Is Trump's cut to Sandy aid latest example of New Jersey under attack in DC?

WASHINGTON — Funding for Amtrak's Gateway project, which includes a new tunnel under the Hudson River, was not touched in the $15 billion package of budget "rescission" requests that President Trump's administration sent to Congress on Tuesday.

But Trump did propose rescinding $107 million in Superstorm Sandy aid, and the cut has added fuel to a fire burning in the New Jersey delegation that sees the state as under attack from Washington.

"Coming on the heels of a tax scam they bragged was designed to hurt the Northeast, Republicans now want to take away $107 million to help my state continue its recovery from Hurricane Sandy," said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson. 

"They want to kick New Jerseyans while we’re down all over again. It’s insult to second injury and chutzpah doesn’t even begin to cover it," Pascrell said.

Rep. Donald Norcross, D-Camden, also reached for some Yiddish.

"You’d have to be an anti-Jersey schmuck to support this," Norcross said. "The ‘moocher state’ Republicans that voted against Sandy aid in the first place are now trying to use every trick in the book to suck New Jersey dry."

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-Paramus, said the state remains too vulnerable to another storm to cut funding.

"It is reprehensible for Republicans to try to lessen the blow of their $2 trillion, deficit-busting, corporate tax cut on the backs of Sandy victims,” Menendez said. 

Whether the cut would really hurt the state or storm victims is debatable.

The $107 million — which Congress could cut using a fast-track process that avoids a Senate filibuster — would come from the Department of Agriculture's Emergency Watershed Protection program. The funding was originally approved in early 2013 as part of the nearly $60 billion package of bills primarily for New Jersey and New York recovery from Sandy, which struck in the October 2012.

Documents from the Office of Management and Budget say the watershed money has not been spent "due to the inability of project sponsors to generate the funding necessary for their portion of the project expenses." In other words, states or localities that could access the aid have not put up the necessary matching funds.

But whether the cut has a real impact, the symbolism has stoked anger in the delegation that has been growing since the tax overhaul signed in December put a new $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes. That limitation will hit harder in New Jersey than just about any other state.

Trump veto threat

Trump followed that with a threat in March to veto a spending bill to keep the government operating if it included funding for Gateway, the Amtrak project that includes a new tunnel under the Hudson and East rivers and replaces bridges in the Meadowlands that are more than a century old.

The spending bill he ultimately signed did put about $500 million in transportation accounts that could be tapped to get Gateway started, but the money has not been awarded yet by the administration.

And last month more than two dozen lawmakers led by Rep Ted Budd, R-N.C., urged White House budget director Mick Mulvaney to ax the Gateway funds in the rescission package.

That did not happen this week because Republican leaders in the Senate had said the March spending package was a bipartisan agreement and they did not want to renege on the deal. But if the latest rescission package passes, conservatives expect there will be more of them following, and future bills still could go after the Gateway money.

"The strategy is now to go after us on every single front," Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-Wyckoff, said at an April 27 news conference where he and five New Jersey colleagues derided the possibility of rescinding the Gateway funding. 

Budd's letter said New Jersey and New York are two of the wealthiest states in the country and should be able to fund the tunnel themselves, but Gottheimer said taxes from New Jersey that flow through Washington help North Carolina get more back than its residents pay. .

"They're picking states like ours that historically have really just moved resources over to prop them up," he said.

Red State vs. Blue State 

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-Long Branch, said the fight has become "red state vs. blue state" and New Jersey is being targeted because it did not vote for Trump in 2016. But he also brought up the fight over aid after Sandy, the worst storm in state history. 

"We were trying to get the package passed that we had a lot of the Republicans and members from the South and the West who said they didn't want to pay for it," Pallone said.

"And yet, last summer, when they had the devastating hurricanes in Florida and Texas, we, because we believe in this country as a whole and we think this is one country, not a collection of states, we ended up voting for the disaster assistance for them."

It does not help that budget director Mulvaney had a hand in the $107 million cut, because he tried, unsuccessfully, when he was a congressman from South Carolina to require $17 billion in budget cuts to offset a part of the Sandy aid package sponsored by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-Harding.

The White House did not insist on offsets for the Texas or Florida assistance that passed in several bills.

Congress can accept some or all of the cuts Trump is proposing, and the first stop for that decision will be the House and Senate appropriations committees. That means Appropriations Committee Chairman Frelinghuysen could prevent the Sandy aid from being cut now.

He is not saying what he'll do, however. Frelinghuysen, who is retiring at the end of this term, walked past a reporter going to vote Tuesday and ignored a question about the rescissions package. His office also did not respond to requests for comment.

But Republican leaders in Congress face pressure to deliver budget cuts because conservative members and outside groups are upset the GOP failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and then approved a budget deal that increased spending for defense and domestic programs.

Some New Jersey Republicans running for re-election this year have concerns about the White House proposal, however.

Rep. Leonard Lance, a Republican from Clinton Township who was the lone Republican to join five Democrats at that April news conference, said this week he opposes cutting the Sandy aid even though he recognizes the money has not been spent.

"I hope those funds can be utilized and do not want to prohibit the possibility they could be utilized," he said.

Lance also said he has problems with the biggest cut in the rescissions package, about $7 billion from the Children's Health Insurance Program that OMB says can't be spent or will not likely be spent this year.

"I don’t want to hurt children in any way,"  Lance said. "Both of these are very serious concerns of mine."

Rep. Tom MacArthur, a Republican from Toms River who has cast the most votes in the delegation to support Trump administration policies, said he also had problems with the cuts to Sandy and CHIP funding.

"I haven’t read them all, but I have two pretty significant reasons why I have a problem with it," MacArthur said Tuesday night.