Bipartisan housing affordability bill faces tough road in House

A sweeping bipartisan housing affordability package that overwhelmingly cleared the Senate faces a tough road in the House, where conservatives are signaling they plan to oppose the legislation.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, spearheaded by Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), would approve incentives to build new homes, establish a program to convert abandoned buildings into housing developments and authorize new grants to modernize existing homes, among other priorities. 

The Senate last week passed the bill, which would be the first major housing law enacted in more than 30 years, on an 89-10 vote. The White House has thrown its weight behind the Senate bill.

But some Republicans in the House are balking at the scope of the legislation, warning it does not go far enough to address concerns around central bank digital currency (CBDC) or in safeguarding investors from government overreach.

They’ve also fumed about being shut out of negotiations over the Senate’s bill.

The housing package combines provisions from the Housing for the 21st Century Act, which overwhelmingly passed the House last month, and the ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the Senate Banking Committee unanimously last year. 

One key sticking point among hard-liners has been a provision in the bill that would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC through 2030, which the Senate included in the package. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and other House Republicans have called for a permanent ban instead.

“CBDC’s are bad for everyone,” Luna said. “Like it doesn’t matter where you are on the political spectrum. You never want to have the government be able to just shut off your access to financials, et cetera.”

More than 20 House Republicans, including Luna and members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) at the beginning of March arguing that CBDCs need to be prohibited. They said that if the bill includes the temporary ban, it will be dead on arrival in the House.

“A Central Bank Digital Currency would expose Americans to unconstitutional financial surveillance and give the unelected Federal Reserve unprecedented power over Americans’ finances that would violate their civil liberties and financial freedom,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “A CBDC is inherently anti-American and a looming issue we must put an end to before it is too late.”

The House-crafted bill cleared the chamber last month 390-9, so a few Republican defections might not affect final passage.

But Johnson will likely still work to avoid alienating the conservatives, whose votes he needs to pass party-line measures.

It’s also unclear how Johnson and GOP leadership plan to handle the bill. They’ve largely been mum on the matter since the Senate passed the legislation, but NOTUS reported that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told Republicans at a retreat last week that they are preparing to shut down the bill.

House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) said in a statement last week that “it is critical we get the details right and mitigate some of the concerns raised by House members with the Senate bill.”

Any changes to the bill would require another round of Senate approval, and it’s uncertain how senators from either party would view a permanent ban on CBDCs.

Some House Republicans have also been unhappy with a provision in the bill requiring large institutional investors of build-to-rent single-family homes to sell that property within seven years.

“When is it constitutional for us as a government to tell a business when they take the risk, they go out, they build something that we’re going to take away your right to do with it, whatever you are legally able to do with it? That is unconstitutional. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness,” Rep. Richard McCormick (R-Ga.) said. 

“The government has to protect people against harm. You’re not harming people by renting them a house. I think that’s a ridiculous overreach of the government … the more we get ourselves inserted into people and how they run their businesses, the worse it goes. We’ve proven that ad nauseam,” he added. 

McCormick added that he will not support the bill if that provision is not removed. 

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) said “there are some really socialist policies” in the bill “that we’ve got to strip off,” without going into detail on what those policies are.

“It’s not a good bill, so I’ll leave it at that,” Self said. 

Thune told Punchbowl News that his preference would be for the House to pass the housing bill and put it on Trump’s desk. But he said that if House Republicans “want to go to conference, we’ll go to conference.”

A conference allows House and Senate lawmakers to come together and reconcile their differences over a piece of legislation.

But the battle over the housing bill is also colliding with the push to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, a GOP-backed voting requirements bill that is referred to as the SAVE America Act. 

The Senate on Tuesday voted to open debate on the bill, which is expected to last through the week and possibly into the weekend. It is not expected to pass the Senate, where Democratic support would be needed to overcome the filibuster.

Trump told House Republicans during a retreat in Doral, Fla., last week that he won’t sign any legislation until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act.

“The people are demanding it. Every time I go out, save America, save America. We want the SAVE America Act. That’s all they talk about. They don’t talk about housing. They don’t talk about anything. That’s what they talk about,” Trump told House Republicans.

And House Republicans have also ramped up pressure on the upper chamber, threatening to block all Senate-passed legislation until the measure is signed into law. They have urged Thune to sidestep Democratic opposition by employing a “talking filibuster,” which would force Democrats to speak continuously on the Senate floor to delay the bill, allowing Republicans to move it forward once they yield. Thune, however, has declined to pursue that strategy.

“The housing bill will die, again, because Thune and the Senate do not want to actually embrace the talking filibuster, actually do anything to pass the SAVE America Act,” Luna said. “So that’s a promise that will die.”

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