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Tonight on NJ Spotlight News, the big, beautiful spending bill goes for a vote in the U.S. House today after barely squeaking by in the Senate.

How will the New Jersey delegation vote?

There are House members in this state that plan on voting for a bill that's going to hurt New Jersey hospitals, that's going to cut New Jersey jobs, that's going to increase New Jersey expenses.

Plus, here in New Jersey, the leading Republican budget officer weighs in after the nearly $59 billion state spending bill is signed by the governor.

They're setting us up for a real mess on all of these levels that they can then try to blame on President Trump.

Also, breaking ground on a multi-billion dollar hospital expansion finally begins after 50 years in the making.

What we're standing in front of today, these blue buildings, were supposed to be temporary buildings.

So it is a huge step and a promise to the community to have these buildings come down and be the start of a huge campus revision.

And hoop dreams, not one but two of Rutgers players are selected in the top five of the NBA draft.

It helps when you say these two kids' names, it opens doors.

Hopefully now we can talk guys into, you know, if you want to be a lottery pick, you can come to Rutgers.

NJ Spotlight News begins right now.

♪ ♪ From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vanozzi.

Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Wednesday night.

I'm Brianna Vanozzi.

We begin with a few of today's top stories starting with the first poll in the governor's race.

It shows Democrat Mikey Sherrill with a big early lead over Republican Jack Cittarelli.

The Rutgers-Eagleton poll puts Sherrill ahead by 20% but also finds the vote could come down to one key factor, President Donald Trump.

More than half of voters, 52%, say the president weighs heavily in how they'll vote this November.

That number jumps even higher among likely Sherrill supporters.

According to the poll, Sherrill is seen as the more moderate and trustworthy candidate on a lot of the state's top issues but not all.

When it comes to taxes, New Jersey's top concern, the gap narrows.

39% say they trust Sherrill while 34% say Cittarelli.

But on the next key big issue, the cost of living and affordability, Sherrill pulls ahead.

45% of voters say they trust her to handle rising costs compared to 29% who say the same about Cittarelli.

But as poll director Ashley Koning points out, this poll is a baseline on how voters feel, not a crystal ball.

And a lot can happen between now and November.

Also tonight, a deeply divided Congress is in the process of voting on President Trump's sweeping tax and spending cuts package, otherwise known as the big beautiful bill.

After Senate Republicans just narrowly approved the bill on Tuesday in a 51 to 50 vote where Vice President J.D.

Vance served as the tiebreaker.

President Trump today turned up the pressure on GOP holdouts reportedly holding personal meetings with House members to convince them to back the bill before the July 4th deadline that's been set.

Some hardline Republicans had threatened to block the President's agenda from making it to the floor for a vote over concerns about changes made to the bill in the Senate, particularly how much it increases the federal deficit and certain Medicaid provisions that differ from the House-passed version of the bill.

Now the new version cuts more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and $285 billion from SNAP, that's the National Food Aid Program.

Under the House bill, New Jersey stood to lose more than $3.5 billion annually from Medicaid.

That's about a quarter of what the state expected to receive, meaning at least 360,000 state residents would lose coverage.

House Republicans can only afford to lose three votes to get this bill passed.

Senator Cory Booker today condemned his colleagues for supporting the package.

This bill is the biggest wealth transfer in American history.

From the lowest income earners, the bottom 20% of hardworking Americans that do some of the jobs we're seeing around us right now.

It will take money from them, increase their costs, increase their health care burdens, and transfer that money to the top 20% of earners who have made more money in the last two decades than ever before in American history.

And New Jersey is facing more federal funding uncertainty beyond the mega bill.

The Trump administration has put billions of federal K-12 funding on hold after the money was expected to be released July 1st.

It helps pay for after-school and summer programs, teacher training, and support for students learning English.

In an email on Monday, the federal Department of Education notified states that more than $6 billion in funding wouldn't be available and offered little explanation or timeline.

Other than that, the money is under review to ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent in ways that align with the president's priorities.

According to the nonprofit Learning Policy Institute, which does education research at the national level, New Jersey's portion of withheld funding is more than $143 million.

Members of the State Board of Education today acknowledged that the money is being reviewed and said New Jersey's Department of Ed is monitoring the issue, but didn't go so far as to comment on how this will affect districts in the short and long term.

Meanwhile, some New Jersey lawmakers say the new state budget doesn't do nearly enough to prepare for the cuts coming from Washington.

Republican Budget Officer Declan O'Scanlan has been among the most vocal to that end, criticizing Democrats for hundreds of millions in last-minute add-on spending he says could have been used to pad social safety net programs like Medicaid.

And for the overall size of the budget, at $58.8 billion, it's the largest in state history, 4% higher than last year's and nearly 60% higher than Governor Murphy's first budget proposal when he got into office.

But O'Scanlan and others are also calling out the process, which they say lacked transparency both for Republicans and taxpayers.

Senator Declan O'Scanlan joins me now as part of our Under the Dome series.

Senator, thanks for coming on the show.

I know you have a lot of concerns with this budget, but what I thought was striking was that on Monday, you proposed legislation to this budget bill that would help account for what we anticipate will be a lot of cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid.

And that was voted down.

It's striking, I think, to see a Republican take a stand on that.

What's your fear here?

Well, look, my fear is the overarching mess that this budget is that the governor won't acknowledge and the legislative leadership won't acknowledge.

They are still out there with the fantastic contention that we only have a $1.7 billion structural deficit when it's over $4 billion.

That's my biggest fear.

Regarding Medicaid, it's twofold.

We may see some Medicaid cuts.

Now, we won't see anything on the scale that the Democrats are suggesting, certainly not in 2026.

We've already seen Medicaid cuts trimmed down in the federal bill.

So we have to wait and see what the real impact is.

But preparing for that potentiality is just smart and reasonable and responsible budgeting.

Not only did they not accept our amendment to deal with any potential cuts, they've anticipated a 12 percent increase in Medicaid payments in this budget.

Which we all know ain't going to happen.

So they are talking out of both sides of their mouths.

They're setting us up for a real mess on all of these levels that they can then try to blame on President Trump, which I will be here to remind everyone that that's B.S.

It's just not true.

I mean, the governor, Senator Sarlo, others obviously, you know, were quick to point out that they are making a fifth full payment into the pension system.

They're fully funding.

I'm sorry.

The school funding formula.

Yeah, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I'm interrupting you, but it's really frustrating to me.

They have to make the pension payment.

It's the law.

It was agreed to under Chris Christie.

Although Christie didn't, but yeah, go on.

No, no, no.

Let me correct you.

Christie, for one blip, followed the ramping up of the payments that we all agreed to.

There was one blip where he didn't because we had a dramatic revenue shortfall.

Other than that, this administration followed, accelerated by a half a year, I think, fully funding the pension payment, the pension system.

But we have to.

It's an obligation.

It's nothing to brag about.

It's oh, my God, give us credit because we're not being wildly irresponsible.

Also, by the way, it was easy to make the full pension payment.

We had $22 billion of federal largesse that was injected into this, our budgeting over the past seven years, six years, can I have years?

Much of it we didn't need, by the way.

Much of it is federal debt that we'll be paying off, our grandchildren will be paying off for a long time.

But don't brag about these things that were easy or an obligation financially and in the law.

The fully funding the school funding formula, one of the single most irresponsible things for any administration to do, fully funding an unsustainable, unfair, outdated school funding formula, slavishly adhering to it and committing their ex-governor to it is outrageous.

We should have reformed the school funding formula.

And rather than increase our school funding by 50 percent, mostly to a handful of schools, by the way, over half the school districts either got cuts or didn't keep up with inflation.

So, so, again, completely and wildly irresponsible and will be part of what creates the $4 billion structural deficit that we have to face.

And it's going to be a disaster.

And it will be this governor's fault and legislative leadership's fault.

Let me ask you about two of the points that you touched on there, one being the revenue projections.

Are they realistic based on the numbers that you've looked at, based on what OLS has put out, what was prepared for lawmakers?

And what are you concerned about in terms of budget holes that the next governor and you as a lawmaker will need to deal with?

And obviously, I'm thinking about that structural deficit, but also some of these programs like Stay NJ and whether or not they're sustainable.

Well, those two things overlap.

So, first off, the revenue projections are, you know, probably fudged a little bit.

That's not where we're going to have the dramatic problem.

The dramatic problem is the second question.

It's the obligations that we are going to face in this next budget and the next years.

And I don't see an end to it, actually.

And things that we could have solved during this past eight years had we done any reforms or any restraint, you know, or even half the recommendations that Republicans put on the table, we'd be in much better shape.

But the structural deficit is a dramatic problem.

Stay New Jersey is part of that $4 billion, by the way, which Democrats are committing they're going to pay for.

Republicans would love to do that.

It'll be high on our priority list.

I don't think it will be high on Democrats' priority list.

I think next year we'll be here talking about the Democrat legislature wanting to cut Stay NJ.

But the structural deficit is a problem.

We have $1.7 billion, which Democrats admit to spending down the surplus.

We've raided the debt to fees and fund to the point where there's no money left.

We spent down all the federal money in this last budget of this governor's budget.

I mentioned Stay New Jersey.

There's a whole there's another half a billion one shots that won't be there going forward.

And let me ask you just quickly how you see this positioning the state overall heading into the next year.

And what looming risks are we not addressing?

We're not addressed in this budget.

Well, again, we have energy infrastructure.

We have things that we've neglected over this past four years.

School construction funding.

Eventually you're going to have to put more money into school construction funding because it's impossible to do at the local level.

So that is at zero.

You're going to have to face these things.

And and that is on top of the four billion structural deficit that I've already outlined.

It is again, this will be done.

The Murphy administration will be known as the administration of lost opportunities because it's true.

And because I'm going to be here to tell everyone over and over again about these missed opportunities.

And then we're going to hopefully be working with the Chinerelli administration to try to fix these things.

The problem is it's going to be much harder on the next administration than it would have been on this one.

We missed golden once in a lifetime opportunities that with the breathing room that the federal twenty two billion dollars gave us.

And the school funding formula, because it had not yet been fully implemented, we could have bent the curve on that.

We could have done work with labor to implement health benefits reforms that they themselves want that would lower their premiums.

That's another area.

Our health benefit system is in a death spiral.

People all acknowledge that.

We're looking at more massive increases on public workers health benefits.

It's it's a mess.

And right now, the governor and legislative leadership are patting themselves on the back.

They're leaving a giant steaming pile of deficit and a ticking time bomb in the lap of the next governor and the next legislature.

Thanks for using the word deficit and not one that we can air.

Republican Budget Chair Declan O'Scanlan, thanks so much for your time.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Under the Dome is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

It's been a long time coming, but University Hospital in Newark will finally get the campus it was always promised.

Hospital execs this week launched phase one of a massive, multi-stage, multi-year construction plan to expand and modernize New Jersey's only public hospital, which includes fully combining the spaces used by Rutgers Health and University Hospital to turn a 50 year dream into reality.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagas reports.

What we're standing in front of today, these blue buildings were supposed to be temporary buildings.

So it is a huge step and a promise to the community to have these buildings come down and be the start of a huge campus revision.

A campus revision that University Hospital interim president and CEO Caitlin Bastin says is 50 years in the making.

That's how long ago these temporary trailers were built, always with the intention of replacing them with something better.

And this week, the hospital started work on that something better.

These buildings are a combination of University Hospital staff and Rutgers University staff.

People have been working in these temporary buildings for years.

As they come down, we'll have a new building where they can work and collaborate, parking for the for the staff, and then also some clinical space in that first phase.

That building will be on this campus where these buildings are here.

Also included in the first phase of the project will be a major clinical outpatient office building that will include modern ambulatory and multi specialty care, which the former health commissioner says the community has been asking for for years.

So it is primary care.

It's also the specialist you might need to see.

The primary care doctor wants you to see a cardiologist or gastroenterologist or dermatologist.

We really think about what the needs are.

And a big part of this is making sure that we're meeting the needs of the community and of our academic clinicians.

As part of the renovation, Rutgers University is turning over buildings they own on the property to University Hospital to continue and strengthen the existing partnership between the two and improve the space for both, says Chancellor Brian Strom.

From our perspective, it's much better for our docs and our staff and our people to have University Hospital be as good as possible.

It's better for our docs because they can give state of the art care in a way that they otherwise couldn't.

It's better for our patients because we can provide state of the art care in much nicer facilities than they otherwise had.

And it's better for our students because it'll attract better, better faculty, the patients are happier.

It's a nicer place to work.

It's sort of, you know, better all along.

Republican Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz has championed these renovations for years and says it's time the state invests in its only public hospital, both to meet the needs of the community and to demonstrate that the state sees its value as the only level one trauma center in North Jersey.

You want our public facility to be state of the art.

The other hospitals look great and it helps attract patients, the insured, and also serve the needs of the under and uninsured, because what we want to see is that the best doctors in the state are there.

The best staff are there, but we want the facility to match the faculty, to match the employees, so that that will attract those in the surrounding communities to say, we know we have a good facility here.

Let's get our patients in here from around the entire region.

The first phase of this expansion is estimated to cost $335 million coming from some state funding, but mostly from federal American Rescue Plan dollars, which have to be spent by December 2026.

Bastin says they will meet that deadline.

University Hospital is also in the final phase of expanding its emergency department on the main campus, a separate project that's been critical to meet its urgent care demands.

We saw during COVID, we need single patient rooms.

We don't need four bedded rooms where, you know, infections move back and forth between different patients.

So all of this, we need to modernize it because it's important for the people across New Jersey, particularly in the northern part of the state.

And the second phase of the renovation project will be a total upgrade to the hospital's main campus.

As we do this plan, it's going to take a few years for these buildings and the whole new hospital campus to be built.

And so we're going to consistently be looking at how to right size that, what the community needs are at that time, and how to make sure we're staffing and growing appropriately.

If all goes according to plan, the timing for the completion of phase one is the end of 2027.

Phase two is still uncertain as of now.

In Newark, I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News.

And finally, the NBA now has not one, but two new players from Rutgers University.

Scarlet Knights standouts Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey became the two highest draft picks in Rutgers basketball history, cementing their spots during last week's NBA selection.

As Ted Goldberg reports, they'll be taking their talents to the San Antonio Spurs and Utah Jazz.

But the two young players are Scarlet Knights for life.

It's been a busy week for former Rutgers standouts Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey.

Everything's kind of a blur.

The ex-Scarlet Knights are taking their talents to San Antonio and Utah, thrilled to be the only top five picks in Rutgers history.

Just seeing your name on an NBA jersey for the first time is probably one of the best feelings besides from getting your name called.

So just seeing my name on a jersey, that number two, and just seeing that on a Spurs jersey was amazing.

They called my name, I was selected.

It was very emotional.

The time when my mom, I mean, she's crying, the whole table crying.

Because they know the hard work and the sacrifices we made for me to be in this position.

Not just me, but my family also.

Bailey will suit up for the Jazz after they nabbed him at fifth overall.

He'd be the highest drafted Rutgers player ever, if not for Harper, who went second to the Spurs.

Both players are confident they'll make an instant impact in the NBA.

I think my confidence and all that comes from all the work I put in.

I feel like I'm one of the hardest working people out.

I just know how much work I put in, but at the same time, I mean, you still got to be humble because, just how quick you get everything, I mean, everything can go away.

So just having that mentality and that mindset, just being humble and just not thinking you're better than anyone else.

I got great energy.

I mean, I can do everything from rebounding, from defense to scoring, to passing.

So I can say I can bring it a lot in different ways.

At Don Bosco, Harper became one of the top high school recruits in the country.

Before following his brother, Ron Harper Jr., who played four years at Rutgers himself, Bailey grew up in the South.

While he also played well at Rutgers, he raised eyebrows ahead of the draft by choosing not to work out for any teams.

I trust my work.

I mean, I've got countless hours in the gym, I mean, everything that I do.

So I trust that.

I mean, everybody made mistakes.

God didn't put us here to be perfect.

So just trust myself and just trust my process.

Bailey denied reports that he didn't want to be drafted by Utah.

As for Harper, he'd like to be the third straight Spurs player to win Rookie of the Year.

I don't think I feel no pressure, but I definitely want to keep that going.

That's definitely a goal of mine, but I mean, probably my biggest goal is just getting better every day and just taking it day by day, step by step, and just learning from everyone I can.

These kids have been through a lot of obstacles, and they stayed the course.

Steve Peichel coached Harper and Bailey last year and spoke after the draft last Wednesday.

To see kids have their dreams come true at 18 years old, you know, the sweat that they put in, I saw that.

I was at the 6 a.m. workouts.

He says their success is also success for Rutgers, at least in terms of recruiting players who also want to be high draft picks in the NBA.

Trust me, it helps when you say these two kids' names.

It opens doors.

Hopefully now we can talk guys into, you know, if you want to be a lottery pick, you can come to Rutgers.

You know, it's happened to two guys.

Harper and Bailey both put up nice numbers for the Knights last year, though the team missed the NCAA tournament and lost more games than it won.

Harper's focus is now helping the Spurs get another title, adding to the five banners already hanging up in their rafters.

Growing up, we were like, these are one of the teams you always want to play for, so just seeing their dynasty and just keep wanting to build on them banners like you just said and want to add a few more.

So, I mean, it's definitely been great and I've been having a great time.

For me, just wanting to come in and just whatever coach asked me to do and whatever is the best for the team, I'm going to go out there and do.

Eagle-eyed beachgoers might have noticed these planes down the shore last weekend, wishing Harper and Bailey good luck.

They've got about four months until the NBA season starts, plenty of time to adjust to the big time from the Big Ten.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Ted Goldberg.

That's going to do it for us tonight, but a quick reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

I'm Brianna Vannosi.

For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thank you for being with us.

Have a great night.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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