The Landmark Housing Bill That Trump Refuses to Sign

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**Michael Barbaro** (0:30)
From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.
President Trump has called it the most comprehensive and consequential housing legislation in the history of our country. And a Congress controlled by his own party has now passed it by overwhelming margins. So why is the president refusing to sign it? Today, my colleague Michael Gold on the strange saga of a landmark housing bill. It's Monday, July 6th.
Michael Gold, always a pleasure.

**Michael Gold** (1:25)
Happy to be here, Michael, thanks.

**Michael Barbaro** (1:27)
So over the next few days, President Trump has to make a decision that on paper, I think we can even argue objectively, seems kind of like a no-brainer.

**Michael Gold** (1:39)
That's how I would view it if I were a politician. So it seems very intuitive that the president would sign this housing bill, because housing affordability is a major issue for Americans, it's something he talked about on the campaign trail when he was running in 2024 And the midterm elections are in about four months. And it would be a very clear demonstration that the president cares about affordability, cares about addressing these cost of living concerns, which is something that Republicans are very eager to demonstrate.
But I think the fact that the president isn't signing this bill really exemplifies just how dysfunctional his relationship with Congress has become, and how divergent his own interests are from Republicans in his party, and from many of voters in the country.

**Michael Barbaro** (2:24)
Well, tell us the story of this housing bill, which we really haven't covered all that much on the show, and how we got to this point where it has reached the president's desk.

**Michael Gold** (2:37)
Sure. So I think anyone who has tried to buy a house, paid rent, looked for an apartment in the last few years can tell you, the country is in the middle of a housing crisis.
And it started in a lot of the big American cities, but it seems to have really spread across the country. And as both parties are campaigning in 2024, politicians across the political spectrum agree that they need to do something to address housing, because people need a place to live, and without a place to live, their chances at all kinds of economic security basically evaporate.

**Elizabeth Warren** (3:06)
Right.

**Michael Gold** (3:07)
So the president takes office in January 2025, and he's not really saying much about housing. He has a handful of other priorities that he's addressing. But in the background, members of Congress decide they're going to try to do something about this, and they start working on their own housing legislation. That's kicking around for a while, but it involves an interesting cast of characters. So in the Senate, you have Tim Scott of South Carolina. He's a Republican. He runs the Senate Banking Committee. You have Elizabeth Warren, a progressive Democrat from Massachusetts.
They're working with their counterparts in the House on this, French Hill, who's a mainstream conservative Republican from Arkansas, and Maxine Waters, a little bit more to the left, perhaps not as far as Warren, and she's from California.

**Michael Barbaro** (3:46)
Yeah, this really is odd, Bedfellows.

**Michael Gold** (3:49)
Yeah, and look, this is how Congress is supposed to work. Lawmakers who have a common interest work together, they put party aside, and they start hammering out a deal.
So this is what's going on for most of last year. At this point, the president's not really saying much about it. He's focused on the big, beautiful bill. He's focused on immigration policy. This just isn't top of mind for him. But as we round into 2026, it's a midterm election year, and affordability is top of mind for the American voter. It's shown in poll after poll that cost of living is the number one problem that voters have and it's an area where they're judging the president's success and something that they're going to vote on when it comes to the midterms. Right.

**Michael Barbaro** (4:24)
It becomes the byword for the midterm elections in general. Who's going to own affordability?

**Michael Gold** (4:30)
Absolutely. Democrats really sees on this, they make it very clear this is going to be a major issue for them. Coming into the start of the year, it's January and Congress makes clear that they really want to get a housing bill done. They've given it a name. They call it the 21st century Road to Housing Act, which is supposed to represent the scope of their ambition here. They want to do something really big on housing. It's really going to help a lot of people.