The House voted on its version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this evening – and on several key amendments from New Jersey’s members of Congress along with it.
One amendment concerning Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County, authored by Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), was successfully added to the bill. Another from Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) on offshore wind, however, surprisingly failed in the face of opposition from a small cohort of moderate Republicans.
Thanks to a series of other amendments added to the bill by Republicans, final passage of the historically bipartisan bill proved to be contentious: it passed 231-196, with seven of New Jersey’s nine Democrats voting against it. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) voted in favor, and Sherrill herself was not present for votes this evening.
Over the summer, Sherrill and most of her New Jersey colleagues sent a letter to top Defense Department officials criticizing a relocation proposal that would gut Picatinny Arsenal, a key military installation in the western reaches of Sherrill’s district. The department’s plan, the representatives wrote, would jeopardize 1,000 jobs and nearly $1 billion in funding while also undermining military effectiveness.
Under an amendment Sherrill added to the NDAA today, the Army would have to complete a report on a key part of that plan – moving around $500 million in ammunition research and development away from Picatinny – submit that report to Congress by next November, and wait for another six months before moving ahead. The amendment, which Sherrill’s office argued would give the Army additional time and information to realize the downsides of its proposal, was approved on a voice vote.
“With today’s action, Congress is making clear that the Army cannot quietly move ammunition research and development funding elsewhere without first reporting on the impacts and giving us the chance to evaluate them,” Sherrill said in a statement.
Smith, meanwhile, has long been a crusader against wind development off the Jersey Shore, and has successfully pushed for a number of bills and amendments over the years to combat it, including the commissioning of a Government Accountability Office study on offshore wind’s impacts that was released earlier this year.
Smith’s NDAA amendment that came up today would have required the Secretary of Defense to certify that offshore wind projects will not interfere with radar capabilities before they can proceed – a key concern for the congressman, who has repeatedly expressed worries that offshore wind turbines will disturb military ships and planes.
“Even somebody who is strongly in favor of ocean wind should want to know if our radar – for civilian aircraft, for vessels; this is focused primarily on aircraft, military and civilian – is going to be disrupted,” Smith said prior to the vote. “The answer right now is capital Y-E-S, with exclamation points.”
The amendment, however, ran aground when a 16-member cohort of Republicans, some of whom have been known to break with their party on environmental issues, voted against it. The amendment failed 209-224; all present New Jersey Democrats opposed it, and all three New Jersey Republicans supported it.
Two other New Jersey congressmen, Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), also inserted amendments into the bill on unanimous votes. Gottheimer authored four amendments, including one pushing back on International Criminal Court arrest warrants for U.S. and allied military personnel and another increasing funding for the National Defense Education Program; Kean’s amendment updates the definition of “conventional ammunition” to include unmanned aircraft like drones.
And as members of the House Armed Services Committee, Sherrill and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden) were part of the process of writing the bill in the first place; the bill passed out of committee back in July on a 55-2 vote, fitting a longer trend of bipartisan NDAA committee work followed by a more partisan debate on the House floor.
