A Few Minutes with… Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ): Making America Bipartisan Again

The minute Josh Gottheimer took his Congressional oath of office in January 2017, the New Jersey Democrat began charting a bipartisan course. As co-chair of Congress’s Problem Solvers Caucus along with Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Gottheimer leads a caucus of 29 Democrats and 29 Republicans who have summoned the political courage to cross party lines to pass laws of importance to all Americans, including the Covid package under President Trump and the infrastructure plan under President Biden.

Gottheimer, New Jersey’s only Jewish member of Congress, represents the Garden State’s 5th Congressional District, covering parts of Bergen, Passaic, Sussex, and Warren counties. Re-elected to a fourth term in November, he serves on the House Homeland Security Committee, where he successfully pushed for the removal of Twitter accounts affiliated with Hamas and Hezbollah; and on the House Financial Services Committee. This interview was originally conducted on our Power Politics podcast and has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

Watch the full interview on Episode #6 of the Power Politics Podcast

How are you solving America’s problems in a bipartisan way?

We’re actually trying to govern, and that’s been my approach since I got elected — of trying to figure out ways where we can sit down, Democrats and Republicans, break bread, develop relationships, and trust and figure out where we can get to an 80% agreement, versus insisting on 100% or nothing. It’s been incredibly successful.

The interest in the caucus has only grown every Congress. We helped negotiate the last Covid package under President Trump, and then in the last Congress, we got bipartisan legislation across the finish line for building [micro]chips in the United States of America, and then on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which I helped write and pass. We also passed commonsense gun safety, legislation to support our veterans, and to fund — not defund — law enforcement.

We now are just finalizing our class for this Congress. There are so many people interested, which is great. But you can’t just join. You actually go through a process where you engage with the other members, talk about your commitment to governing and to civility and to working together to put the country first.