Congress Passed the Biggest Housing Bill in Decades. Trump Won't Sign It Until the Senate Passes a Voting Law.

Congress sent President Trump the largest housing bill in decades this week. As of Friday it was sitting on his desk, unsigned, because he canceled the signing and tied it to an unrelated voting bill that the Senate has not passed.

The legislation is the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, H.R. 6644. The Senate passed it 85-5 on Monday, June 22, and the House passed it 358-32 on Tuesday, June 23, according to the congressional vote records. Both votes drew wide support from members of both parties. Every lawmaker who voted no was a Republican.

Trump was scheduled to sign it at a noon ceremony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. He called the event off hours beforehand. In a post on Truth Social, he wrote that "Today's Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency." The SAVE America Act is a separate Republican elections measure. It is not part of the housing bill.

As of Thursday it was not clear whether Trump still intended to sign the housing bill or veto it, ABC News and Axios reported.

What the housing bill does

The bill is a collection of provisions aimed at increasing housing supply and lowering the cost of building. It does not appropriate new federal money for construction. Its main parts, as described by NPR and the Senate Banking Committee:

• A limit on large corporate investors. A firm that already owns at least 350 single-family homes would be barred from buying more.
• A faster path through federal regulation. Builders could skip a fresh environmental review when a project goes up between two buildings that already cleared one.
• A grant program for local "pattern books" of preapproved housing designs, meant to cut the number of approvals a builder needs to meet code.
• Removal of the rule that manufactured homes carry a permanent chassis, the steel frame that lets them be moved. Kate Wood, a lending expert at NerdWallet, told NPR that dropping the requirement could cut $5,000 to $10,000 from the cost of those homes.
• Federal incentives that reward local governments that build more housing.

The bill's backers point to a supply gap. Realtor.com estimated the country was short more than four million housing units last year. Redfin estimated a household needs about $117,000 in income to afford the typical home on the market, roughly $30,000 more than most U.S. households earn.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and a co-sponsor, told NPR that "every time every member of Congress goes back home they hear how urgent it is to bring down home prices. And that's what the bill does." Sen. Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican who chairs the Banking Committee and sponsored the measure, said on the Senate floor that local governments that fail to build should lose federal incentives: "If you don't build more housing, you should lose those incentives. And they should go to the places where you're building more housing."

The corporate-investor ban was among the most contested pieces. Supporters cast it as a check on landlords who outbid families with cash. Critics said it could reduce supply. The Urban Institute estimated that institutional investors hold about 3 percent of the single-family rental market nationally.

The five senators who voted no

All five senators who opposed the bill were Republicans: Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rick Scott of Florida, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, according to the Senate roll call reported by Time and Newsweek.

Their stated objections varied. Lee argued the bill would not meaningfully improve affordability. Paul objected to the restrictions on institutional investors on property-rights grounds. Rick Scott said he had "offered an Amendment to make sure Congress gets an annual report on how this bill directly impacts housing affordability for middle income homeowners" but "never got the chance to bring it up." Thirty-two House Republicans also voted against it.

What the SAVE America Act would do

The bill Trump is demanding in exchange is the SAVE America Act, a Republican elections measure. It would require people to show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate, or REAL ID, to register to vote in federal elections, and it would add a photo ID requirement to cast a ballot. The bill would require most registrations to happen in person and would direct states to identify and remove noncitizens from voter rolls.

The House passed an earlier version of the measure. The Senate has not passed it. Republicans hold a majority but are short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster, and the bill has no Democratic support, NBC News reported. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal and, studies have found, rare.

The standoff hardened on Thursday

Senate Republican leaders said again this week that they do not have the votes for the SAVE America Act. Trump has pressed Majority Leader John Thune to find them, or to change the Senate's rules so the bill could pass with a simple majority. Thune, a South Dakota Republican, has said Republicans will not do that. "We've made the point a number of times, as you know, that we don't have the votes," Thune said Wednesday, according to CBS News. "But that's not a conclusion obviously he would like to see us draw."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, told CBS News the president was obstructing his own agenda. "If he chooses to hold up his own agenda because he wants action on the SAVE Act, that's, I guess, his call. It is not helpful to him," she said. "If you don't have the votes, sir, you don't have the votes."

The fight has stalled the House floor. A group of conservatives led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has refused to advance other legislation until the Senate acts, CBS News reported. Procedural votes in the House pass on party lines, and with a narrow majority, Republican leaders need nearly all of their members to move bills. "I don't want to vote on anything else until this is passed," Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina said Thursday, per CBS News. "I'm not voting for anything."

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump met for several hours at the White House on Thursday. Johnson said afterward that the two were "on exactly the same page" and that Trump wanted House Republicans to stop blocking floor action. Johnson has said the most workable path for the elections bill is attaching it to a third budget reconciliation measure, which would need only a simple majority in the Senate. Asked Wednesday whether he would accept SAVE Act provisions in a reconciliation bill, Trump said, "Not really, no," CBS News reported. Luna and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas have said reconciliation cannot carry the full bill.

This is not the first bill Trump has held back over the SAVE America Act. Earlier this month he declined to reauthorize a warrantless surveillance authority, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, unless the elections bill was attached, CBS News reported. That authority has not been reauthorized.

Where it stands

The housing bill has cleared both chambers and been presented to the president. Under the Constitution, a president has 10 days, not counting Sundays, to sign or veto a bill once it reaches his desk, or it becomes law without his signature while Congress is in session. A pocket veto, in which a bill dies because the president takes no action, applies only when Congress has adjourned and cannot receive a veto message.

The Senate left Washington a day early for a recess that runs until July 13, CBS News reported. The House is scheduled to be in session for most of next week, then on break from July 3 to July 13. The White House has not said what happens to the housing bill if the SAVE America Act does not move.