Credit: (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)WASHINGTON — A passenger rail project critical to New Jersey and the greater Northeast will receive $700 million under legislation likely to become law, a rebuke to President Donald Trump, who tried to terminate the project altogether.
The legislation also includes about $307 million in federal funding to extend the Second Avenue Subway line in Manhattan north to East Harlem and roughly $100 million for transit agencies and operating expenses for host cities of this year’s FIFA World Cup, the massive soccer tournament that will include matches in New Jersey.
The core of the infrastructure project, known as the Gateway Program, is a $16 billion public works effort decades in the making to upgrade two decrepit tunnels built in 1910 that run beneath the Hudson River and connect Newark’s train station and New York’s Penn Station.
In the fall, Trump tried to cancel federal funding for both the Gateway and subway projects during a federal government shutdown. In particular, Trump relished the move to eliminate money for Gateway as a way to skewer Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate. “It’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get,” Trump, a former New Yorker himself, said in October. “Tell him it’s terminated.”
Months later, Gateway has not been terminated and Congress is poised to fund many of the agencies, programs and projects the president threatened with deep budget cuts last year, the first he made since in his second term.
The $700 million the spending bill sets aside for Gateway is specifically for the Hudson River tunnels, the program’s centerpiece.
“The money designated for the Gateway tunnel in the pending funding package represents a vital next step in the project’s growth,” Rep. Nellie Pou (D-9th) said in an emailed statement. “As New Jersey’s only Democratic member of the House transportation committee, I will remain aggressive in working to secure every nickel and penny of funding we need to keep the Gateway project on track and reverse the Trump hold on federal investment in this critical project.”
Money for Gateway and the Second Avenue subway is included in a broader array of legislation, pending before Congress, to fund the U.S. government through the current budget cycle, which ends in September. The money for the World Cup would be taken from funding Congress has already approved through other appropriations laws.
After immigration agents shot and killed a U.S. citizen over the weekend in Minnesota, Democrats in Congress are pushing to reform the Department of Homeland Security — in particular the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol agencies, whose agents have flooded Democratic-leaning states and cities in recent months.
Schumer and other Senate Democrats said over the weekend and on Monday they would not vote for the bill the House passed last week to fund DHS, raising the odds of a partial government shutdown that would start at the end of the day Friday.
“I will not vote for another dollar for a reckless ICE & DHS,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said in a statement online Saturday.
Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate but need 60 votes total to advance most bills, including spending legislation. That shortfall means they will need Democratic support to pass the spending bills before them, giving Democrats leverage.
In the House, just seven Democrats voted for the bill to fund DHS, none of whom represent New Jersey seats. New Jersey’s three Republicans in Congress, Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd), Chris Smith (R-4th) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th), voted for it.
The bill contains some language Democrats wanted, including $20 million for body cameras for ICE agents. That’s not sufficient, said Rep. Donald Norcross (D-1st), who voted against the bill.
“Money alone doesn’t guarantee those cameras get worn,” Norcross said last week, pushing for a bill of his that requires all “public-facing” immigration officers to wear cameras.
That DHS funding is part of a broader $1.2 trillion legislative spending package that funds a series of departments and policies, including the Pentagon, the departments of treasury, state and transportation, along with foreign aid, labor, education and public health programs. That measure passed the House last week.
A separate portion of the package, which contained less divisive measures, passed easily last week, on a vote of 341 to 88.
