A bill providing $17.6 billion in aid to Israel – and nothing else – failed to pass the House tonight, with New Jersey’s Democratic House delegation splitting down the middle.
Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff), Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), and Donald Norcross (D-Camden) joined all three New Jersey Republicans in supporting the bill; Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark), Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), and Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) voted against it.
The overall House vote on the bill, which required a two-thirds majority to pass, was 250-180; a few Republicans joined with around four-fifths of the Democratic caucus in opposing it. President Joe Biden had threatened to veto the measure anyways, pushing instead for a legislative package recently announced in the Senate dealing with both foreign aid and border security.
Pascrell and Payne, two of the representatives who voted against the bill, both said that they did not want to support a proposal that did not come with any funding for Ukraine or for humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
“My heart breaks for the innocent lives being lost in this war and I will not vote for any aid package like this that does not include one penny of humanitarian aid to suffering Palestinians,” Pascrell said in a statement. “I agree with President Biden that this is not sufficient and it is not acceptable… House Republicans should stop playing games with peoples’ lives and let us vote on saving lives in Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine.”
And even Norcross, who supported the bill, criticized it for its omissions, but he said that supporting Israel was too important to vote no.
“It is extremely unfortunate that House Republicans have decided to tie this needed supplemental for Israel to a political ploy that is designed to divide America, and I disagree strongly with their partisan approach,” Norcross said. “However, the military aid in this supplemental is too important for the safety and security of the Israeli people. That is why I supported the emergency legislation today.”
This is the second controversial Israel aid bill the House has taken up in the last several months. In November, the House passed a bill that offset funding for Israel with cuts at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), angering most House Democrats; Gottheimer was the only New Jersey Democrat to support that effort, which immediately died in the Senate.