After a weird year in the United States Congress, things have largely come to an end, with the exception of some last-minute negotiations still ongoing in the Senate. This week, senators and representatives voted on a bipartisan defense bill, struggled to come up with a foreign aid deal, and officially began an impeachment inquiry into the president.
With most of them now back in the Garden State for nearly a month, here’s some of what New Jersey’s 14 members of Congress did this week.
You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here
The House is gone. The Senate is planning on sticking around for a little while longer, but some senators are openly questioning whether there’s any point to doing so. Happy holidays!
The main thing that Congress was in fact able to accomplish before most members headed home was passing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which had gotten bogged down over the summer after the House passed a partisan bill with conservative provisions Democrats found unacceptable. This fall, a conference committee of senators and representatives (including four New Jerseyans) hashed out a bipartisan bill that could pass both chambers.
“House Republicans tried to poison this historically bipartisan legislation with an extremist social agenda, including a ban on reimbursements for abortion care-related travel and attacks on the LGBTQ community, but were ultimately unsuccessful,” said Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), a member of the conference committee. “I am glad we were able to pass a serious piece of legislation that fulfills our sacred commitment to our armed services and the men and women who sign up to defend our nation.”
Most of New Jersey’s members of Congress supported the bill, but an unusual bipartisan cross-section of the delegation voted against it: U.S. Senator Cory Booker and Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) and Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark) for Democrats, Reps. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) and Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) for Republicans.
The other big mission of the week – passing an aid package for Ukraine and Israel – wasn’t as successful, thanks to major disagreements over immigration policy. Republicans in both chambers want Democrats to agree to substantial changes to asylum laws in exchange for foreign aid, a price that many progressive Democrats say they’re unwilling to pay.
I thought Borders closed in 2009
Two New Jerseyans are among those Democrats aggressively opposing conservative immigration reforms on the southern border: U.S. Senator Bob Menendez and Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), the state’s two Hispanic members of Congress.
At a Congressional Hispanic Caucus-led press conference on Wednesday, Senator Menendez had harsh words for President Joe Biden, whose administration is reportedly willing to compromise with Republicans on certain immigration issues.
“I could not comprehend how a Democratic president, who vehemently countered Trump’s policies as a candidate, is seriously putting forward the most Trumpian, anti-immigrant proposal that President Trump himself could only have dreamed of accomplishing,” Menendez said. “These would be the most far-sweeping, anti-immigrant, permanent changes to our law in a generation. It would be a complete betrayal.”
Congressman Menendez, meanwhile, told the New Jersey Globe that he thinks there could be electoral consequences for Democrats if some of the proposed changes are enacted – a daunting prospect, given that polling already shows Democrats may be slipping with Hispanic voters.
“If you say to the immigrant advocacy groups that, to get Ukraine funding, you have to sacrifice asylum or change parole and the executive’s ability to use parole, then there’s going to be consequences in those communities,” Menendez said. “So often, decisions get made, and then we’re told, ‘This is the deal. Take it or leave it,’ even if it’s something we fundamentally disagree with.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer postponed the Senate’s holiday recess in order to continue work on a compromise, meaning that the issue could come to a head as soon as next week. But with the House having already left town, there may not be much more Congress can do before the start of the new year.
Princess Impeach
It wasn’t the most materially important thing that happened this week, but the most headline-worthy moment came when the House voted to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden, formalizing an investigation that had already been going on for several months. Every House Republican – including New Jersey’s three GOP representatives – voted for the inquiry.
“It is crucial that our leaders uphold the values of transparency and cooperation in our democracy,” said Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), who represents a competitive district won by Biden in 2020. “Unfortunately, President Biden’s obstruction in ongoing investigations has led me to support this necessary step towards accountability and openness.”
With the inquiry now authorized, the three participating House committees will be able to continue their investigation and potentially tee up an actual vote on impeachment sometime in 2024. Long before that day arrives, though, Democrats are dismissing the entire operation as a farce that has more basis in politics than fact.
“What is Republican leadership going to say?” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) opined. “‘We’re ending the least productive Congress in history, we’ve ignored all problems, we’ve forgotten our allies, but hey we’re starting a lying impeachment fraud – Merry Christmas!’”
Larry the Medal Guy
New Jersey’s own Larry Doby, the second Black man to break baseball’s color barrier in 1947, received a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor this week on what would have been his 100th birthday; Pascrell and Booker both spoke at the ceremony.
Doby was born in South Carolina, but moved to Paterson as a teenager and joined the Newark Eagles, a Negro League baseball team, in 1942. After a several-year stint in the U.S. Navy, Doby signed with the Cleveland Indians in the middle of the 1947 season, becoming the second Black man in the Major Leagues – Jackie Robinson had played his first game for the Dodgers three months earlier – and the first Black man in the American League.
“I come from Paterson – I still live there – and I am proud to say: so did my friend Larry Doby,” Pascrell said at Wednesday’s ceremony. “The abuse Larry endured would have destroyed most people: unspeakable racism, countless threats. Even some of his own teammates shunned him. Larry Doby endured because of his unshakable courage and incredible character. The example he set did not just help break the American League color barrier – it helped set in motion a civil rights revolution in America.”
Doby went on to play in the Major Leagues for 12 years, and in 1978 became the manager of the Chicago White Sox, making him the second-ever Black MLB manager. He died in 2003 in Montclair, where he had lived for 43 years and raised his family.
Legislation awarding Doby the Congressional Gold Medal had been approved back in 2018; he is also a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame and the namesake for the Larry Doby Post Office in Paterson, which was renamed thanks to legislation authored by Pascrell.
“He is rightfully in the Hall of Fame,” Pascrell said. “A Gold Medal from Congress was the next step to remind Americans about his legacy. Larry Doby: a leader, a role model, and a paradigm of the American Dream. He deserves nothing less.”
The Prescriptions Transparency Act
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), the Democratic ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has been sharply critical of his committee’s Republican leadership in the year since Democrats lost the House. But this week, he notched a bipartisan victory when the House passed the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, a bill he co-led with Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington).
If enacted, the bill would require hospitals and insurance companies to make their prices publicly available to consumers. It would also add new transparency mandates for pharmacy benefit managers, a type of health care middlemen who handle prescription drugs for health care plans.
“This bipartisan bill does exactly what it says it does – it delivers lower health care costs for the American people and brings much-needed transparency to our nation’s health care system,” Pallone said in remarks on the House floor. “It is a victory for everyone who has ever struggled to navigate and understand the cost of a health care procedure or a prescription drug at the pharmacy counter.”
The bill passed on a bipartisan 320-71 vote, with an eclectic mix of Republicans and Democrats opposing it; two New Jersey congressmen, Reps. Pascrell and Donald Norcross (D-Camden), were among those who voted against it.
Other Garden State plots
• New Jerseyan Adeel Mangi appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week for a spot on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals; he’s Biden’s 11th federal judicial nominee from New Jersey, and the first for an appellate judgeship. Mangi is a partner at the firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler and has focused in particular on religious liberty cases, but Republicans on the Judiciary Committee wanted to focus on something else entirely: Mangi’s views on Israel and Palestine.
Republicans repeatedly asked Mangi – a Pakistani immigrant who would be the first Muslim appellate judge in U.S. history – to condemn Hamas and refute criticism of Israel; Mangi said he would “unequivocally” condemn terrorism, but declined to otherwise take specific policy stances.
“Senator, I have no basis, as a judicial nominee, to cast views on the Middle East and what does and does not happen there,” he said in response to questions from Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri).
• The House passed yet another Israel-related resolution this week, this time calling on the presidents of Harvard and MIT to resign after a controversial House Education Committee hearing last week. The two presidents, according to members of both parties, failed to sufficiently condemn antisemitism on their own campuses; the president of Penn has already resigned due to her appearance before the committee.
The resolution passed the House 303-126, but four New Jerseyans voted against it: Reps. Menendez, Pascrell, Payne, and Watson Coleman.
• It wasn’t the first time Watson Coleman has broken with many of her Democratic colleagues on House resolutions this fall. On a number of resolutions regarding Israel and Palestine, Watson Coleman has served as a lonely dissenter, including one notable instance last week in which she was just one of 14 representatives to vote no on a resolution equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
This week, Watson Coleman decided to propose a resolution of her own: the Anti-Hate Resolution, a wide-ranging resolution that condemns all forms of bigotry, including both antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“Let this resolution serve as a powerful message that reflects the values of compassion and empathy that are essential for building a more just and equitable society and a small reminder that it is imperative upon all individuals, communities, and institutions to actively reject hate and work towards fostering an environment of understanding and acceptance,” Watson Coleman said in a statement.