Time to say so long to Rodney.

Career politician U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) is in his 12th term representing a solidly Republican district comprising five Sussex County towns—Byram, Hopatcong, Ogdensburg, Stanhope and Sparta—and Morris County, which has the highest concentration of Republicans in the state. He has risen to the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, arguably one of the most powerful offices in the nation.

Like a junior varsity football team that finally made a first down, giddy GOP members of Congress held a beer bash Thursday to celebrate House passage of a bill that gives hundreds of millions of tax breaks to the very wealthy and pharmaceutical companies while stripping low- and middle-income, elderly and/or non-healthy people of affordable access to health care, all without holding hearings or researching its effects. Passage in the House is the first step in enacting a new law, but doesn’t guarantee its passage, something you wouldn’t have guessed from watching the hilarity that ensured after Thursday’s vote.

The Republicans in power are insisting that their epic failure to destroy the Affordable Care Act (which they’d been promising to do the instant they got in charge) and replace it with the tax-cuts-for-the-rich bill Donald Trump apparently thought was “really terrific” on Democrats. They just wouldn’t support it (well, they got that part right.)

U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) whose district includes the Sussex County municipalities of Byram, Hopatcong, Ogdensburg, Sparta and Stanhope, said Friday he would vote “no” on the administration’s “replacement” for the Affordable Care Act. Frelinghuysen is the new chairman of the power House Appropriations Committee.

Thanks to Republican administrations in Trenton and in Washington, the New Jersey administration that will replace Chris Christie will be facing giant problems in the provision of healthcare to the state’s low- and middle-income residents.

We’ve lost track of the number of times the Rodney Frelinghuysen and Scott Garret joined their fellow GOP members of congress in a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This time the bill to repeal the ACA made it to the President’s desk.