How N.J.’s congressional delegation voted in March

Click here for a web version of the New Jersey Globe’s March 2025 vote tracker, with links to the bills and votes in question, or scroll to the bottom of this article for a PDF version.

By far the biggest bill that Congress debated this month, one that nearly broke the Democratic Party, was the controversial government funding bill written by Republicans and supported by President Donald Trump. The bill keeps the government funded at similar levels as before, but Democrats chafed at being excluded from the appropriations process and said that the bill gave far too much latitude to Trump and Elon Musk to fund, or not fund, the government as they see fit.

In the House, the vote was fairly straightforward. Nearly every Republican (including the party’s three New Jerseyans) supported the continuing resolution, while nearly every Democrat (including the party’s nine New Jerseyans) opposed it; since Republicans hold the majority, that was that, and the measure passed.

“This bill simply extends current funding levels through September, preventing a government shutdown and providing time needed for President Trump and Congress to continue advancing their agenda to put Americans first,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) said.

In the Senate, though, Democrats faced a far more complex choice. Because 60 votes are necessary to break a Senate filibuster, some Democrats needed to join with Republicans to approve a bill they hated, with the alternative being a government shutdown that members of both parties wanted to avoid. New Jersey Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim ultimately came to the conclusion that the possibility of a shutdown was worth it if it meant blocking what they said was a terrible bill.

“Republicans have made it so Musk and the most powerful win and everyone else loses,” Kim said before he cast his vote against the bill. “I don’t want a shutdown but I can’t vote for this overreach of power, giving Trump and Musk unchecked power to line their pockets.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and nine of his Democratic colleagues, though, came to the opposite conclusion, and ultimately helped Republicans overcome the filibuster threshold – a decision panned by many Democrats, especially in the House.

“I think, at any given time, we cannot just let things go,” Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) said last week. “We have to fight for every piece of something that we need for the American people that we represent. That was [Schumer’s] opportunity to do that, and folks definitely feel like he failed at that.”

The Senate had a busy month in general, also working to confirm 20 of Trump’s nominees, largely to federal government positions below the Cabinet level (most Cabinet nominees were approved last month). Booker and Kim, consistent with their general opposition to Trump’s administration, only voted for one of the 20 (Abigail Slater to be Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Antitrust Division).

Senate Republicans also tried to bring up a bill that would bar transgender girls from women’s sports, but Democrats, among them Booker and Kim, banded together to block it. Booker and Kim also voted against a handful of resolutions undoing Biden-era federal regulations, though both supported one resolution targeting reporting requirements for cryptocurrencies.

Lastly, there was the HALT Fentanyl Act, a bipartisan bill to permanently classify fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs. The bill passed 84-16 (after clearing the House last month), but Booker voted against it, saying that it could cause great harm while doing little to solve longer-term problems.

“[The bill] borrows a page from the War on Drugs playbook that ushered in excessive mandatory minimum sentences under the misguided notion that giving more people harsh prison sentences would somehow reduce the availability of drugs,” Booker said in a lengthy statement explaining his opposition. “We now know that this approach just doesn’t work. As lawmakers, we must learn from the lessons of the past. And where laws that we passed failed, we should not repeat their mistakes.”

Over in the House, Republicans mostly focused on a bevy of obscure and noncontroversial bills, with the biggest exception being the DETERRENT Act, which puts new requirements on colleges and universities that receive gifts from certain foreign countries. Most Democrats were opposed to the bill, but a few dozen supported it, among them Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) and Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch).

(Notably, though, an amendment from Rep. Rashida Tlaib that would have added Israel to the list of countries of concern was soundly defeated, drawing no votes from the entire New Jersey delegation.)

Like the Senate, the House also passed a handful of resolutions targeting Biden regulations. The New Jersey delegation voted on party lines on most of them; the one exception was the same cryptocurrency resolution approved by the Senate, which was supported by Reps. Gottheimer, Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair).

And following Rep. Al Green’s disruptions at Trump’s joint session address on March 4, the House took up and passed a resolution censuring the Texas Democrat; New Jersey Republicans supported the censure measure and its Democrats opposed it.

“I understand there is a particular decorum that we are all required to abide by,” Pou said, referencing prior times that Republicans have disrupted proceedings. “And there are rules, I understand that. But it has to go both ways, and it has to be applied both ways.”

Click here for a web version of the vote tracker.