Amna Nawaz:
Welcome to the “News Hour.”
President Trump has upended Congress’ plans for a major housing bill, refusing to sign legislation that passed with veto-proof majorities as he tries to force action on his voting reform agenda.
Geoff Bennett:
The tactic is familiar.
Earlier this year, the president derailed a bipartisan deal on intelligence and surveillance legislation while pressing lawmakers to adopt that controversial voting bill known as the SAVE Act. Now he’s using a housing package that many lawmakers expected would be signed into law today as a new point of leverage.
Andrew Desiderio covers the Senate for Punchbowl News and joins us now.
Andrew, always great to see you.
So, the White House had prepared for this signing ceremony. Lawmakers were gathered there on Capitol Hill, and then President Trump says via social media that he’s not going to sign the bill after all. You have to tweet up on the screen right there. You were there with the news broke. How did Republican senators react?
Andrew Desiderio, Punchbowl News:
They were shocked, I mean, dumbfounded.
As you mentioned, the president has done this a lot lately where he has blindsided Republican leaders. But a signing ceremony usually happens at the White House. This one was set up in the Capitol Building itself here in what’s known as Statuary Hall. They had a stage set up. They had the presidential emblem there, a desk for him to sign it.
And just about an hour before he was supposed to leave for the Capitol, he put this message on TRUTH Social, saying that he wasn’t going to sign it into law until the Senate and the House sent him, as you mentioned, the SAVE America Act, which is legislation that has virtually no chance of passing either chamber, frankly, at this point, but especially in the Senate, where the filibuster exists.
And what’s fascinating about this particular rift between Senate Republicans and the president is that the president was already scheduled to attend a lunch meeting with Senate Republicans right after the signing ceremony, which he came to anyway.
And the conversation ended up devolving into mostly an argument between himself and Senator Bill Cassidy over the Iran war. And the president really didn’t open it up for Q&A at all about the SAVE America Act issue and the fact that he’s blocking now the bipartisan housing and affordability bill, which, by the way, got 85 votes in the Senate and nearly 400 votes in the House.
Geoff Bennett:
Right, bipartisan, veto-proof majority. What leverage does the president really have at this point as it relates to this bill?
Andrew Desiderio:
Well, he has leverage in the sense that he could just hold out in not signing it.
But there is a 10-day clock that starts to run, but only when the speaker of the House officially transmits the bill to the White House. Speaker Johnson, of course, a close ally of President Trump, has not officially done that yet.
So, if he doesn’t actually transmit this bill to the White House, that 10-day clock doesn’t start to run. And if he does, then the 10-day clock runs, and, at the end of it, the bill automatically becomes law without the president’s signature.
Now, if the president were to get the bill eventually and then veto it, Congress could vote on overriding that veto, but it takes two-thirds in both chambers. If you take into consideration the fact that it got huge margins in both chambers to begin with, you would think that they would be able to easily override this veto.
But veto override votes tend to be very interesting, in the sense that a lot of members back off of their initial support for a piece of legislation when it comes to a veto override because they don’t want to be seen as crossing the president.
So who knows, honestly, what’s going to happen with this bipartisan housing affordability bill, which Republicans really, really want to focus on, because they know that affordability is the number one issue for voters in the midterms.
Geoff Bennett:
Well, yes, let’s talk more about that, because the president dismissed this housing bill as being of minor importance. That was the phrase that he used. But housing costs, affordability remain a top issue for voters heading into November.
So, how much of a political vulnerability does this open up for Republicans?
Andrew Desiderio:
It’s a major political vulnerability.
The president’s poll numbers are already at historic lows. Voters are already saying that they in these surveys are very dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, the cost of living, again, affordability concerns, and they want to see Congress and the president addressing that.
And, instead, what we’re seeing is, of course, the president having this fixation, this obsession on the SAVE America Act, which, as I mentioned before, has virtually no chance of actually becoming law. And it’s something that Republican leaders think they can use against Democrats to show that they’re against voter I.D., for example, which is usually an 80/20 issue in this country, right?
So what the president is also doing is, he’s preventing Republicans from even seeking political benefit from that issue on its face. And so it really is not just blindsiding them, but dumbfounding the Republican leadership up here, to the point where I have Republican senators coming to me and openly questioning whether this president is intentionally, deliberately trying to blow up their congressional majorities.
Geoff Bennett:
Wow.
Andrew Desiderio covers the Senate for Punchbowl News.
Andrew, thanks again for your time this evening.
Andrew Desiderio:
Thanks, Geoff.
