Christmastime is here… and Congress left most of its most important problems until after the new year.
Four rogue Republicans teamed up with Democrats to force a vote on extending Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years, but House leaders chose not to schedule the vote until January, when Congress will also be rushing to fund the government before a January 30 deadline. Here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week before departing for their holiday recess.
Just in the nick of too late
This week was the week when long-running battles over ACA tax credits that expire at the end of the year came to a head, with four politically vulnerable Republicans joining a discharge petition – a mechanism that forces bills to come to the House floor when they get 218 signatures – submitted by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on a three-year extension bill.
None of those four, though, were from New Jersey, despite the fact that Reps. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) and Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) have been calling for an extension to the credits for months. Van Drew told the New Jersey Globe he doesn’t like the Democratic bill and will vote against it; Kean and Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) have declined to say how they’ll vote.
“I said from the very beginning that I wouldn’t vote for it,” Van Drew said. “This bill is not decent. It’s an insult to the American public.”
(Republicans also put up a separate health care-related bill this week that didn’t touch the ACA credits; the bill had no Democratic buy-in and passed on a near party-line vote.)
The ACA vote won’t come until January, after the credits have already expired, and there’s no guarantee that the Senate – which already rejected the same bill once before – will have any interest in taking it up. Still, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), who led a separate bipartisan effort to extend the credits, said he’s “very optimistic” about the bill’s chances.
“My goal was always to actually get the ACA tax credits extended and help people with their coverage,” Gottheimer said. “Anything we can do to keep the pressure on to get these tax credits extended is a win, and so we’ve just kept moving it and working it.”
Need for SPEED
Reps. Van Drew and Smith scored an arcane but important victory this week on offshore wind, one that briefly put them directly in conflict with their own party’s leadership.
The two congressmen were both worried about provisions in the SPEED Act, a bill intended to streamline environmental review processes for infrastructure projects, that they said would make it harder for President Donald Trump to cancel offshore wind projects. Along with a handful of other anti-offshore wind allies, Smith and Van Drew held up a procedural vote on the bill until they got a commitment to address the issue (and Smith still ended up casting a “no” vote even after the negotiations).
And indeed, when the SPEED Act passed the House on Thursday, it included an amendment ensuring that the president would still have the ability to terminate offshore wind projects, which Van Drew and Smith celebrated as a win.
“I’m sick of giving the American taxpayers’ money, and the New Jersey taxpayers’ money, to these damn foreign companies,” Van Drew said. “So we held up the process on the rule – I wasn’t voting for that rule, and I had a handful of people with me – and that was enough to ensure that this didn’t go through.”
Carr crash
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who was at the center of this fall’s battle over Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary removal from the air, appeared before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Wednesday and got an earful from the committee’s Democrats.
One of those Democrats was Senator Andy Kim, who, like many members of his party, questioned Carr on whether he considers himself and his agency to be independent of President Trump.
“Is President Trump your boss?” Kim asked during one exchange.
“President Trump has designated me as chairman of the FCC,” Carr responded. “I think it comes as no surprise that I’m aligned with President Trump on policy. I think that’s why he designated me as chairman.”
“Do you consider him your boss?” Kim pressed.
“Ultimately, the president designated me as chairman,” Carr said. “I can be fired by the president.”
We’re going to have to reschedule
President Trump signed an executive order yesterday expediting the reclassification of marijuana as a less dangerous drug over the objections of some members of his own party, among them Rep. Smith.
In a letter sent to Trump before the order was signed, Smith and 25 of his House Republican colleagues wrote that rescheduling marijuana would “send the wrong message to America’s children, enable drug cartels, and make our roads more dangerous.”
“Rescheduling marijuana will not make America great,” they wrote. “You have always been a role model for America’s youth, telling young people for years that they should never do drugs. We hope that you consider the harms of marijuana rescheduling and continue sending that strong message of hope to the next generation.”
Like many states, New Jersey has already gone far beyond the federal government on marijuana, legalizing the drug via a 2020 referendum and subsequent legislation. That referendum passed overwhelmingly statewide (including in Smith’s congressional district), but Smith and his colleagues argued in their letter that the drug has become less popular in recent years: “Americans are catching up to the harms of marijuana,” they said.
Maybe this will finally stop New York-bound Amtrak passengers from getting off at the wrong stop
On what would have been the late Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark)’s 67th birthday, his successor in Congress, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), introduced a bill to name Newark Penn Station after him. The bill already lists all ten of McIver’s New Jersey House colleagues as co-sponsors.
“I knew that I had a giant’s shoes to fill when I was elected to serve New Jersey’s 10th congressional district, succeeding Congressman Payne,” McIver said. “Donald Payne, Jr. was a towering leader in our community, championing New Jerseyans from all walks of life – especially through his tireless advocacy for transportation infrastructure. Renaming this beacon of transportation for our community is fitting.”
The Donald M. Payne, Jr. Transit Center at Newark Penn Station joins the Bill Pascrell, Jr. Scenic Overlook Trail Bridge as an active congressional renaming effort; the Pascrell bill passed the House overwhelmingly earlier this year but hasn’t been taken up in the Senate.
Tick talk
It’s been a tick-heavy couple of weeks for Rep. Smith.
After getting his bill to study whether Lyme disease began in a U.S. military lab signed into law, Smith joined a roundtable with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on improving treatment options and diagnoses for patients with Lyme disease.
“I am very grateful for Secretary Kennedy’s unwavering commitment to uncovering the origins, investigating the comorbidities, and developing new diagnostics and treatments for Lyme disease – significantly improving the qualities of life and care for patients,” Smith said. “Lyme patients deserve answers, and under Secretary Kennedy’s phenomenal leadership, the HHS is steadfastly working towards procuring them.”
Imagine there’s no countries
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), soon to enter her final year in Congress, is taking on a new role as the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s Rebuilding and Reimagining Government Task Force.
The task force, Watson Coleman said, is intended to present a gameplan for helping the federal government recover from the Trump administration, which has actively dismantled some federal agencies and hobbled many others. The first meeting will come early next year, and the end goal is for a report on the task force’s findings and legislative recommendations to be made by the end of 2026.
“We have a responsibility to both strengthen our democratic institutions as well as ensure they are oriented toward serving everyday people,” Watson Coleman said. “This is no small task, but the Progressive Caucus has some of the most brilliant, forward-thinking, and creative minds in Congress who I know are up to the task of rebuilding and reimagining a government that works for everyone.”
That TRACKS
Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon)’s bill to improve the safety of railroad crossings took an important step this week, passing the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee on a unanimous vote.
The bill, the laboriously named State Actions for Employing Transportation Risk Assessments and Crossing Knowledge Strategies (SAFE TRACKS) Act, creates new coordination and reporting requirements for highway-rail grade crossings.
“High risk railroad crossings remain a serious threat in communities in northern New Jersey and across our country,” Pou said. “While we have made progress, particularly through the landmark 2021 roads and bridges law, we must continue to pursue railway improvements. My SAFE TRACKS bill will require states, railroads and other stakeholders to work more closely together to reduce pedestrian deaths.”
Other Garden State plots
• The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act has been signed into law with a variety of New Jersey priorities attached, but six of the state’s members of Congress, including both of its senators, voted against final passage of the bill.
“While this bill includes important initiatives, including provisions I helped secure, it does not do enough to reign in this administration’s lawlessness that puts American servicemembers at-risk, threatens stability at home and around the world, and erodes the sacred trust of what our military stands for,” Senator Kim said.
• A bipartisan quartet of New Jersey lawmakers – Senators Kim and Cory Booker and Reps. Kean and Watson Coleman – have teamed up on a bill to study whether the Upper Raritan River, which all four of them represent, should be included in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
“The Upper Raritan River is a vital resource for New Jersey that sustains our ecosystems and economy, supplies our communities with clean drinking water, supports local farms, and provides recreation for families,” Booker said. “This critical step reflects our common commitment to collaborative, community-led stewardship that will preserve critical river systems for the long-term benefit of New Jerseyans now and in the future.”
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement said yesterday that a detainee at Newark’s Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility died last week, news that was greeted with dismay by many of the New Jersey politicians who have spent months calling on the facility to be shut down.
“For months, I have condemned the inhumane conditions at Delaney Hall and the mismanagement of this facility by its private operator, GEO Group – and now this tragic death has compounded the long and grotesque list of atrocities the GEO Group is committing,” Booker said. “The Department of Homeland Security’s continued refusal to comply with appropriate oversight of this facility and the GEO Group’s abuses are totally unacceptable.”
