The federal government shutdown began 17 days ago and counting. How will it end?
That’s the question that everyone in Congress has been asking themselves, and no one seems to have an answer. Democrats and Republicans alike say they share the goal of finding a way to reopen the government, but disputes over a few key issues – most notably the continuation of soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act tax credits – have made a solution that can earn 217 votes in the House and 60 votes in the Senate elusive.
Two New Jersey congressmen from opposing parties, Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), have some experience with these kinds of tangles. Both are members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group with a mission of cross-party cooperation, and both have played roles in resolving past congressional logjams.
But in conversations with the New Jersey Globe this week, Kean and Gottheimer had very different viewpoints on where the blame for the shutdown lies, and while they both said they’re engaged in conversations with members of the other party about potential solutions, neither presented a clear path out of the impasse.
Kean’s preferred solution to the shutdown is simple, and matches what essentially all of his Republican colleagues are saying: Senate Democrats need to give up their “partisan political games” and pass the stopgap funding bill that the House approved in September. Because the bill needs a three-fifths of senators to overcome a filibuster, Democrats – among them Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker – have been able to successfully block it for the last two weeks.
“Right now, the only pathway out is for [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the Senate – and that includes Cory Booker and Andy Kim – to do their job and vote for a continuing resolution that’s already passed the House on a bipartisan basis, and now has bipartisan support in the Senate as well,” Kean said.
Democrats in both the House and the Senate say that in order for a funding bill to earn their votes, they need to get some concrete concessions in return – especially an extension of the expiring ACA credits, without which millions of people are likely to be priced out of health care. Schumer has put forward an alternate funding bill that extends the credits, undoes Medicaid cuts from the Big Beautiful Bill, and puts new guardrails in place to prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from unilaterally revoking funding; Republicans in the Senate have shot it down repeatedly.
But Kean ruled out the idea of connecting the ACA debate to reopening the government, saying the two need to be hashed out separately and calling Schumer’s proposal a “non-starter.”
“There have never been any policy changes or discussions or provisions in [continuing resolutions],” Kean said. “There is absolutely no connection in that.”
Kean’s hard stance against including ACA credits in a funding deal comes in spite of the fact that he was one of the original co-sponsors of a bill to extend the credits for a year. That standalone bill may face tough headwinds in the GOP-controlled House; Kean says he’s talked to Republican leaders about the importance of the bill, but many of those leaders have indicated they don’t particularly like the idea of keeping the credits.
Gottheimer, too, is a co-sponsor on that bill, but he takes the opposite view to Kean on how to go about extending the credits: a deal to reopen the government, he said, needs to include some sort of solution to the ACA issue.
“If you open back up without addressing this issue, you’re not going to be able to – by November 1, when open enrollment begins – address the issue,” Gottheimer said. “And people’s premiums – they’ve already gotten notices of this – will skyrocket at the beginning of the year.”
Gottheimer said he’s been involved in discussions with members of both parties about how to move forward, though he wouldn’t tip his hand as to what their conversations have included.
“Where is that agreement? How do you find the deal? And that has, right now, been the challenge,” he said. “I think in some ways, both sides are going to have to be willing to do something and to move a little bit, and it hasn’t happened yet, but many of us are working hard on that.”
Complicating matters is the fact that, while the Senate has continued to hold votes throughout the shutdown, the House has been out of session since September 19, when it passed its funding bill. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that his chamber has done its work and has no reason to return to Washington until the Senate passes the bill, a stance Kean said he agrees with; Gottheimer said the lack of in-person action is “frustrating.”
“What does it say to the American people when you’ve got people’s airports being affected, seniors’ food being affected, infrastructure projects being affected, veterans being affected, and these guys aren’t even showing up?” Gottheimer said. “That, to me, speaks volumes about their interest in solving the problem.”
Like prior government shutdowns, there is a price to pay for failing to fund the government. Many government services have been curtailed, and many federal employees – including, critically, air traffic controllers – are going without full paychecks.
But Trump has also taken the unprecedented step of directly targeting programs in Democratic states that would otherwise go unaffected by the program. Since the shutdown began, the Trump administration has frozen funding for the Gateway Tunnel connecting New Jersey and Manhattan – Trump went on to say this week that the project is “terminated,” though it’s still somewhat unclear what that entails – and cancelled Energy Department grants in blue states, including millions of dollars in New Jersey.
Gottheimer and his fellow Democrats have roundly condemned such moves as counterproductive and an attempt at political intimidation; Kean has been more circumspect, saying he is “adamant” that the Gateway Tunnel be completed but blaming Democrats for any impediments to that happening. (That was Kean’s stance after the initial funding freeze, and his office provided largely the same statement again today following Trump’s repeated assertions that the project is “dead.”)
If nothing else, the Trump administration’s funding cancellations will likely further drive home the impacts of the shutdown in New Jersey. Both Kean and Gottheimer said they’ve heard from constituents about the need to reopen the government – but again, they took away different conclusions on what needs to be done.
“I’ve been in the district, speaking to constituents, talking to them about their priorities,” Kean said. “They know, and I know, that it’s important that Chuck Schumer do the job that is necessary to keep this government open.”
“[People are] like, ‘What are you doing to fix this? Are you in there trying to get it done?’” Gottheimer said. “And I tell them the truth, which is, yeah! I’m doing everything I can. I’m not in the game of pointing fingers, I’m in the game of solving problems and getting shit done. That’s my job.”
