New Jersey’s three-man Republican delegation in Congress may not be big, but in such a closely divided House, Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), Chris Smith (R-Manchester), and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) could seriously jeopardize the passage of any party-line bill – if they choose to.
As Republicans try to write the tax- and spending-cut bill that will define President Donald Trump’s early legislative agenda, that power gives the trio of congressmen quite a bit of leverage. And all three have drawn a number of red lines on issues as varied as Medicaid, the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap, and green energy tax credits, laying out what it is they will – and won’t – support in their party’s eventual mammoth bill.
Van Drew has been especially clear on his stance with regards to Medicaid: he has insisted in statements, in interviews, and even in a letter to House GOP leaders that he will not support cuts to the federal health program for low-income and disabled Americans. (The budget resolution that Republicans passed last month directs the House Energy & Commerce Committee to make $880 billion in cuts, most of which would almost certainly have to come out of Medicaid.)
“I will not vote for any bill that cuts eligible, legal people, human beings or entities – that means hospitals, that means nursing homes, that means the working poor, that means the disabled,” Van Drew said earlier this week.
Smith has not been nearly as vocal as Van Drew, but he too told the New Jersey Globe that cutting Medicaid, or Medicare or Social Security, was a no-go for him.
“Leave [Medicaid] alone,” Smith said. “I have spoken repeatedly to our leadership…They keep assuring me, okay, it’s fine.” (Smith also affirmed his support for state-level Medicaid expansion – “It’s the only thing in Obamacare that worked,” he said – which is another potential target under the GOP’s plans.)
Of course, what Republicans define as Medicaid “cuts” could be malleable. Van Drew declined to specify a hard cap on how much he’d be willing to reduce Medicaid spending, and he expressed openness to implementing work requirements or re-evaluating eligibility every six months instead of every year, two policies that Democrats would undoubtedly argue constitute cuts.
Smith and Van Drew both represent sprawling districts with a large number of Medicaid recipients: 138,800 in Smith’s district and 126,400 in Van Drew’s, per a Georgetown analysis from 2023. Kean’s district, on the other hand, only has 44,000 Medicaid recipients – the lowest in the state and one of the lowest in the country – but the congressman has said in the past that he does still want to keep Medicaid intact.
“What we are focusing on together, and my hope is we can find bipartisan support, is protecting Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare for the beneficiaries who are relying on them,” Kean said in March. “That’s a sacred task that we have. We need to ensure that we also get out the waste, the fraud, and the abuse that’s endemic all too often in government spending right now. And we can do both.”
Kean’s bigger interest, however, lies in the SALT cap, which was established at $10,000 in Trump’s 2017 tax bill and which North Jersey politicians of both parties have desperately been trying to raise since then. Kean, who has joined forces with a handful of other pro-SALT Republicans from high-tax states during reconciliation negotiations, has said that he’s fighting for a full restoration of the SALT cap and won’t support a deal that doesn’t go far enough, though he hasn’t specifically said what a minimum SALT cap raise would be.
“I’ve been very clear, both last year and this year, that we need to have SALT restoration in any tax package that’s coming out of Congress in order for me to support it,” he said in the March interview.
Van Drew and Smith have both also said they want to see the SALT cap raised – Smith voted against the 2017 tax bill in part because of its SALT provisions – but neither have been as committed to that issue as Kean has been.
“I’m all in for SALT, and I think we’re going to get it much higher,” Smith said. “I don’t have a number yet; nobody does. But I do think we’ll get a good number.”
“I’m a little bit more flexible with [SALT],” Van Drew said. “I understand the importance of it, and I’m very supportive of it, and I wouldn’t just go to 0. That would be a red line, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case. But generally, that’s a different issue to me than the Medicaid issue.”
Kean, who represents a closely divided district that’s likely to host yet another competitive election in 2026, has also staked out aother issue of particular interest: renewable energy tax credits that were approved under President Joe Biden. Some Republicans have signaled an interest in repealing the credits or scaling them back, but Kean and 20 fellow Republicans have made it clear they’d oppose such a move.
This week marked the true beginning of the reconciliation process, with a number of House committees meeting for day-long markups of their portions of the larger GOP bill. Reps. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) both spent hours this week sitting through extensive markups on their respective committees, and both said they were sorely disappointed in Republicans’ unwillingness to work with Democrats or consider their amendments.
“They were in lockstep with the Trump administration from #1 right through #34,” Pou said, referring to the 34 failed amendments Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee offered on their portion of the bill. “Not a word. Complete and total silence… It’s clear that they got their marching orders.”
“I don’t think we got one Republican vote on any of our amendments,” Sherrill said of her experience on the Armed Services Committee. “I don’t know if they’re going to pick their moment to do something, but time’s wasting.”
Notably, both the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees have portions of the bill that are slated to increase spending on things like border wall construction and missiles, which is politically easier to swallow than spending cuts (though many Democrats have argued that the increases don’t come with nearly enough oversight).
Far bigger challenges, though, are likely to arise on other committees like Energy & Commerce – where Medicaid cuts would come – or Ways & Means, which will be responsible for many of the bill’s thorniest tax questions. (No New Jerseyans currently serve on Ways & Means following the death of Rep. Bill Pascrell last year, but Energy & Commerce is home to three New Jerseyans: Kean, Rep. Rob Menendez, and Rep. Frank Pallone, the committee’s ranking Democrat.)
Eventually, all of the component pieces will be assembled into “one big, beautiful bill,” as Trump has termed it, which will be the centerpiece of the 119th Congress’s Republican agenda. Republican leaders will then have to convince any representatives or senators who didn’t get what they were looking for out of the bill to support it anyways.
Back in 2017, during Trump’s first Republican trifecta, many New Jersey Republican congressmen decided they didn’t like how the GOP’s big-ticket bills would affect their state; four out of five of the state’s Republicans voted against the tax bill that put a cap on SALT, and three out of five voted against repealing Obamacare. (Smith was among the “no” votes on both.)
This year, if Republicans’ bill ends up touching Medicaid, or targeting clean energy tax credits, or abandoning SALT reform, then Van Drew, Smith, and Kean could be confronted with a similar choice. They’ve staked out their positions on those issues and drawn their red lines, but the GOP’s tiny majority makes any single “no” vote extremely consequential; the coming months may test how much the three congressmen are willing to bend those lines.