Metro-east congresswoman looks back on a challenging 1st year. What did she accomplish?

U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski went into her freshman term representing Belleville, East St. Louis and much of the metro-east in 2023 with a long list of goals. How close has she come to achieving them?

She recently sat down with the Belleville News-Democrat to discuss her first year during the tumultuous 118th Congress.

Budzinski, D-Springfield, started to chip away at some of her goals for the 13th Congressional District, which stretches from southwestern to central Illinois. But in many cases, she said she wasn’t able to advance the legislation she wanted to because of “political chaos” caused by Republicans, who control the House.

One piece of legislation that Budzinski sponsored or cosponsored in 2023 was signed into law: a bill to make a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps, which the congresswoman acknowledged wasn’t the highest priority for her or her constituents. She introduced nine bills covering workers, infrastructure and rural issues, none of which made it to the House floor for a vote.

Altogether, Congress passed just 34 bills in 2023, a historically low amount. And the two chambers are still debating full-year spending bills for the fiscal year that began in October.

“Their inability to lead to get us to a budget has prevented us from getting floor time for a lot of other really important issues,” Budzinski said of the Republican leadership.

Republicans have been struggling with a thin majority and disagreement within their party, according to Laurie Rice, a political science professor in Budzinski’s district at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

“The narrower your majority, especially when there’s partisan polarization, the harder it is to pass legislation,” Rice said of the current challenge for the House.

Division among Republicans was on display in October when GOP leadership was in turmoil and work halted for weeks. The House speaker was removed for the first time in history. Republicans eventually elected U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson from Louisiana, their fourth candidate for the job.

While Budzinski wasn’t able to get bills passed, she said she spent her first year in Congress advocating for the 13th District to get federal resources and preparing legislation.

Here’s a look at what Budzinski said she has done to work toward her goals for the district:

Advocating for a community exposed to sewage

Budzinski said one of her top priorities is advocating for Cahokia Heights residents and ensuring the community receives resources to address longstanding infrastructure issues that cause sewage to flood into homes.

In response to BND reporting last year, Budzinski, along with U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate how decades of exposure to sewage-contaminated floodwater has affected residents’ health.

Hazardous Homes, a special report the BND published in November, revealed local and state health agencies failed to provide essential health services: The East Side Health District and Illinois Department of Public Health didn’t investigate the possible health effects or fully inform citizens of the risks they face.

The CDC has said it is reviewing the request from lawmakers. Budzinski says she plans to keep advocating to make sure it happens.

“I feel like this is one of the more important parts of my job since getting here in this first year is not taking no for an answer or a lack of an answer as the answer when I’m advocating for the communities in central and southern Illinois,” Budzinski said. “I see it as my top job to continue to advocate until we get to yes.”

Also in 2023, Beth Murphy, of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was given the job of coordinating the response and various funding from all levels of government toward the issues in Cahokia Heights after Budzinski requested it.

Murphy has started working to understand the current projects and the community’s needs, including residents’ health concerns, and to identify where gaps might exist, according to the EPA.

The coordinator and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined the Corps needed a bigger federal investment to work on improving stormwater management in the community, Budzinski said. The congresswoman asked for an additional $100 million to be allocated in the Water Resources Development Act, which hasn’t been approved yet.

Budzinski also helped advocate for EPA grants that funded air quality monitoring and replacing some existing school buses with zero-emission and low-emission models to address concerns about air pollution in the Cahokia Heights area.

Proposals for workers, infrastructure and rural issues

These are some other proposals Budzinski said she put forward or supported in 2023:

• Affordable Insulin Now Act that would cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for all patients.

• LEAP Act that would give tax credits to small businesses when they hire apprenticeship employees.

• Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities Act that would make funding available for young and beginner farmers to purchase land.

• Trauma Support and Mental Health in Schools Reauthorization Act of 2023 that would increase funding for school and campus based mental health services.

• Rural America Health Corps Act of 2023 that would relieve student loan debt for health care professionals who work in rural areas with worker shortages for five years.

• Tools Tax Deduction Act that would allow apprenticeship employees and construction workers to write off expenses for tools and equipment required for their jobs.

• America Grows Act of 2023 that would increase funding for agricultural research.

• Veterans in STEM Expansion Act that would make college scholarships more accessible to veterans.

• Farm to Fly Act that would speed up development of sustainable aviation fuel from biofuels. Budzinski also advocated with Republican colleagues Mike Bost and Mary Miller from the 12th and 15th Districts of Illinois that the White House offer an ethanol blend gas year-round to support corn and soybean farmers and lower gas prices for consumers.

• Fair Warning Act of 2023 that would strengthen advance layoff notice requirements. Budzinski said her support stemmed from Granite City Works employees’ experiences with last-minute notices of layoffs.

• Grocery, Farm and Food Worker Stabilization Act that would allow Congress to cover disaster-related costs for farm, grocery and meatpacking workers to prevent supply disruptions.

Few federal bills pass in 2023

At SIUE, Rice and her students analyze data on the number of laws enacted to judge Congress’ productivity. They’ve seen a drop over time.

Former metro-east congressman John Shimkus, a Republican, and the two Republicans hoping to unseat Budzinski in the general election, Thomas Clatterbuck and Joshua Loyd, pushed back on the number of bills passed as the best measure of success for Congress.

Each of them said lawmaking should be measured in quality rather than quantity. Even by that measure, Congress isn’t very successful right now, Shimkus said.

Members of Congress haven’t agreed on crucial spending bills. They passed their third stopgap measure in January to keep the government running at least until March, their 35th bill to become law.

Loyd said the low number of legislation enacted is actually the result of more careful assessments of the bills and resolutions coming forward.

Clatterbuck thinks Congress hasn’t gotten much done because it has given up “huge amounts of its lawmaking authority to administrative agencies, executive orders, and judicial holdings.”

Clatterbuck and Loyd will be on Republican ballots for the 13th District primary on March 19. Budzinski doesn’t have a Democratic challenger in the primary.

How can Congress move forward?

Republican leadership could try to work across the aisle with Democrats to pass legislation with a moderate coalition, like they have with the stopgap spending bills. But Rice said that leads to revolt from the party’s far-right members.

Shimkus said he respects that far-right representatives are fighting for what they want rather than taking orders on how to vote in smoke-filled rooms, but he thinks they should consider that some compromise could further their agendas.

“I’m an old Reagan Republican. Ronald Reagan would say, ‘Work to get 80% of a deal and go back next time and try to get the other 20,’” Shimkus said. But he notes in many districts, their voters want them to hold out for 100%.

Rice added that voters, donors and partisan media outlets often reward politicians for their lack of bipartisanship with attention and popularity. “To try to win support within the party, to try to be more popular, to try to get voters’ attention on these sources, you can’t work across party lines,” Rice said.

Shimkus, who served in Congress for 24 years, thinks gerrymandering districts to clearly favor one party or the other has deepened divisions within parties. He represented Illinois’ 15th Congressional District until he decided not to seek re-election in 2020. U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Oakland, replaced him.

“When you minimize moderate voices, then the louder voices on the far left or far right, they are what drives policy,” Shimkus said.

Illinois’ gerrymandered congressional map carves up O’Fallon. Few people seem to care.

Loyd thinks Republicans need to meet to assess and plan their goals to alleviate disputes about priorities on the House floor.

Budzinski, on the other hand, thinks the solution to get more done in the future is getting new leadership in the House. She is calling on voters to elect more Democrats in the 2024 election so the party can take over as the majority in the House.

A spokesperson for Speaker Johnson’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

During her 2022 campaign for office, Budzinski emphasized bipartisanship. When asked if reaching out to Republican colleagues was no longer working, Budzinski said she would continue looking for common ground, but they don’t see eye to eye on some issues.

“I think there are a number of issues where I can work with someone who’s Republican on an agricultural issue, but I might not agree with them on, for example, women’s reproductive health care,” Budzinski said.

“And it’s OK to agree to disagree,” she added, “But I think that the voters of the 13th District sent me to Congress to find the places where we do agree and that’s been a real priority.”

Budzinski said she needs “the will and the leadership in the House” to make some of her other goals realities, like raising the federal minimum wage and implementing mandatory paid sick and medical leave and federal protections for abortions.