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- [00:00]
A
Hey, guys, it's Andrew Egger with the Bulwark. I am here with our congressional reporter Joe Perdicone and our economics reporter Katherine Rampel to talk about some breaking news that we've gotten out of the Hill today and out of the White House on a piece of legislation, the 21st century road to Housing act, that had seemed weirdly not susceptible to all of the same normal Trump era forces of everything being locked down all the time and everything being ultra polarized all the time. And here we had this random housing bill that had of just been sailing in a bipartisan way, little fights here and there, but basically just functional legislative process all the way up to today when the President was supposed to sign the thing. And now, right at the very 11th hour, we have hit a big time snag, which is this tweet, this truth social post, I should say, from the President this morning, if we can throw it up there. Today's housing news conference and signing is hereby canceled until such time as we pass the desperately needed Save America act, which I consider to be a national emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT So, Joe, you're on the Hill right now. Nobody saw this coming. Can you just give us a little bit of, a little bit of scene setting for how this tweet landed among the Republicans who were gearing up to celebrate the signing of this big housing bill?
- [01:20]
B
Yeah, so no one did see this coming. I kind of walked through at the perfect time. I crossed the second floor of the Capitol where they were set to hold this big signing ceremony and in Statuary hall and they had all the chairs and they had the flags and the stage. And right when I'm walking through, there's a staffer going, does this look good? Like, does it look washed out on camera? They're ready to begin this thing as soon as Trump, you know, made his way across the city to the Capitol. And I cross through, I go down to the Senate basement and we find out that he's canceled it through Truth Social, which he loves to do. And right when that happens, it's right as a Senate vote starting to happen. So all of them start coming through so they learn from us that this thing is canceled. In addition to that, people had already started showing up. So you can chalk this up to bad staff work, not informing their boss that, you know, anything can happen when the President posts something on his social media account, which none of them actively use themselves. But. So Virginia Fox congresswoman, she showed up like, wait a minute. And a Reporter had to explain to her, this thing's not happening anymore. We can see her there now. And she's just like, mama, is this Wade? And they're. And they start breaking it down. In addition to that, Maxwell Frost, who's a Democrat, he showed up and started playing around on stage and sat at the desk and was kind of mocking the whole thing. The reason why this was hit them so hard is because they were like, here's our first, like easy bipartisan win that focuses on affordability, which Trump says is a made up word by Democrats, but which they really were like, we can sell this. We can say, look, we're doing something other than chaos. And Trump turns it into chaos. And so then I head back across to the other side of the Capitol where we're recording now. And already in like a 20 minute span, I see all the crew packing up the chairs, they're rolling everything out, and it's fully broken down. It's really impressive. I mean, it's like a Hollywood set getting their price topped and broken down in a minute. And because Trump is expected to be here, there was a massive police presence. So whenever he comes to the Capitol, they lock down certain areas so he can have smooth passage through. So there were all these police all over the Capitol and all of a sudden they just scattered and it went back to normal. And then all of a sudden, a bunch of Amish and Mennonite tourists in the Capitol were filling their spaces. Shout out to our Amish viewers right now.
- [04:00]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [04:02]
A
So I want to talk a little
- [04:03]
C
bit about the actual policy that's underway here in just a minute with Katherine.
- [04:06]
A
But before we do that, the other surreal element to all of this is that House Republicans were having a press conference. I don't know if they were already on the stage as the tweet went out, but they were up there in front of the cameras touting all the good stuff about this deal. Right.
- [04:20]
D
Can you.
- [04:21]
A
What was the story with this, Joe?
- [04:23]
B
So they were on a different stage. They were at the headquarters, which is across the street from the Capitol. So they were at the same time holding their weekly press conference where they're like, look what we're about to do, like, everybody celebrate. And they were doing it at the exact same time.
- [04:38]
A
So. So let's hit a couple of clips
- [04:40]
C
from this real quick.
- [04:40]
A
This is Representative French Hill talking up this very important bill full of, as he says, the President's own housing priorities,
- [04:48]
C
which the President has just keelhauled.
- [04:49]
D
So let's see him to let the process play out. Let's show the American people what legislating looks like. Let's show the American people how you bring together and do something on a bicameral basis. And we did that. And we did that in conjunction with President Trump and his priorities, which are reducing regulation, enhancing community banks. And one of his goals announced in the State of the Union was he doesn't want a mom and a dad trying to buy that first home to find out that they were outbid for cash by some institutional investor at some big company off in New York or somewhere.
- [05:26]
A
And then so they're having this press conference, then the news, maybe they, maybe
- [05:31]
C
they were previously told by staffers in the midst of this thing.
- [05:33]
A
Or maybe these, these lawmakers as well were hearing for the first time when
- [05:37]
C
they were asked some of these questions by reporters.
- [05:39]
A
But let's see, see Speaker Mike Johnson responding to the very late breaking news
- [05:45]
C
that the president is pulling the plug on this whole thing.
- [05:48]
E
In the process of this press conference, President Trump announced that he is canceling the bill signing for the housing bill that you all were just talking about. He said he's canceling it until the SAVE act is passed. And he called this housing bill was passed with such bipartisan support of minor importance and said it pales in comparison to the SAVE Act.
- [06:08]
F
What is your reaction?
- [06:09]
G
Yeah, my reaction is the truth of the matter. I spoke to the President for 20 minutes before I went in and gave that rousing speech to the House Republicans this morning. He and I have talked about this a lot. He has expressed his, the priority and the preference of the Save America Act. We share that. We passed it three times in the House. The latest version was passed a few months ago and it has proof of citizenship to register to vote and the proof of showing a photo ID when you show up to vote. Basic issues that we probably don't need
- [06:38]
C
to play this whole clip. He goes on in this vein for a long time, talking entirely about the Save America Act. Right. He basically says, look, we agree on the Save America Act. And then he does a lot of Trump flattery about how important that bill is.
- [06:48]
A
But, but this bill also was quite important. I mean, this is the big, other than the tax cuts, this is the big affordability type bill, as you mentioned, Joe, that they were planning on running on this, this, this fall. I mean, it passed with giant majorities
- [07:02]
C
in both houses, 358, 32 in the
- [07:04]
A
House, 85, 5 in the Senate. If Trump were to it, they could, they could overcome that with just the same margins again. So it's not like Trump is necessarily going to actually stop this thing from becoming law, but him threatening to do it in this way and him withholding his signature and throwing all this political wrench in keeps them from being able just to make the simple case to voters. Republicans care about affordability. And Republicans passed this bill to help you out with that. I mean, it's just sort of shocking on, on the political merits there. Now, Catherine, sorry to take so long before coming to you, but we should talk about what's in the actual bill here because this is, I mean, it's a big bill. It's a kind of a grab bag of housing policies. But a lot of people from a lot of different camps had seen this as having a lot of good stuff
- [07:48]
C
to address America's current housing crunch.
- [07:51]
F
Yes. And as you point out, there was a lot to like if you are sort of an old school deregulatory favoring Republican, in addition to the sort of more symbolic wins here, if you are trying to tell voters you care about affordability. So there's a lot in this bill that that is supposed to cut back on red tape that make it harder for someone to buy a home. So just to give you some examples, faster environmental reviews for housing. So I think one example that I heard when I was talking with an expert about this was that if there are two projects that have both gotten an environmental review and they've been built and then there's a development in between them that is in process, they don't have that. That developer does not actually have to go through the same rigmarole because they can sort of like piggyback on the review and the regulatory gantlet that has already been gone through. There are incentives to build more housing supply side measures intended to encourage local governments and developers to build more home homes. That's the kind of thing that there's a contingent of the Democratic Party, you know, the sort of abundance movement, if you will, that is in favor of this. But also a lot of Republicans who are in favor of working with developers, of being pro business, et cetera, in furtherance of making housing less expensive. There are reforms for building more manufactured homes, which is kind of a corner of the housing market that has probably not gotten sufficient public attention. But that I think holds great promise at the very least in again, getting more homes built Upstate's financing rules to make manufactured homes easier to build and finance, that sort of thing. I think in the press conference clip that you played a moment ago, there's some language about Making it easier for community banks to do mortgage lending, updates to other federal housing programs, zoning regulatory reforms. There are also some measures to restrict so called institutional investment in homes. I think the cap in the final bill was something like no more than 350 homes can be owned by a single investor or by, by a, you know, one of these big corporate investors going forward. Yes.
- [10:16]
A
Can I just cut you off real
- [10:17]
C
quick to say that that particular provision that you mentioned is the single one that was a big priority for Trump to have in this bill.
- [10:24]
A
All this other stuff, House Republicans, House or Senate Democrats, there were different groups
- [10:29]
C
that were all getting each of those other things you mentioned in.
- [10:31]
A
But for Trump and for some of
- [10:32]
C
the other populists like Senator Elizabeth Warren, this institutional investor ban was a huge part of what they wanted to achieve politically. So sorry, go ahead.
- [10:40]
F
Yeah. And I will add, it is largely performative. The reason why housing is expensive is not because there are a bunch of big corporate oligarchs that are conspiring to keep people from buying homes or living in homes or what have you. It's actually a very tiny fraction of the housing market, the single family housing market in particular nationwide. It's a very easy scapegoat because who doesn't want to, you know, shake their fist at Wall street homeowners? But it's a very small piece of the market and there's little evidence that it's making any difference actually in pushing up housing costs, particularly since on net these kinds of investors are actually getting out of the market. Like they're, they have fewer homes today than they did a few years ago. But whatever, this is a performative thing. It's symbolic if if nothing else. And the worst parts of the legislation that were in this or the worst parts of the institutional investor policy, which were about like requiring new developments that were supposed to be rental developments to be sold within seven years to individual homeowners, which was going to disincentivize a lot of new building that's out of this bill. So, you know, the stuff that's, I don't want to say it's toothless, but it's less damaging at the very least is still in there. But as you point out, like, you know, good messaging. Everybody gets to the populists on both left and right, both get to rail against the Wall street elite and that's useful messaging to them. In addition to the ability to talk about affordability writ large, you have a villain that you can blame for making things unaffordable. And you are the savior of the common man who is having actual difficulty being able to buy a home. So that's what was supposed to be in all of this. I don't know that it would have been like a magic bullet, to be clear, for homeownership, particularly in the very, very near term. But on the margin, it definitely, the overall bill would have been helpful. It's not just, you know, sloganeering. It would actually have been helpful in getting more housing supply built and therefore making it more accessible to Americans who are currently locked out of the market.
- [12:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, would have been helpful. Is true. Would be helpful, may still be true. Because again, we don't know whether Trump's
- [13:02]
C
throwing up this roadblock here will actually prevent this thing from becoming law. That sort of remains to be seen.
- [13:06]
A
He would have to bring a lot
- [13:07]
C
of Republicans with him in his defection from this, it seems, if he were to veto it and then, you know, argue aggressively that nobody should pass it. So we'll see what's going to happen there.
- [13:16]
A
So this, this bill, I already mentioned
- [13:19]
C
how it's been sort of strange to
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A
watch it because it's just functioned as
- [13:23]
C
sort of a legislative sausage making process
- [13:25]
A
and it has gotten better throughout that process. As you mentioned, Catherine, some of the actually.