Trump and Congress Ride the Legislative Rollercoaster Over Housing

Will he, won’t he? President Donald Trump was all set to sign the bipartisan housing bill when he suddenly canceled on Wednesday. Then, by Thursday evening, he was having friendly meetings with GOP lawmakers – now it seems he’s going to sign it after all. The legislative rollercoaster goes up, down, and then back up again. But what about the SAVE America Act – or, for that matter, FISA?

Trump Takes Congress for a Ride

The latest housing bill out of Congress, officially titled “the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” cleared both chambers with wide, bipartisan majorities earlier this week. The largest housing bill in decades passed the Senate 85-5 Monday night and the House 358-32 the next day. Note that those are easily veto-proof numbers.

And President Trump was planning to sign the bill into law – he even had a signing desk set up in Statuary Hall. But then he changed his mind. “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 on Truth Social on Wednesday, June 24.

And just like that, the latest rollercoaster ride had launched.

But as abruptly as that appeared to happen, the situation quickly changed yet again. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) met with Trump at the White House for three hours on Thursday. He emerged, it seemed, with two wins. First, the president urged House Republicans to stop sabotaging procedural votes. After Trump declared he wouldn’t sign the housing bill without the SAVE America Act on his desk first, some GOP lawmakers vowed to tank any vote held that wasn’t to pass that particular bit of legislation. Second, it appears the president has at least indicated that he’ll sign the housing bill after all, as Johnson officially transmitted the Housing bill to the White House.

But will he sign it? As far as determining whether it becomes law, it almost doesn’t matter. Once the bill is transmitted, the president has ten days to either sign it, veto it, or take no action. Two of the three options result in the bill becoming law. Only through the veto can Trump kill the measure, and with such overwhelming majorities passing it the first time – 94.4% in the Senate and 91.8% in the House – it’s almost inconceivable that at least two-thirds of both chambers won’t repeat that support to overturn said veto.

Theoretically, should Trump refuse to act and Congress adjourn before that ten-day deadline arrives and remain out of session long enough, the president could kill the bill via pocket veto. But the legality is questionable and, in this case specifically, such an overwhelming majority in both chambers seems just as likely to simply reintroduce the bill and pass it all over again, being more careful on their timing the next go around.

SAVE, FISA, and Senate Procedures

The president’s line in the sand – well, at least until Thursday, in any case – was passing the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show ID at the polls and proof of citizenship when registering to vote. It and others like it have passed the House multiple times already, but thanks to the rules of cloture in the Senate, it remains in limbo.

President Trump and some Republicans have suggested nuking the filibuster. Democrats have already promised to do so as soon as they hold a trifecta of their own in the Swamp, so why not beat them to the punch and let the net difference be whatever party-line legislation they manage to pass via simple majority before losing said majority? That’s their logic, and it seems pretty sound if we trust the Democrats to do exactly what they said they were going to do. That seems to be the only way to pass the SAVE America Act on its own and in its full form. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) warns Republicans simply don’t have the votes to make that happen.

Short of convincing enough of the GOP to kill the filibuster, some other options have been floated. Some senators want Thune to cram it into a third budget reconciliation bill so it can pass with a simple majority. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) is a fan of this plan, and Speaker Mike Johnson in the House said he’d push the SAVE America Act through as part of a reconciliation bill to be sent to the Senate.

The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, already said it doesn’t pass muster – and a handful of Republicans tried unsuccessfully twice to add it as a rider on the last reconciliation bill to clear Congress. Still, some argue there are legal workarounds, and Johnson claims to have one that works by using grants to incentivize states to adopt provisions of the SAVE America Act.

That’s not the only idea Sen. Kennedy had, though. The Louisiana lawmaker also suggested attaching it to a FISA bill that reauthorizes Section 702 surveillance, a program that lost its congressional authorization on June 12.

Will Trump sign the housing bill? Will it matter if he does? Can the SAVE America Act ever pass as a rider on FISA reauthorization or reconciliation – or must the filibuster die for it to live? Just as you think you’ve got it all figured out, the rollercoaster hits another loop and it’s all turned upside down again. Where she stops, nobody knows.