If Congress can’t pass some sort of government funding bill by September 30, then the federal government will enter into a shutdown for the first time since 2019. And thanks to the filibuster, which requires most bills to get 60 votes in the Senate in order to pass, Senate Democrats will have to play a role in any funding deal that makes it to the president’s desk.
New Jersey’s two senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, are saying that their votes can’t be taken for granted to prevent a shutdown. If Republicans put forward a bill that doesn’t involve any input from Democrats and would, from their perspective, harm New Jersey and its residents, both senators signaled that they’re willing to use their power to stop it.
“I am not going to support a budget that hurts New Jerseyans, that hurts people more than they’re hurting already,” Booker told reporters during a gaggle that he later posted online. “Donald Trump and Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They have a responsibility to put forward a budget that can get through the United States Senate.”
If Trump tries to “bully” the Senate into passing a partisan bill, he added, “I’m going to block it and I’m going to fight to prevent him from doing that.”
Kim told the New Jersey Globe today that he feels similarly: “Let’s just say there’s no way I’m going to vote for something that’s purely partisan on the Republican side, and let that go through,” he said. “I’m prepared to do what I did the last time around.”
The “last time around” refers to a similar fight in March, when Republicans pushed through a controversial year-long stopgap bill and essentially dared Senate Democrats to block it. Booker and Kim both voted against the bill alongside most of their fellow Democrats, but a critical handful Democratic senators – including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – supported it and averted a shutdown.
Republicans are discussing the possibility of another stopgap bill, and House Republicans have also been working through a series of strongly partisan appropriations bills that have drawn fierce opposition from Democrats. But some Republicans in the Senate have been more amenable to a traditional bipartisan funding process, in defiance of the Trump administration, and Kim said that’s the outcome he still hopes prevails.
“If the Republicans are going to refuse to do bipartisanship, that’s going to be a real problem here,” Kim said. “They’re the ones that are breaking precedent if Trump continues to push them in this extremely dangerous way. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m really trying to make sure that we try to get something that’s bipartisan through.”
New Jersey’s nine House Democrats, too, are likely to push back on any partisan GOP funding process. But without an equivalent to the filibuster, they don’t have the same power to stop the Republican majority from doing whatever it wants to do; just today, every present Democrat voted against an Energy Department appropriations bill, but it still passed 214-213. (New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill, notably, was not in attendance for the vote amid her campaign for governor.)
