In what may be the most consequential congressional vote of the 119th Congress, New Jersey’s three Republican congressmen – Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), Chris Smith (R-Manchester), and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) – voted to support the enormous GOP legislative package known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk.
All nine New Jersey House Democrats voted against the bill, which has major implications – Democrats say disastrous ones – for Medicaid, tax policy, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (a.k.a. food stamps), green energy development, the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap, abortion access, border security and more. The bill passed on a vote of 218-214; Trump is expected to sign it tomorrow.
Republicans argue that provisions like extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, adding billions in new funding for border security and national defense, and boosting the child tax credit are in keeping with the promises they made in 2024 to win control of Congress and the White House.
“[Democrats] are trying to scare the daylights out of everybody, which is really disingenuous,” Van Drew said. “This is part of, in my mind, America leading, America being number one, America being the engine on the train, not the caboose.”
But Democrats, who have dubbed the bill the “Big Ugly Bill,” counter that in order to achieve those aims, Republicans have pursued deeply damaging policies: slashing more than a trillion dollars from Medicaid and SNAP funding, ballooning the federal deficit, and giving some of the largest tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. One much-cited analysis has found that incomes of the bottom 20% of Americans would fall by around $700 per year under the bill, while incomes for the top 20% would rise by around $5,700.
“Some people have called it beautiful. Some have called it ugly. I call it cruel,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), who as the ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee was a key figure in the early fight against the bill’s Medicaid provisions. “It is the cruelest bill that I’ve ever seen since my tenure in the House of Representatives.”
The bill had already passed the House once before, with the New Jersey delegation voting along the same 9-3 party lines in May as it did today. The Senate then followed suit, approving the bill 51-50 earlier this week over the strong objections of New Jersey Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim; in both of those votes as well as today’s, some Republicans held out against the bill for hours or days before eventually giving in and supporting it.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 11.8 million Americans would stand to lose health coverage by 2034, after many of the bill’s provisions regarding work requirements and provider tax changes come into full effect. Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee calculated state-by-state losses and found that 363,330 New Jerseyans could lose coverage from a combination of Medicaid cuts (known in New Jersey as NJ FamilyCare) and the expiration of Affordable Care Act tax credits.
Van Drew, who represents a sprawling South Jersey district with a sizable population on Medicaid, had long insisted that he would not support a bill that cut too deeply into Medicaid for those who need it. And as the bill moved through first the House and then the Senate, those cuts steadily got deeper and deeper, targeting even more than the $800 billion in cuts House committee leaders initially set as their goal.
But despite the cuts laid out by the final bill, Van Drew said he was satisfied that they wouldn’t have the disastrous impacts he initially feared; he also disputed the accuracy of the CBO’s numbers, claiming that the true losses of coverage would be far smaller.
“I didn’t like every single provision, you never do,” Van Drew said of the bill’s Medicaid cuts. “The art and science of politics and public policy is what’s possible, what’s doable, and that’s where we have to work.”
Another key issue for New Jerseyans on the opposite end of the income spectrum was the SALT cap, which was put in place under Trump in 2017 and limited how much taxpayers from high-tax states could deduct on their federal taxes. Kean had decided that the issue was make-or-break for him, saying that he wouldn’t support any tax-related bill that didn’t sufficiently address SALT. (The cap was set to expire at the end of this year anyways, though a GOP-controlled Congress was unlikely to let it fully disappear.)
After much haggling, the House agreed to hike the cap from $40,000, up from $10,000, which earned the support of Kean and a handful of other pro-SALT Republicans. The Senate, however, added a provision that reverts the cap back to $10,000 at the end of 2029, prompting a back-and-forth between Kean and Kim over whether Kean had broken his promise.
“We secured the full SALT deduction for every middle-class family in New Jersey,” Kean said in a statement today. “I never backed down from the fight for SALT relief, standing up to Democrats and Republicans alike to quadruple the deduction to $40,000… Once President Trump signs this bill into law, life will become more affordable for residents of New Jersey’s Seventh District.”
(Smith, meanwhile, never took on a starring role in GOP opposition to the bill, at least publicly, and the long-serving congressman’s vote never seemed to be in doubt. That’s a stark contrast with the Chris Smith of eight years ago, who voted against both Obamacare repeal and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act because of their potentially damaging impacts on New Jersey.)
Though many of the bill’s furthest-reaching impacts won’t kick in for years, it’s sure to be a political football in the 2026 midterm elections for control of Congress.
Democrats running against Kean, who represents one of the country’s most competitive districts, and Van Drew, whose district is more Republican-leaning but not overwhelmingly so, have already worked to tie the two congressmen to the bill’s most contentious provisions, especially its Medicaid cuts. Republicans, meanwhile, see some political upside of their own, and argue that Democrats like Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) who voted against it voted for “largest tax hike in generations.”
The issue has even bled over into this year’s governor’s race, in which Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) is trying to keep the governor’s office in Democratic hands against Republican Jack Ciattarelli.
After the bill first passed the House in May, Ciattarelli said “shame on any Republican across the country who doesn’t support this [bill]” on a radio program, a quote that Sherrill has already pounced on. (Sherrill, for her part, voted against the bill every step of the way, calling it “fiscally irresponsible and morally bankrupt.”)
And as detailed by Ben Hulac in NJ Spotlight News, the cuts the bill contains to Medicaid and SNAP will inevitably become a state issue, because New Jersey, like every other state, relies on federal funding to make many of its most critical programs work. Term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy signed his last budget into law earlier this week, but the Big Beautiful Bill threatens to upend state-level financial calculations; “our state is just not positioned to be able to fill the gaps that we’re seeing,” Kim told NJ Spotlight.
The polling that’s been conducted thus far indicates that Democrats may have an upper hand in the messaging war. Polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans view the bill unfavorably, and are especially skeptical of any attempt to cut funding from Medicaid, though when asked directly about instituting work requirements and ensuring undocumented immigrants don’t receive Medicaid, many voters’ opinions soften.
Indeed, no Democrat even seemed to entertain voting for the bill despite its provisions on taxes on tips, SALT, and more. That includes Pou, who represents a district that voted for Trump last year but who was staunchly opposed to the bill from the very beginning.
“I heard from a mother in my district who’s worried that her disabled son won’t have Medicaid access when he ages out of her insurance, which will be soon,” Pou said. “A father told me that he fears that his adult daughter with a disability will end up homeless if she loses her Medicaid… Instead of helping the least advantaged in our community get by, this bill will take away health care from 17 million Americans and make them go hungry.”