily to quickly respond to emergencies,” Kean said in a statement. “This bill, which incorporated my introduced language, will reauthorize federal grants and programs for local fire departments which will help protect families in New Jersey and nationwide. I thank the Senate for their support of my legislation and urge the president to sign this into law.”
Dope!
With the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris just a month away, the House Energy and Commerce Committee – on which Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) is the Democratic ranking member – held a subcommittee hearing this week on efforts to combat doping at the Olympics.
Reports surfaced earlier this year that, during the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs but were not punished for it by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). That debacle, Pallone said on Tuesday, should make Americans nervous about the fairness of this year’s games.
“Athletes should be able to compete on a fair playing field,” Pallone said on a press call prior to the hearing. “My concern, and the concern of the committee – this is a bipartisan hearing – is that unless better enforcement actions are taken by WADA, there may not be a fair playing field. And that’s not fair to our American Olympic athletes, and other Olympic athletes… They should not be discriminated against because they’re not doping when Chinese athletes, and possibly others, are.”
Among the witnesses at the subcommittee hearing was former Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, who testified alongside fellow gold medal-winning swimmer Allison Schmitt about the need for stricter doping enforcement.
“If we continue to let this slide any farther, the Olympic games might not even be there,” Phelps said.
Calvin & Dobbs
The second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision – which ended the constitutional right to an abortion and reshaped American politics in its wake – arrived on Monday, prompting a diverse array of reactions from New Jersey representatives.
For Democrats, the anniversary was a somber one; while abortion remains fully legal in New Jersey, they noted that the same is not true in many Republican-led states around the country, and warned that congressional Republicans could try to implement nationwide limits as well.
“Two years after Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court struck down a woman’s right to an abortion, reproductive freedom is still under attack,” Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) said. “States across the country have restricted not only abortion and life-saving emergency care, but have also blocked efforts to protect access to contraception and threatened abortion providers with jail time. And MAGA Republicans in Congress are still trying to enact a national abortion ban.”
But for Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester), who got his start in politics as an anti-abortion activist and who remains New Jersey’s fiercest abortion foe in Congress, the decision is something worth celebrating and expanding.
“Dobbs marked a critical first opportunity to end the culture of death and to protect women and unborn children from the violence of abortion,” Smith said. “Many states like my state of New Jersey have enacted extremist laws that legally sanction the killing of a baby for any reason whatsoever right up to the moment of birth. The sacred burden to double down and work even harder to protect women and unborn children from the violence of abortion has never been clearer.”
Other Garden State plots
• At the same Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing where Rep. Menendez questioned Buttigieg about Amtrak, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) asked the secretary for his thoughts on offshore wind development, which Van Drew vociferously opposes.
“Should we wait for the GAO study to be completed – it’s not a Republican study, it’s not my study, it is the Government Accountability Office, totally nonpartisan,” Van Drew said. “Shouldn’t we wait until their safety analysis is done before we go ahead and build offshore wind, yes or no?”
“I can only weigh in on the transportation side of the house, but we will not proceed with anything we think harms safety, and if GAO or anybody else produces data or analysis that would affect a safety decision about transportation, we’d want to know it,” Buttigieg responded.
• Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) remained absent from Washington this week following surgery for a lower back condition; she will resume her district work schedule next week, and is expected to return to D.C. following the 4th of July recess.