September was a hectic month in Washington. Congress struggled to pass the appropriations bills necessary to keep the government funded, House Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, and a government shutdown seemed like an inevitability until it was unexpectedly averted at the last minute.
New Jersey’s 14 members of Congress were really not the main characters in any of these maneuverings. (Instead, the main news coming out of the Garden State this month was Senator Bob Menendez’s indictment on federal bribery charges, which had massive reverberations in New Jersey and on Capitol Hill.)
But they still cast votes, in some cases pivotal ones, on well over 100 bills, amendments, and nominations. Here’s a look at each and every one of those votes. (Click here for a web version of the vote tracker, with links to the bills and votes in question, or scroll to the bottom of this article for a PDF version.)
Stopgaps and appropriations
The biggest news of September, of course, was the government shutdown – or lack thereof. Right up to the September 30 deadline, it looked like Congress wasn’t going to be able to come to an agreement to fund the government, but on the morning of September 30, House Republican leaders produced a 47-day stopgap funding bill that quickly passed the House and Senate on huge bipartisan margins.
Both New Jersey senators and 11 of its 12 House members voted for the bill. The lone exception was Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), who joined with 99 other conservative Republicans in the House and Senate in opposition.
Just a day earlier, the House had held a vote on a different, much more conservative stopgap bill that would have made drastic cuts to many government agencies. New Jersey’s three Republican representatives supported the bill, while its nine Democrats opposed it; the bill failed overall thanks to universal Democratic opposition combined with 21 no votes from right-wing Republicans.
In order to fund the government long-term, though, Congress needs to pass 12 regular appropriations bills. Three GOP-authored appropriations bills – those funding the State, Defense, and Homeland Security Departments – passed the House this month with almost no Democratic support; New Jersey’s 12 House members voted along party lines on all three.
A fourth appropriations bill, funding the Agriculture Department, was not able to pass the House. 27 more moderate Republicans, among them Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), voted against the bill over its inclusion of a provision that would have restricted access to abortion medication.
None of the House-passed appropriations bills have a chance of becoming law as-is due to opposition from the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House. But the Senate hasn’t passed any of its own appropriations bills yet, so the process to hash out a long-term compromise is still in its early stages.
Van Drew charts an increasingly conservative path
When Van Drew, who was first elected to Congress as a Democrat, switched to the Republican Party in 2019, he pitched himself as a pragmatist appalled by the Democratic Party’s leftward shift. But now in his third term in Congress – and in a less competitive district – Van Drew is increasingly positioning himself as a conservative stalwart who sometimes sides with the right wing of his caucus even against the wishes of Republican leadership.
During the month of September, the House held 80 roll call votes on GOP-authored amendments to appropriations bills, most of them reducing funding for certain government agencies or symbolically eliminating salaries for certain agency officials. Of the 80 amendments, only nine passed – but Van Drew voted for 74 of them.
That means, among other things, that Van Drew voted to cut off aid for Ukraine, nix a commission dedicated to renaming military bases commemorating the Confederacy, and reduce overall Homeland Security funding by $8.7 billion. In each case, he was the only New Jersey representative to support the amendment; in some cases, he was one of only a few dozen representatives in the entire House to do so.
Those votes, combined with his opposition to the eventual stopgap funding bill, may cement Van Drew as New Jersey’s rightmost member of Congress. Given that the congressman is looking into a 2024 Senate campaign – or even a bid for the vice presidency – that’s probably not an accident.
Kean confronts some difficult votes
As the congressman from New Jersey’s only true swing district, Kean has to think about the political ramifications of his votes more than anyone else. How he chooses to vote on controversial topics could mean the difference between winning and losing next November.
September’s votes, particularly on GOP-written appropriations amendments, demonstrated the tough tightrope Kean has to walk. On many of those votes, Kean broke with the right flank of his caucus, refusing to support amendments that would have defunded various agencies and bureaucrats or withheld aid to Ukraine.
But there were still some votes on which Kean took a more conservative route. Perhaps most notably, Kean voted for an amendment by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) banning the Agriculture Department from using funds on “woke” courses or books related to LGBT issues or diversity and inclusion; he also supported amendments removing funds for the Paris Climate Accords and Biden’s climate change executive orders.
And, of course, Kean voted for three of the four appropriations bills that came up this month as well as the initial GOP-led stopgap funding bill, which included substantial funding cuts. Kean will, not unreasonably, point to those votes as evidence that he was fighting to keep the government open – but his Democratic opponents will still be able to attack him over the controversial components of each bill.
That’s the life of a swing-district congressman: every vote is a complicated gamble between remaining loyal to your caucus and making concessions to the swing voters you need to win re-election. Given how many conservative bills and amendments are coming to the floor courtesy of the House Republican caucus’s right wing, Kean will be making that gamble over and over again.
(Separately, Kean got his first legislative success this month: a last-minute bill funding $300 million in aid to Ukraine that had been stripped out of the Defense Department appropriations bill. Kean was the chief sponsor of the bill, which passed on a wide bipartisan vote and will now head to the Senate.)
Democrats largely stick together
Throughout the month, New Jersey’s nine Democratic House members – from centrists like Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) to progressives like Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) – were unified on nearly every vote.
All nine were opposed to the Republican-led appropriations bills and initial stopgap funding measure; all nine supported the eventual bipartisan stopgap bill; and all nine voted the same way on the vast majority of amendments, with a few scattered exceptions.
New Jersey Democrats were also universally opposed to September’s only controversial non-appropriations legislation: the Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act, which prohibits states from implementing bans on gas-powered vehicles. In doing so, they stood by New Jersey’s own planned regulations, which are set to phase out gas-powered car sales by 2035.
That, ultimately, is the privilege of being in the minority; sticking together is easier when it’s done in opposition to a Republican majority that all Democrats can agree to hate.
The Senate does stuff too
The focus this month was decidedly on the House, where tempers flared and the Republican caucus not-infrequently descended into mayhem, rather than on the more staid Senate.
But the upper chamber did still take some important votes this month, most notably the confirmations of three top military leaders: Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Charles Q. Brown, Army Chief of Staff Randy George, and Marine Corps Commandant Eric Smith. New Jersey Senators Cory Booker and Bob Menendez supported all three nominations, which had been held up for months by Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville over the Defense Department’s abortion policies; Tuberville is still blocking hundreds of lower-level military nominations and promotions.
The Senate had also been working on its own version of a bipartisan stopgap funding measure to avert a government shutdown, but shortly before a vote was held, the House reached a breakthrough and the Senate decided to support that bill instead.
Click here for a web version of the vote tracker.