N.J. House Democrats cry foul on last-minute government funding renegotiations

All Congress had to do before heading home for the winter holidays – and preparing for a new Congress to be sworn into office in January – was pass a temporary government funding package keeping the federal government open through early next year. That’s proven difficult for them to manage, and a shutdown deadline is looming tomorrow night.

House Republican leaders unveiled a massive bill on Tuesday night that both funded the government through March and contained a host of other provisions, including disaster relief, aid for farmers, and a wide variety of unrelated bills fast-tracked for passage before the 118th Congress comes to an end. But while most Democrats seemed amenable to supporting the compromise, conservative Republicans were not, driven by complaints from two of their guiding lights: President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.

Now the compromise is dead and everything is back in limbo, with no clear plan as of yet to prevent a shutdown tomorrow night. Democrats in New Jersey’s congressional delegation are angrily denouncing the last-minute about-face, with one New Jersey Democrat, Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), threatening not to help Republicans out with passing whatever alternate proposal they come up with.

“We negotiated a bipartisan agreement in good faith that would fund the government and support communities across the country, including those ravaged by natural disasters,” Menendez said. “House Republicans, on the other hand, backed away from their obligations to their constituents because Elon Musk told them to… If Republicans would rather do an unelected billionaire’s bidding, they’ll have to produce the votes themselves to get it done.” 

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) has more to lose than most: some of his own bills, including one reauthorizing a Traumatic Brain Injury research program and renaming it after the late Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), were part of the negotiated funding package and now could end up being dropped entirely.

“All of this is at risk because some in Washington decided to take their marching orders from the richest man on the planet instead of standing up for the people they were elected to serve,” Pallone said. “New Jerseyans deserve better than this reckless brinkmanship.”

As for New Jersey’s three Republican congressmen, they have not been widely broadcasting their views on the funding commotion. Asked yesterday for his thoughts on the initial funding package, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) said that he opposed it – but with an important caveat.

“If I am the deciding vote to close government; if I am the deciding vote that there will be no farm aid; if I am the deciding vote that there will be no disaster relief, I would vote for [the funding bill],” Van Drew said. “But I really find it anathema, I really find it distasteful… If I am not the deciding vote, I am not going to vote for it.”

Congress did manage to pass another critical bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), on a bipartisan basis this week, but not without some substantial defections from Democrats over a provision targeting health care coverage for servicemembers’ transgender children. Most New Jersey Democrats voted against the NDAA, including five House members and Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker; Kim’s vote is particularly notable in light of his own national security background and the fact that it was the first major bill to come up in his Senate career.

“[The anti-transgender provision] undermines trust in negotiations and sets a dangerous precedent for what is widely considered the last true space of traditional bipartisan legislation,” Kim said on the Senate floor earlier this week. “We are putting politics into a bill where it simply does not belong. We are sending a signal to our military families that if your loved ones are transgender, we don’t have their backs.”

New Jersey’s three Republican congressmen voted for the NDAA, as did Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) and Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), both candidates for governor in 2025. Sherrill said that she was appalled by the bill’s anti-trans provisions, but that she couldn’t imagine Democrats would get a better deal next year, when Republicans take full control of government.

“Governing requires making tough choices with the options in front of you,” she said. “Had this bill failed, extremist House Republicans would simply have bided their time, coming back in January with a Trump-led government trifecta to use the NDAA to enact the whole slate of their dangerous agenda. This is only the first salvo in a fight to which I am extremely committed.”

This story was updated at 10:41 a.m. on December 20 with a correction: Van Drew expressed support for farm aid, not foreign aid.