This week brought longstanding and intensely heated congressional debates over Medicaid cuts and the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap to a head, with New Jersey’s Republican congressmen having to stake a position for the first time – and yet, after last week’s dustup at Delaney Hall, that’s still not the biggest news to hit New Jersey’s congressional delegation recently.
Here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week.
Bon McIver
A week after an oversight visit at the Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility devolved into a dustup between federal officers and several New Jersey politicians, the fallout for those involved is still ongoing.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested at the scene for allegedly trespassing (he had been allowed inside the facility’s gates and says he left when he was instructed to), faced federal charges with a trial likely coming in mid-July. And one of the Democrats who was with Baraka and ended up scuffling with ICE agents, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), is now set to face charges herself, though they haven’t yet been publicly announced by interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba (and it’s not yet clear exactly what the charges will be).
McIver and the two other members of Congress who were at Delaney Hall last week, Reps. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), are also facing threats of consequences from Republican leaders in the House. One Republican congressman from Georgia introduced a resolution to strip the trio of their committee assignments, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he’s looking into that proposal or a possible censure of the three Democrats.
“[Their] behavior demands a swift and firm response, and I assure you, action will be taken,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tennessee) said on Wednesday – while McIver, a member of his committee, was sitting a few seats away.
The three normally talkative House members, meanwhile, have refrained from saying much in recent days, but they did say in a joint statement on Tuesday that any punishment meted out on them is simply an effort to turn the nation’s attention away from Republicans’ Medicaid- and food stamp-cutting agenda.
“This is just another attempt to distract from the reality of what Republicans are seeking to do: strip healthcare away from 13.7 million Americans and slash programs that strengthen our communities and make them healthier,” they said. “As we all know, Members of Congress have a legal right to conduct oversight at any DHS detention facility without prior notice, and that’s exactly what we were doing last week.”
A committee hearing longer than Cory Booker’s Senate speech
Months ago, Republicans set themselves an ambitious target of cutting hundreds of billions in spending governed by the House Energy & Commerce Committee, most of which would have to come out of Medicaid, in order to finance their broader tax-cutting agenda. This week, the rubber hit the road on their plans.
During a 26-hour Energy & Commerce Committee hearing on Tuesday into Wednesday, representatives debated the GOP’s bill, which would add Medicaid work requirements, change eligibility deadlines, and other cost-cutting measures. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), the committee’s ranking member, has called the proposal “catastrophic,” citing numbers from the Congressional Budget Office estimating that 8.6 million people would lose coverage under the bill.
But Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) – a New Jersey Republican from an extremely competitive district, and a member of the committee – was not swayed.
“Frank Pallone has had the same rhetoric, and the same statistics, since the beginning of this year,” Kean said. “We cannot allow fear-mongering – we need to preserve Medicaid, we need to protect it for its intended beneficiaries. That’s what this bill does on every front.”
While they’re not on the committee, New Jersey’s two other Republicans also signaled they’re basically satisfied with their party’s Medicaid proposal; that’s notable coming from Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), who had been one of the GOP’s loudest critics of heavy Medicaid cuts.
“All in all – look at where we started, look at where we are now,” Van Drew said, referring to the changes made since beginning of the negotiation process. “This is what I asked for.”
“I’m still looking at it very carefully… If you’re able-bodied – 80 hours of community service or something else seems reasonable,” Smith said of the bill’s work requirements, which would account for much of the loss in coverage.
The committee ultimately approved the bill on a party-line vote – Kean voted yes, Pallone and Rep. Menendez voted no – pushing Republicans over one of the biggest hurdles in their legislative agenda…
BBB: Always a good acronym for big-ticket bills that will definitely succeed
…but more hurdles remain. After every piece of the bill had been combined, including tax cuts from the Ways & Means Committee and food stamp reductions from the Agriculture Committee, the Budget Committee was supposed to approve the broader One Big, Beautiful Bill (its actual name). But a handful of hardline Republicans who didn’t think the bill cut enough government spending tanked it in committee, leaving the path forward unclear.
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), the lone New Jerseyan on the Budget Committee, blasted the GOP’s plan and ridiculed the Republican renegades who opposed it “because it wasn’t cruel enough for their own members.”
“The American people have been clear: they do not want cuts to Medicaid,” Watson Coleman said. “But Republicans don’t seem to care. They’re hellbent on trying to jam through an unpopular budget proposal that only benefits their wealthy donors.”
That echoes the broader Democratic attitude in Congress about the Big Beautiful Bill; Rep. Herb Conaway (D-Delran), a physician, blasted the bill’s health care components and said that it’s a “recipe for a declining GDP and a lot of dislocation for people who would otherwise be … driving our economy forward.” But since it only needs simple majorities in both houses of Congress to pass, it’s New Jersey’s three Republicans who really hold its fate in their hands.
SALT in the wound
And one of them is still unsatisfied with parts of the bill. One of the remaining sticking points in One Big Beautiful Bill negotiations is the SALT cap, and Rep. Kean is right in the middle of that debate.
Kean and a handful of other Republicans from New York and California have made raising the SALT cap – implemented at $10,000 in 2017 during Donald Trump’s first administration – a must-have in order for them to vote for the GOP’s legislative agenda. Republican leaders put forward a $30,000 cap (and added it to the Ways & Means section of the bill), but even that, Kean and his colleagues have said, is not enough, prolonging negotiations further.
“It needs to be a lot higher than [$30,000],” Kean told the New Jersey Globe earlier this week. “We need to find a number that is able to provide real relief for the families that I represent, and that number does not meet that standard.” (Reportedly, a new offer of a $40,000 cap is now on the table.)
Many New Jersey Democrats, especially North Jersey suburbanites like Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), have also made SALT a huge part of their focus in Congress – but since the cap is set to expire at the end of this year if Congress doesn’t take any action, they have little incentive to play ball with Republicans on the broader bill.
Big Bicycle’s statewide transportation sabotage program in full effect
Newark Airport has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks thanks to staffing shortages and reported equipment failures; NJ Transit, wanting to get in on the fun, decided that it would melt down, too, with an engineer strike grinding service to a halt starting at midnight on Friday.
On the former issue, New Jersey’s members of Congress continued to press federal officials for answers on what can be done to fix Newark Airport’s many problems before disaster strikes. Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) got the chance to grill Federal Aviation Administration officials at a House Transportation & Infrastructure hearing, while Senator Cory Booker led a letter alongside most of the state’s Democratic House members requesting emergency funding from Congress to address the airport’s failings.
“In order to resume operations at EWR and begin to expeditiously upgrade our nation’s air traffic control infrastructure, we request robust emergency supplemental funding to the FAA’s F&E account,” they wrote. “This supplemental funding must include at least $2,000,000,000 dedicated to regions with repeated instances of a complete failure of the telecommunication system between TRACON facilities and approaching aircraft.”
The NJ Transit issue, meanwhile, is one that for now remains in the hands of state and union officials; Congress does have the power to eventually step in, but there seems to be little appetite for that right away.
“If they can’t figure this out soon, Congress will have to step in,” Rep. Gottheimer said. “I think the key is to keep the parties at the table now and see if they can find a solution. I’m hoping they can figure that out this weekend, and we should keep the pressure on all parties to figure this out.”
Oops!
When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before a Senate committee on Wednesday, Senator Andy Kim confronted him about why the National Firefighter Cancer Registry – an initiative to study the prevalence of cancer among firefighters – had been shut down. Kennedy responded that he “[didn’t] know about that.”
Kennedy told Kim he’d work to address the issue; hours later, Kim said, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed that the registry was back up. Results!
“I was alarmed that the registry to support firefighters was shut down; it’s why I pressed the Secretary to take action,” Kim said. “Even in the most divided times, we have to stand with our first responders and make sure they have the support they need – some issues should rise above politics. I’m grateful this error was corrected, and hope Secretary Kennedy prioritizes the health of our first responders.”
O Feigenbaum, O Feigenbaum
After President Trump issued an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship from the children of many immigrants, New Jersey was far from the only state to challenge the policy as unconstitutional. But after three nationwide injunctions against the order were issued by lower courts and several cases were combined before the Supreme Court, the case became Trump vs. New Jersey – and a New Jerseyan is at the center of the legal fight over the order.
New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum appeared before the Supreme Court yesterday for oral arguments, which revolved somewhat around the legality of Trump’s order but much more so around the ability of district court judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which they have done several times early in Trump’s term.
“[The government’s] argument that a single district court cannot decide birthright citizenship, or that we need more percolation on that question for the nation, overlooks that this court already settled this exact Constitutional question 127 years ago, and that this [executive order] is contrary to over a century of executive practice,” Feigenbaum argued.
Next up: the William J. Pascrell Jr. Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too
An effort to rename parts of Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park after the late Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) was born last year shortly after Pascrell died, and now it’s beginning to make headway in an otherwise bitterly divided Congress.
The bill – co-led by Rep. Pallone, Pascrell’s longtime friend, and Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), Pascrell’s successor – passed the House this week on a 362-50 vote; every New Jersey representative of both parties is co-sponsoring the bill.
“Few public servants have shaped Paterson or New Jersey more than Bill Pascrell,” Pou said. “He understood the importance of honoring our past while fighting for our future. Every brick and every drop of the Falls tells a story about Paterson and America, and now those stories will include Bill.”
Other Garden State plots
• Edan Alexander, a Tenafly native the last remaining American held hostage by Hamas, was at last released on Monday and returned home to Israel.
“Edan is an all-American kid who could have been anyone’s son,” said Rep. Gottheimer, Alexander’s hometown congressman and an indefatigable advocate for his release. “Through it all, the Alexander family never gave up hope – and neither did we. From traveling to Qatar and Egypt to the UAE and Israel, to pushing the Administration at every level, with the leadership of his parents, we fought tirelessly to bring him back home. In America and Jersey, we never leave anyone behind.”
• Rep. Sherrill introduced a bill this week that would require agencies like the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Affairs Department to certify that any staffing cuts or office closures – which have been floated or in some cases enacted by the Trump administration – don’t affect people’s ability to access their benefits.
“We were seeing an attack on a lot of organizations that people in my district rely on – whether it’s Social Security or Veterans Affairs, we’re hearing a lot of fear,” Sherrill said. “And it was also being done in a very politicized way; there wasn’t a good strategy to it, it was taking a hatchet to a lot of organizations that vulnerable people rely on. So this legislation forces more accountability.”
• Two Democratic state senators from North and Central Jersey are making a renewed push to allow casinos outside of Atlantic City – and, as would be expected, Atlantic City’s local congressman is not happy.
“The 2016 referendum to expand casino gaming outside Atlantic City was defeated by voters in all 21 counties,” Rep. Van Drew said. “Make no mistake – we defeated North Jersey casinos once, and we stand ready to do so again, because South Jersey is always worth fighting for, and I will never back down when it comes to protecting our people.”