The 118th Congress has come to an end

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After two tumultuous years – especially within New Jersey’s congressional delegation – the 118th session of the United States Congress has come to an end.

The House and Senate both passed a stopgap funding bill that keeps the government’s lights on through March, narrowly averting a shutdown that would have been triggered at midnight. The bill, which also includes disaster relief and a farm bill extension, was thoroughly bipartisan, with every New Jersey representative and senator of both parties voting for it.

The bill’s overwhelming passage, though, belies the difficult process that led to this point. Republican leaders initially unveiled a massive temporary funding package that had buy-in from Democrats, but it drew flak from President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, dooming its chances of passage; the House then cycled through several alternative options before ultimately landing on the relatively straightforward bill that ended up passing, to the consternation of some conservatives.

Many of New Jersey’s Democratic representatives said after the vote that while they may have supported the bill, they remain very frustrated with the way Republicans went about crafting it.

“We cannot bring our government to the brink of a crippling shutdown every three months,” Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) said in a statement. “Donald Trump and Elon Musk inserted chaos into the process and eschewed good governance in favor of causing uncertainty and chaos for New Jersey families. As we head into the new year with a Republican-controlled Washington, we’re going to need leaders who are not afraid to build broad coalitions to get big things done.”

The final stopgap bill also stripped out some provisions important to New Jersey members, including anti-junk fee legislation and a traumatic brain injury (TBI) program reauthorization led by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) and an anti-deepfake porn bill with which Senator Cory Booker was closely involved.

“I voted in favor of a temporary government funding bill to avoid a shutdown,” said Pallone, who has fought to rename the TBI program after its erstwhile champion, the late Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson). “However, Republicans left out bipartisan policies that would have improved health care, eliminated junk fees and lowered costs. I’m gonna keep fighting for these initiatives moving forward.”

In addition to – just barely – preventing a shutdown, Congress also passed a few other notable bills during the lame duck period, the last time in the near future when Democrats will hold any official levers of power in Congress.

The National Defense Authorization Act, a major defense bill that Congress has to pass every year, was approved by the House this week and the Senate this week, though many Democrats opposed it due to a provision targeting health care for servicemembers’ transgender children. (Reps. Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer voted for it, but all other Democrats in the New Jersey delegation opposed it.)

“[My work in the House] underscored to me the importance of giving military families all the support they need and not play politics with their livelihood and healthcare,” brand-new Senator Andy Kim said of the NDAA. “That’s why I strongly opposed Speaker Johnson’s last minute effort to override bipartisan agreement and instead restrict healthcare resources that thousands of military families have used. I trust military families that sacrifice so much for our country to have the freedom to make their own decisions about healthcare.”

Also getting Congress’s approval was the Social Security Fairness Act, which eliminates limitations on the Social Security benefits received by those with certain pensions or other benefits. And other initiatives championed by New Jersey members, like Rep. Pallone’s HEARTS Act (which promotes cardiomyopathy awareness) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester)’s Autism CARES Act (which reauthorizes many of Smith’s own autism-related  programs), passed Congress as well.

Now that the 118th Congress has ended, New Jersey’s delegation can prepare for an overhaul. Kim has already taken the Senate seat once held by disgraced former Senator Bob Menendez, and two new members – Reps.-elect Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) and Herb Conaway (D-Delran) will assume their offices on January 3, when the 119th Congress will begin and Republicans can begin working with an unobstructed majority (though Trump won’t take office until later in the month).

It remains to be seen whether the next Congress will be as chaotic as this one, which featured multiple prolonged battles over the House Speakership, several near-shutdowns, and a general feeling that nothing was working as well as it should have. With some Republicans already threatening to throw wrenches in the January 2025 Speaker election, optimism is perhaps not in order.

Asked whether he believed the 118th Congress was a success, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) gave a conditional answer, saying that Republicans were hamstrung by the circumstances they were placed in.

“I don’t know that I’d call it a success, to be honest with you,” he said. “But we are in the most difficult of circumstances: a narrow majority, we don’t have the Senate, we don’t have the executive branch. I don’t know how you could have success knowing all that. And I really believe this is a really bad administration. Now, in retrospect, even a lot of Democrats are saying, ‘My God, what were we doing?’ So how could you have a good result, with all that is going on with this administration?”

Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), who was sworn into office just three months ago to replace the late Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark), said that the slow pace of Congress has taken some getting used to.

“When you come from the local perspective, and you’re serving as a councilperson, you have to fix problems each and every day, very fast,” said McIver, until recently the president of the Newark City Council. “Not taking your sweet time, not thinking about it, not having 1,001 conversations about it – you just have to deliver. So coming to Congress, things are very obviously different. They’re not happening overnight.”

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