Andy Kim rode a wave of anti-Trump rage to flip a Republican-held House seat in 2018, then latched onto anger at establishment New Jersey Democrats last year to score a promotion to the U.S. Senate.
Now that the federal government is in turmoil, shut down because of a partisan spat over Obamacare subsidies, with President Donald Trump using the shutdown as an excuse to target projects in Democratic-led states, does Kim regret his decision to begin a career in Congress during what seems like the absolute worst time to be there?
I asked him this question Thursday and didn’t get an answer. But Kim, a Democrat, reminded me that, at this point, he’s a government shutdown vet.
“I was sworn in during a government shutdown,” he said, referring to the 2018-19 shutdown. “Thankfully we were able to flip the House Representatives and take back the gavel there, but it’s sad to see just like the lack of willingness to actually engage in anything that resembles governance.”
Kim was in New Jersey this week to chat with residents about the shutdown and the Trump administration’s move to use it as a reason to kill or delay things like the Gateway project, a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River intended to replace aging tunnels damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Kim likened Trump’s actions to “mafia tactics.”
“It just shows that he’s willing to harm the American people just for his own political purposes,” he said.
Trump and Republicans have been adamant that the shutdown is the fault of Democrats. The U.S. Senate this week considered one Dem-led stopgap budget bill and one Republican bill. The GOP measure won more than 50 votes, but neither scored the 60 it needed to pass. When I asked Kim whether it would be fair to say Democrats are indeed blocking a bill with majority support, he said no because Trump and Republicans know that they should have produced a bill that would have gotten 60 votes.
“First and foremost, again, the Republicans are in firm control over this government and they know how this works, which is you’ve got to have bipartisanship on these negotiations, which they just chose not to do,” he said. “We’ve been reaching out to have negotiations. We reached out starting this summer to sit down and have negotiations. Donald Trump didn’t agree to it until the day before the shutdown.”
When I asked the White House to comment on Kim’s criticism, it blamed his party for the budget mess.
“Andy Kim and his fellow Senate Democrats shut down the federal government in a bid to strong-arm Republicans into giving free health care to illegal immigrants,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai. “The Democrats’ government shutdown affects everyone and requires the Administration to make decisions to keep mandatory government functions operational. The Democrats can choose to reopen the government at any time.”
The claim about free health care is a canard. Immigrants without legal status are ineligible for the federal subsidies at the heart of the budget dispute. Democrats want to extend federal aid for health insurance purchased in the Obamacare marketplaces, since costs are expected to skyrocket without them. Republicans do not — though states can and have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain subsidized health care. Here in New Jersey, children under 19 can enroll in Medicaid no matter their legal status. There are indeed noncitizens who are eligible for federal subsidies, but not every noncitizen is in the U.S. illegally (for now).
Kim is more hopeful than I am that lawmakers will come to their senses and broker a deal. He said he was involved in a productive dialogue with senators from both sides of the aisle on Wednesday.
“And I did hear from a number of them, the Republicans, that they share concerns on the health care side. They’re feeling the pressure, which is why, again, [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson just kept them home,” he said. “He doesn’t want them here feeling the pressure and the heat about this,” he said.
Here’s why I’m not hopeful: The 2018-19 shutdown lasted for about one month, and that was back when Trump was way more interested in playing the game and surrounded by a few people who appeared interested in curbing his more insane instincts. His reascension to the presidency after years of prosecutions and two assassination attempts has him, well, emboldened would be a polite word. And judging by his public remarks since the shutdown began, he’s having a gay old time.
So what’s going to get this to stop? An appeal to reason? Trump is sh––posting from the Oval Office. Reason is in the rearview mirror.
- Editor Terrence T. McDonald is a native New Jerseyan who has worked for newspapers in the Garden State for more than 15 years. He has covered everything from Trenton politics to the smallest of municipal squabbles, exposing public corruption and general malfeasance at every level of government. Terrence won 23 New Jersey Press Association awards and two Tim O’Brien Awards for Investigative Journalism using the Open Public Records Act from the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. One politician forced to resign in disgrace because of Terrence’s reporting called him a "political poison pen journalist.” You can reach him at tmcdonald@newjerseymonitor.com.
