D.C. Dispatch: What N.J.’s members of Congress did in Washington this week

With Congress scheduled to head home for Christmas in just six days, there’s still a towering list of priorities that the House and Senate haven’t accomplished yet. But this week, the House passed a bill that specifically pertains to New Jersey Transit – so it wasn’t a total bust for the Garden State.

Here’s some of what New Jersey’s 14 members of Congress did in Washington this week.

She’s got a one seat ticket to ride

Getting a standalone bill passed by the House is a rare event; having that bill be specifically applicable to New Jersey is even rarer.

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), alongside co-sponsor Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), managed that feat this week with the One Seat Ride Act, which would commission a Transportation Department study into the benefits and drawbacks of single-passenger commuter rail service, especially on New Jersey Transit’s Raritan Valley Line (RVL).

Passengers on the RVL, which has 14 stations in Kean’s and Watson Coleman’s districts, currently have to transfer at Newark Penn Station to get to and from New York thanks to limited capacity in the tunnels beneath the Hudson River. That problem likely won’t be solved long-term until the Gateway Project is completed, but the One Seat Ride Act would get the federal government involved in analyzing the issue in the near future.

“I am grateful for the overwhelming bipartisan support that propelled the One-Seat-Ride Act through the House today,” Kean said in a statement shortly after the bill passed on a 356-61 vote. “This is another milestone in our mission to pave the way for the crucial One-Seat-Ride needed for my constituents and their fellow New Jerseyans.”

Every present New Jersey representative voted for the bill, as did all other House Democrats and a majority of Republicans; now the question is whether the bill can find any momentum in the Senate, a body that has killed countless House bills before.

Elementary, my dear Watson Coleman

If there’s been one thing that the House has been good at these past two months, it’s voting on resolutions decrying antisemitism and affirming the United States’s support for Israel. This week brought a new resolution that condemns antisemitism and – more controversially – explicitly states that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism.

The latter provision drew blowback from much of the House Democratic caucus, but ultimately, only 14 House members voted against the resolution – and New Jersey’s own Watson Coleman was one of the 14. In explaining her vote, Watson Coleman said that rising antisemitism is “deeply upsetting,” but it needs to be addressed in a concrete way rather than through “divisive” resolutions.

“This resolution offers no solutions,” the congresswoman said. “The Republicans who authored it have no intention of making it a bipartisan effort, bringing people together, or facilitating a safer and more inclusive environment for our Jewish communities. In fact, it does the exact opposite. It further divides the country and shifts us further away from unity, peace, and a true two-state solution.”

Three other New Jersey representatives – Reps. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark), and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) – voted “present” on the resolution as did 89 of their House Democratic colleagues. Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) was not in attendance for the vote, but he said through a spokesperson that he prefers other resolutions supporting Israel and condemning antisemitism over the one that the House passed on Tuesday.

Republicans, meanwhile, are arguing that the splintered vote on the Democratic side of the aisle is a sign that Democrats aren’t willing to unequivocally denounce antisemitic beliefs.

“I would have hoped that every member of Congress could agree on condemning and denouncing the drastic rise in antisemitism,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) said on Twitter. “Let me be clear: Israel has every right to exist and every right to eliminate Hamas.”

COP28acabana

As the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) will lead the Democratic side of a congressional delegation this weekend at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (better known as COP28) in Dubai.

Pallone said in a statement that he hopes to demonstrate the United States’s “ironclad commitment” to fighting climate change, in contrast to the views of Republican members of the congressional delegation. According to Politico, even the makeup of that delegation was somewhat controversial, with Democrats protesting that they’ve been sidelined by the delegation’s GOP leaders.

 “I hope my Republican colleagues come in good faith, prepared to offer more than Big Oil talking points,” Pallone said. “We are out of time for climate denialism and political games.… Democrats have proven we won’t back down, and now COP28 gives Republicans the opportunity to prove they won’t either.”

The Ghost of Tolls Yet to Come

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) reached deep into his stocking of Christmas metaphors this week as part of his prolonged fight against New York City’s congestion pricing plans, saying that the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is being a real Grinch to New Jersey’s villages of Whos.

“Because of MTA Chairman Janno Lieber’s Congestion Tax, families will be priced out of coming to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, walking past Macy’s store front windows, or coming to dinner at Il Posto,” Gottheimer said outside of Il Posto Accanto, a restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. “Janno ‘Scrooge’ Lieber is putting coal in everyone’s stockings this year with his $15-a-day Congestion Tax.”

Gottheimer and his fellow anti-congestion pricing crusaders got some bad news on Wednesday, though, when the MTA board officially approved its final pricing plan, which would charge passenger vehicles $15 a day to drive south of 60th Street in Manhattan. The board vote opens up a 60-day period of public comment, but there aren’t likely to be any big changes to the plan from here on out.

Other Garden State plots

• Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) at last released his holds on hundreds of lower-level military promotions this week, after months of preventing them from being efficiently confirmed by the Senate in protest of the Defense Department’s policies regarding abortion. But as noted by Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot who frequently protested Tuberville’s blockade, the senator is still holding up the highest-ranking military nominees, which Sherrill called “unconscionable.”

“The men and women who serve in four-star roles are commanders and leaders at the forefront of our national defense, and it is absolutely unconscionable for Senator Tuberville – who represents a four-star command himself – to place his own political interests above our national security,” Sherrill said. “That’s why Congress should immediately pass my bill to codify the Department of Defense’s abortion travel policy for servicewomen who risk their lives to defend our freedom.”

• Senator Cory Booker issued a plea on the Senate floor this week for the Senate to pass Ethan’s Law, a bill that would mandate safe storage of firearms in situations where a minor might be able to access the firearm.

“Safe storage of weapons – this is not a violation of someone’s fundamental rights,” Booker said. “What it is is a reasonable step to protect children, because 90% of the kids in our country that are dying by suicide or unintentional shootings are in homes where a loaded gun is easily accessible for children… Over 40,000 Americans die in a year to gun violence, and the response of this body is to do nothing.”

• Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) has long been a proponent of fairer ticketing schemes at concerts and sporting events, including pushing for his (deep breath) Better Oversight of Stub Sales and Strengthening Well Informed and Fair Transactions for Audiences of Concert Ticketing Act of 2023, or the BOSS and SWIFT ACT.

That bill remains in limbo, but on Tuesday the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved a different bill, the Transparency In Charges for Key Events Ticketing Act (TICKET) Act, that would accomplish much of what Pascrell has tried to achieve: requiring ticket sellers to clearly disclose the full price of tickets without any hidden fees.

“I will keep pressing for the fuller reforms in the BOSS and SWIFT ACT,” Pascrell said. “But in the meantime, let’s pass this bill on the House floor and show the Senate how to achieve more than the bare minimum for fans everywhere.”