Last month, New Jersey lost two legendary members of Congress in two days, with disgraced Senator Bob Menendez resigning on August 20 and 87-year-old Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) dying the very next day. It was an especially rough month for a congressional delegation that has endured a nearly nonstop year of chaos.
But the state almost immediately gained one member back: George Helmy, a longtime insider in New Jersey political circles, has taken Menendez’s seat on an interim basis. And with Congress returning this week after a nearly two-month-long recess, there’s lots for him to do: vote on funding bills, approve judicial nominees, put his name on tributes to Pascrell, and more.
Here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week.
George at the helm
State director for Senator Cory Booker; chief of staff to Gov. Phil Murphy; executive vice president of RWJBarnabas Health. Now George Helmy has a new title to add to his resume: U.S. Senator.
Helmy was sworn into the Senate on Monday, taking the seat held until last month by Menendez, who resigned following his conviction on federal corruption charges. The new senator will only have a couple of months in the Senate, having pledged to step down following the November Senate election and let the winner of the election be appointed in his place – but he said he’s going to hit the ground running.
“There’s a few things I’m already focused on,” Helmy said the day he was sworn in. “One of which, I talked to the White House today [about] helping them advance nominations and judges, which I know have been backlogged. Two is to maintain New Jersey’s share of appropriations – I was just talking to [Senate Appropriations Chair] Patty Murray. There’s a couple of pieces of legislation that we’re going to introduce in this first week that I’m really excited about.”
Helmy has already begun sponsoring legislation, including teaming up with Booker to introduce a Senate version of the Firefighter Investments to Recognize Exposure to Cancer (FIRE Cancer) Act, a bill authored by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) to provide cancer screenings for firefighters.
Taking a stopgap year
The presidential election may be less than two months away, but Congress has an even earlier date to be alarmed about: the deadline to fund the federal government on September 30.
It’s inevitable that Congress will have to pass a continuing resolution (CR), a stopgap bill that prolongs current funding levels and provides more time to hash out a deal. But what, exactly, will be in that CR is still the subject of debate, with House Speaker Mike Johnson insisting on a six-month CR that includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Johnson’s proposal has, for different reasons, angered nearly the entire Democratic caucus as well as a not-insignificant number of Republicans, forcing Johnson to withdraw it from consideration ahead of a planned vote on Wednesday and leaving its future uncertain.
“They agreed, from the beginning, that they were going to do a clean bill,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) said of the CR proposal. “And now, all of a sudden, they’re trying to add poison pills. It’s just unacceptable because the budget agreement was that we were going to do the bills at a certain level, and they weren’t going to have these poison pills or riders – and now they’re going back on that.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), on the other hand, said he’s a proponent of Johnson’s strategy, though he does have issues with some funding levels – a repeat of his skepticism of last year’s entire government funding process.
“I don’t love CRs, and I don’t love some of the spending levels,” Van Drew said. “However, if we can get the SAVE Act in there and ensure that every single person who votes should be voting, I will vote for it.”
Surely everyone will now refer to it in casual conversation as The Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. Scenic Overlook Trail Bridge
This week was Congress’s first week back since Rep. Pascrell died on August 21, prompting his former colleagues to commemorate him in a number of ways.
On Monday night, Reps. Pallone and Chris Smith (R-Manchester), joined by nearly the entire New Jersey House delegation and many of Pascrell’s other congressional friends, led the House in a moment of silence in tribute to the late congressman.
“He spent his whole life in Paterson, and Paterson was how he identified: tough, gritty, industrial city; said what he pleased; always looked out for the little guy,” Pallone said on the House floor. “And that was true in Congress as well… He was like America itself: big and strong, full of good intentions, always there when you needed him, a believer in simplicity, directness, and hard labor. That was Bill Pascrell.”
Pallone is also spearheading a longer-lasting effort to memorialize Pascrell: renaming two facilities in Paterson’s Great Falls National Historic Park as the “Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. Scenic Overlook Trail Bridge” and the “Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. Overlook Park.” Pascrell was a longtime proponent of the park and helped lead the effort to designate it as a National Historic Park in 2009.
Helmy introduced the renaming bill in the Senate, making it the brand-new senator’s first piece of legislation; every member of the New Jersey delegation, in both chambers and from both parties, has signed on as a co-sponsor.
Triangulation
In Washington, when the weather’s nice and a member of Congress wants to draw attention to a cause, there’s one place to go: the House Triangle, a small paved strip outside the Capitol Building that hosts several press conferences every day. (If you’ve ever seen a flashy photo of a representative with the Capitol Dome looming behind them, there’s a solid chance it was taken from there.)
This week, two New Jersey representatives, Reps. Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), headed to the House Triangle to promote bills near and dear to them.
On Tuesday, Gottheimer joined a bipartisan set of House members from the New York area to push for the American Victims of Terror Compensation Act, which would provide funding for the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund.
“Since I’ve come to Congress, we’ve fought year in and year out to make sure that 9/11 families and first responders get the support they deserve,” Gottheimer said. “It’s a shame that we actually have to be here today with this group to fight to help these victims. This isn’t a partisan issue, as you can see – it’s a bipartisan issue, it’s an American issue, it’s a human issue.”
Sherrill, meanwhile, teamed up with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts) and a number of other female Democratic representatives on Thursday to advocate for a resolution asserting that every American has the right to an abortion in an emergency.
“We’re introducing this resolution today to make abundantly clear that federal law, [the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act], guarantees a woman’s right to emergency care, including abortion,” Sherrill said. “We must take action not only to protect women’s lives, but also their health. House and Senate Democrats will not rest until we restore full abortion rights for women across the country.”
HKETO Diet
In the absence of a funding bill, the House instead focused this week on “China Week,” passing a number of bills aimed at limiting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s influence in the United States.
One of those bills came from a New Jerseyan: Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester)’s legislation requiring the president to determine whether to terminate the operations of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices, or HKETOs, in the United States. According to Smith, HKETOs were once beacons of Hong Kong’s freedom, but since the passage of a new repressive law in 2020, they’ve become a propaganda operation for the CCP.
“These offices serve as Beijing’s propaganda arm in the United States, defending and dismantling the freedom of Hong Kong and obscuring the truth,” Smith said. “In addition, HKETOs help the Chinese Communist Party track exiled Hong Kong activists in our own country… The United States should not be granting diplomatic privileges and immunities to a network of communist spies and propagandists.”
The bill passed on a 413-3 vote, with every New Jersey representative voting yes.
Other Garden State plots
• Rep. Gottheimer and 31 of his colleagues, most (though not all) of them Democrats, launched a new “Unity Commitment” earlier today pledging to abide by the results of the 2024 presidential election and assist in the peaceful transfer of power.
“Respect for our democracy, the greatest democracy in the entire world, cannot – and should not – be a partisan issue,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have a responsibility to demonstrate true leadership ahead of this critical election and serve as a voice for calm.”
• Rep. Smith chaired a subcommittee hearing this week on international child abduction, featuring testimony from a Newark native named Nafeesah Ali Ismail who was taken to an Egyptian village by her father at age seven as her mother tried in vain to bring her back to the United States.
“The heartbreaking reality is that hundreds of American children are still abducted every year – illegally kidnapped by one of their parents to a foreign land,” Smith said. “They are subjected to what amounts to a form of child abuse – with devastating psychological and even physical consequences for them and their families left behind.”
• The biggest political news of the week, of course, was the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Your mileage may vary on who “won” based on your own political leanings, but according to Senator Booker – Harris’s closest New Jersey ally – the vice president hit it out of the park.
“Wow, my sister Kamala just showed America that she has the knowledge, character, and strength to lead this nation,” Booker said on Twitter. “We must do everything we can to ensure she is elected as the next President of the United States on November 5th.”