The federal government has shut down.
Faced with a September 30 deadline to come up with a funding deal that both parties could agree to – a deadline that recurs every year – Congress failed to do so, voting on partisan proposals from each side that couldn’t pass muster with the other. That impasse led to the first shutdown since 2019, with no clear off-ramp for either party.
As long as the government is shut down, federal services like national parks and museums will be closed, and many federal workers will be furloughed. Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have specifically threatened to go further, warning of mass layoffs and cuts to specific federal programs in the event of a protracted shutdown.
Longer-term funding for many New Jersey-specific projects and programs is at risk too, including hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks that may not make it into a funding deal.
At least eight of New Jersey’s members of Congress – Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker and Reps. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), Donald Norcross (D-Camden), Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), and Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) – have also said they won’t accept their congressional paychecks during the shutdown.
At a telephone town hall shortly before the shutdown began, Kim said that the blame lies at Republicans’ feet for refusing to engage with Democrats on a funding deal.
“Right now, what the American people deserve is a government that shows up and does our job,” Kim said. “They want adults in the room. They want people who are willing to sit down and engage, even if there are differences… [But] what we have right now is just an absolute catastrophe. This is not a way to govern.”
Republicans, however, are blaming the shutdown on the Democratic representatives and senators who turned down the opportunity to pass a two-month funding bill because it didn’t include certain provisions they wanted.
“Nearly two weeks ago, House Republicans fulfilled their promises to the American electorate by delivering and passing a short-term [continuing resolution] that funds the government’s operations while legislators wrap up negotiations on remaining appropriations bills,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) said in a statement earlier today. “Unfortunately – but unsurprisingly – radical leftist Democrats in the Senate have chosen to reject and block this crucial legislation to keep the government running, all in the name of unrealistic partisan demands.”
Republicans have, for weeks, held to the position that their stopgap bill, keeping the government funded mostly at current levels through November 21, is the one reasonable way to avert a shutdown.
Democrats, however, noted the Trump administration’s public hostility towards working with their party in what is normally a bipartisan appropriations process, and said a stopgap wouldn’t get their support without certain additional provisions. Top Democratic leaders demanded an extension of Obamacare tax credits, a reversal of Medicaid cuts made earlier this year, and new safeguards to prevent the Trump administration from revoking funds as they see fit.
In the House, Republicans put their two-month stopgap up for a vote on September 19; it passed with the support of every New Jersey Republican and zero New Jersey Democrats. The House then adjourned for a recess that still has not ended despite votes being originally scheduled for this week; a huge number of House Democrats gathered in the Capitol today to protest Republicans’ decision not to call the House back into session.
On the Senate side, meanwhile, both the Republican stopgap and a separate Democratic proposal have been put up for multiple votes, to no avail. Either bill would require 60 votes to clear the filibuster threshold; when the two bills came up again earlier today, the GOP bill failed 55-45 and the Democratic bill failed 47-53, with Kim and Booker opposing the former and supporting the latter.
In a last-ditch attempt to find a way out of the mess, Trump met with the top four leaders in the House and Senate yesterday to discuss options. The meeting failed to produce a breakthrough, and soon afterwards Trump put out a racist AI-generated video depicting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero.
