Congress managed to briefly break its usual gridlock this week when the Senate agreed to pass a bipartisan housing affordability bill. The legislation was expected to have an easy journey through the House of Representatives and to the desk of Donald Trump, who is itching for a legislative win amid a series of embarrassing and unpopular policy blunders.
But just hours before the signing ceremony, Trump abruptly scuttled the first victory his party has had in months, saying he won’t sign the bill until the Senate passes the unpopular, electorally poisonous SAVE Act.
“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,” Trump wrote Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social.
The SAVE Act, or the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, is a transformative electoral reform package that, if passed, would immediately nullify the voter registrations of millions of Americans by requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. It would also mandate that voters present a form of ID when they cast their ballots, and would facilitate frivolous lawsuits against local election officials for potentially violating the bill’s stringent requirements.
Trump has repeatedly pushed Republicans to force the legislation though in an attempt to quite literally reset the electorate in the middle of an election year in which Republicans are expected to severely underperform. Lawmakers are naturally skeptical of the ploy, which would likely be the subject of a series of court challenges. The president has not been able to get anywhere near the 60-vote threshold he would need to force the legislation through the Senate, or draw support for his demand that the GOP eliminate the filibuster.
Now, he’s sabotaging a piece of bipartisan legislation that not only would have actually passed, but that would have addressed the affordability crisis — at least in part.
“It says to me that Donald Trump just doesn’t care about the cost squeeze on American families. This is the guy who said affordability is a made-up word that Democrats came up with. Affordability is a hoax,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the primary Democratic sponsor of the bill in the Senate, told MS NOW of Trump’s scuttling the bill. “He said he loves the inflation. Yes, he does. He doesn’t care about high prices for millions of people across this country. What he does care about is Donald Trump and nothing else. And that’s what today’s cancellation of the signing ceremony is all about.”
Even Republicans seem infuriated by the president’s about face, as many of them were presumably hoping to campaign on the legislation this election cycle. “We saw glimpses of this during Trump’s first administration, but never in my lifetime have I seen a president so deliberately attempt to lose majorities for his own party,” one anonymous senior Republican Senate aide told reporters.
Speaking to Punchbowl News, one GOP senator described a meltdown “venting session” against the president that took place during the closed-door lunch Trump attended on Capitol Hill. According to reports from within the room, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who lost his bid for reelection to a Trump-backed primary challenger, got into a full-blown shouting match with the president, with Trump calling him a “lunatic” in response, per CNN.
“He raised his voice. I lost my temper. That’s not appropriate. It’s the Irish in me, but I again matched his tone and his volume,” Cassidy said of the incident. “I am sticking up for the American people, even if I’m speaking to the president,” he added.
The spat was reportedly prompted by questions about a non-binding Senate resolution passed on Tuesday that rebuked Trump’s war against Iran. Cassidy relayed to reporters that he had questioned Trump about the length of the war and his public statements about it. “It was supposed to last for four weeks, it’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved. And I want to know what’s going on. He did not particularly care for my comments” the senator said.
Discussion of the war powers resolution dominated the meeting. Trump also reportedly attacked Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) for missing the resolution vote, even though McCormick — who was literally campaigning with Trump in Pennsylvania the day the resolution came to the floor — would not have made a difference in its passage.
Lawmakers in the room on Wednesday told CBS News that Trump told GOP senators that he felt Tuesday’s vote had “undermined” him. It seems he chose to return the favor in the form of nixing the housing affordability vote.
Cassidy confronted Trump, but other Republicans seem willing to let Trump foist himself on his own petard. “If you don’t have the votes, sir, you don’t have the votes,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters. “It causes me to wonder if we were to pass the SAVE Act tomorrow, if he wouldn’t find yet another reason for what I think he really is seeking, which is for us to blow up the filibuster, and I’m certainly not giving my consent to that.”
Sen. Susane Collins (R-Maine), who is facing a viable challenge to her long-held seat from Democratic candidate Graham Platner, told reporters that Trump’s move “makes no sense.”
“This bill has very strong bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. The primary author is a Republican senator and it addresses an issue that affects many American families who find the cost of housing to be a tremendous burden,” she added.
But while Senate Republicans fume, House Leader Mike Johnson (R-La.) is ready to reassume his role as the president’s most favored lap dog. On Wednesday, Johnson indicated he was considering forcing the SAVE Act through Congress by packaging it in an upcoming reconciliation bill, allowing it to potentially circumvent the 60-vote majority needed in the Senate.
“House Republicans will put together a reconciliation bill, reconciliation 3.0, that will have that,” Johnson mused. According to Punchbowl News, Johnson was clued into the real reason Trump tried to tank the landmark bill. According to several sources who heard Johnson quoting the president’s viewpoint: “no one gives a shit about housing.”
Trump addressed his decision to kill the bill while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office. “I said I’m not signing it,” he said. “I made billions of dollars with housing. I know housing better than anybody maybe anywhere. It’s all about the interest rates. Lower interest rates. I don’t want to hurt people that own houses either. These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses. They become rich. I don’t want to hurt them either.”
