President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he would not sign the major bipartisan housing bill that Congress passed this week after months of negotiations.
Less than two hours before the planned signing ceremony for the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, Trump abruptly called it off, saying he would only sign the housing package after Congress passes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, an election security bill that Trump and many Republicans have been pushing ahead of the midterms.
“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 said on Truth Social.
The news shocked Washington as lawmakers were already celebrating bipartisan housing bill. Coming after months of negotiations, it contains 45 provisions aimed at cutting housing costs. That includes constraints on institutional investors in the housing market, new banking rules aimed at promoting mortgage lending, and measures to cut red tape and speed homebuilding.
Following months of stalled progress, the bill sped through Congress this week with broad bipartisan support. Trump now has 10 days to either sign or veto the bill, otherwise it will become law.
A veto would require a two-thirds majority from Congress to override, which may be possible given the broad support for the bill. The House ultimately passed the housing bill 358-32 Tuesday night, one night after the Senate passed it 85-5.
Eleventh hour spike
The sudden announcement took Washington D.C. off-guard. Lawmakers have already been hailing the bill as a rare act of bipartisanship ahead of the midterms. Democrats, pitching their own message of affordability, pounced.
“It’s clear he doesn’t care about the costs that people are facing,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-California, said at a press conference after the posting. “This is something that will move the needle in an affordability way for housing. This was one piece and it shows that we want to take the win for the American people … and drive down the cost of housing.”
The SAVE Act, which would bring more stringent identification requirements for voting has been politically unpopular. Trump has argued for it as he alleged election fraud. But Democrats fiercely oppose the bill.
“The SAVE America Act is a massive voter suppression bill, full stop,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, said in a social media post.
A group of 25 House Republicans staged a revolt late Tuesday, hours before the House signed the bill. They posted to social media that all other measures should be rejected or opposed until the SAVE Act.
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Tristan Navera is a senior reporter on housing policy, covering trends and solutions in the housing market from Washington, DC. He was previously a senior reporter at Bloomberg Law, and before that covered real estate for the Washington Business Journal. Earlier in his career, he spent a decade reporting on business and real estate in Dayton and Columbus, OH. A Cincinnati native, he holds a journalism degree from Ohio University.
