Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) says she will turn down her congressional salary if the government shuts down at midnight tonight, echoing a similar declaration made yesterday by Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), her fellow swing-district representative.
Pou sent a letter to U.S. House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor last night officially declining her salary in the event of a shutdown, writing that “until Congress and the White House come to a bipartisan resolution to this impasse, one that makes whole the workers I represent in New Jersey’s Ninth District and fully reopens the government, I firmly believe Member pay should be withheld.”
Both parties have so far proven perfectly willing to blame the other for the looming shutdown. Republicans have proposed a two-month stopgap bill that keeps the government funded largely at current levels, and questioned why Democrats are unwilling to support it; Democrats say they need more guardrails against President Donald Trump’s ability to revoke funds at will, and also want a variety of health care provisions to be included in the funding bill. A meeting between Trump and top congressional leaders yesterday failed to produce a breakthrough.
Pou voted against the GOP’s two-month plan when it came up in the House, but it passed anyway with near-unanimous Republican support. The same can’t be done in the Senate, however, where Democrats have the ability to block bills that don’t meet a 60-vote filibuster threshold – which is exactly what they’ve done to the stopgap bill.
Pou and Kean aren’t the first New Jersey members of Congress to voluntarily refuse their salary in response to Congress’s failure to fund the government and pay federal employees.
In September 2023, Kean and Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), and Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) all said they’d turn down their salaries in the event of a shutdown, but Congress unexpectedly arrived at a deal at the last minute and kept the government open. And in 2019, Kim and Sherrill both refused their first paychecks as House members in the midst of a shutdown that began before they were sworn in.
Pou and Kean represent the state’s two most competitive House districts – each of their districts voted for Trump by around one percentage point last year – and both are likely to be in for stiff challenges next year.
