Jeff Van Drew and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Six Deciding House Votes, Then a Yes on the Final Law

February 25, 2025, budget plan, Jeff Van Drew's vote decisive; May 22, House bill, decisive again, 215 to 214; July 3, final law, a yes. Those three dates carry the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which by KFF's reckoning will cost New Jersey $28.71 billion in federal Medicaid money over the coming decade.

Between and after them, Van Drew's yes also decided the April 2025 rule and final budget resolution, the May previous question on the bill's rule and the July previous question that opened debate on the Senate text, and in April 2026 he voted for a House resolution celebrating the law. Under it, 300,000 more New Jersey residents will lack insurance in 2034, KFF projects.

Jeff Van Drew's House Votes on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in the Order the Bill Moved

• Van Drew Cast Three Votes for the House Budget Plan, the Last of Them Deciding, in February 2025. Three February 25, 2025 roll calls, three Van Drew yes votes: the previous question on H.Res. 161, the rule bringing the budget resolution to the floor, at 216 to 210; the rule's adoption at 217 to 211; and H.Con.Res. 14, which got 217 votes to 215. That last margin was his to erase, since one switch would have left a tie, and ties fail. The plan wrote the targets: savings of no less than $880 billion assigned to Energy and Commerce, Medicaid's committee; $230 billion or more assigned to Agriculture, SNAP's committee; and permission for Ways and Means to run up deficits by up to $4.5 trillion.
• Van Drew Decided Both the April Rule and the Final Budget Resolution, in 2025. April 9, 2025 brought H.Res. 313, which set the terms for considering the Senate-amended budget resolution: Van Drew voted for its previous question, 217 to 212, and its adoption, 216 to 215. A day later his yes helped the House concur in the Senate text, 216 to 214. Switching alone, he could have sunk the rule or the resolution. In the Congressional Budget Office estimate KFF uses, the Medicaid reductions in the final law total $911 billion over a decade; Van Drew voted for that law on July 3, 2025.
• Van Drew Cast Six Votes on May 22, 2025, Two of Them Deciding, as the House Passed the Bill by One. H.Res. 436, the rule governing H.R. 1, drew four Van Drew yes votes on May 22, 2025: two questions of consideration (217 to 211, 216 to 211), the previous question (213 to 211) and adoption (217 to 212). The motion to recommit drew his no and went down 212 to 216. On passage the House split 215 to 214 with one present, Van Drew in the 215; had he switched, the bill and the previous question would both have failed. After Senate changes it emerged as a law that, through its Medicaid sections alone, swells the uninsured by 7.5 million in 2034, per the Congressional Budget Office figures KFF relayed; it also barred Planned Parenthood from Medicaid reimbursement for a "1-year period".
• Van Drew Decided the Vote That Brought Up the Final Version, Then Voted for the Law, in July 2025. July 2, 2025: on H.Res. 566, the procedure for handling the Senate text, Van Drew's previous-question yes was part of a 214-to-212 result that his switch would have tied, killing it. The same day he also said yes, 220 to 212, to the Foxx amendment changing the rule. July 3: yes on the amended rule, 219 to 213, and yes, 218 to 214, on the concurrence vote that served as final passage. The president signed it as Public Law 119-21 the next day. Ten million more Americans will go uninsured by 2034 because of it, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, as KFF reports, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded that "The megabill cuts SNAP by $187 billion or about 20 percent by 2034."
• Van Drew Voted for a 2026 Resolution Calling the Law a Working-Family Tax Cut. Nine months after the law passed, on April 16, 2026, Van Drew added his yes to H.Res. 1156, adopted 219 to 207, whose text names the law the "Working Families Tax Cuts" and asserts it "will result in a 15 percent tax cut for Americans whose income is in the bottom 40 percent." The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy's 2026 numbers say otherwise for the bottom: "For the poorest fifth of Americans, the average tax change from OBBBA is a small tax increase," with the top 1 percent averaging tax cuts above $70,000.

What the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Costs New Jersey, Topic by Topic, After Jeff Van Drew's Votes

• New Jersey's Medicaid program loses $28.71 billion, 18% of its federal funding. That 18% cut, $28.71 billion over ten years in KFF's state split, comes out of the federal share of New Jersey's Medicaid program, which pays for hospital care, nursing homes and doctor visits. The votes behind it are on Jeff Van Drew's health care page.
• Van Drew's votes put $2.23 billion a year of New Jersey hospital funding over the new caps. KFF puts $2.23 billion in yearly federal payments for hospital services in New Jersey above the new ceiling on state-directed payments, with reductions starting January 1, 2028. Van Drew's health care page walks through the hospital limits.
• 300,000 more New Jersey residents will be uninsured in 2034. KFF's projection of 300,000 additional uninsured New Jersey residents in 2034 sits beside a national Congressional Budget Office finding that the richest tenth of households gain about $13,600 a year; how the tax side tilts is laid out on Van Drew's taxes and deficit page.
• One resident in five in Van Drew's district depends on the Medicaid his votes cut. One in five residents of New Jersey's 2nd District, 162,900 people, had Medicaid in 2025, 54,600 of them children; Van Drew's homelessness and poverty page covers what the law means for the district's poorest families.
• Tens of thousands of New Jersey adults and parents faced SNAP loss in CBPP's June 2025 estimate. Monthly, 22,000 New Jersey residents in their late 50s and early 60s and 26,000 parents of teenagers could be cut from SNAP, by a June 2025 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimate for the Senate Agriculture Committee's version of the new work rules, while the state now bears three-quarters of the program's administrative bill. Van Drew's food assistance page has his votes.
• 1.77 million New Jersey Medicare enrollees depend on a hospital fund the law drains sooner. Medicare's hospital trust fund, which serves 1,766,379 New Jersey enrollees, is now projected to run dry in 2033, a quarter sooner, and the law also strips Medicare from some lawfully present immigrants; Van Drew's Medicare page has both.
• Most New Jersey nursing-home residents rely on the Medicaid the law cuts and lose the federal minimum staffing standard. Across New Jersey's certified nursing facilities, Medicaid picks up the bill first for 61% of the 41,563 people living there, while under the law Washington may not enforce a nursing-home staffing minimum until 2034; Van Drew's elder care page explains.
• Van Drew's district has 16,900 Medicaid enrollees with disabilities, and the state's home care list is 3,683 long. Disability-based Medicaid enrollment in New Jersey's 2nd District stood at 16,900 in 2025, and the statewide wait list for Medicaid home care held 3,683 people in 2026. More is on Van Drew's disability rights page.
• The work rule reaches the coverage of nearly three in four New Jersey Medicaid adults with opioid addiction. Expansion coverage, the target of the work rule, held 38,235 of New Jersey's 52,243 Medicaid adults with an opioid use disorder diagnosis in 2021; Van Drew's mental health and addiction page covers the narrow exemptions.
• Three in ten children in Van Drew's district are kept from the full child tax credit. Three in ten children in New Jersey's 2nd District, 46,000, come from families whose earnings fall short of the full credit, in the Columbia poverty center's count. See Van Drew's child care and families page.
• New Jersey retirees face a $554 monthly cut when the retirement fund runs short. With $168.6 billion in new costs loaded onto Social Security through 2034, the average New Jersey retiree stands to lose $554 a month once the retirement fund is exhausted, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates; Van Drew's district alone had 196,863 beneficiaries at the end of 2024. Details are on his Social Security page.
• Leaving SAVE adds $2,827 a year to the average New Jersey borrower's payments. For the average New Jersey borrower, swapping SAVE for the Repayment Assistance Plan means $2,827 more each year, by Center for American Progress figures; Van Drew's student debt page has the votes.
• New Jersey veterans on SNAP who are working age and not disabled have lost their exemption from the three-month clock. New Jersey's SNAP households included 14,000 veterans on average from 2021 through 2023, and veterans are no longer exempt from the program's three-month clock; Van Drew's veterans page has the details.
• The law's energy repeals could add about $220 a year to New Jersey household energy bills by 2035. Energy Innovation, in a projection CNBC published, finds the law's energy provisions could add roughly $220 to the average New Jersey household's yearly energy costs by 2035.

Frequently Asked Questions About Jeff Van Drew on One Big Beautiful Bill

Last updated: 2026-10-27

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