A bipartisan Senate bill to grow American housing stock once seemed unstoppable. Then, the House stopped it.
The House voted 396-13 this afternoon to send the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act back to the Senate with substantial revisions. The result was a massive win for House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), as well as Speaker Mike Johnson.
But this fight isn’t over. The Senate’s reception is already shaping up to be frosty. Just hours before the House vote, Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) issued a joint warning: “There’s still work to be done.”
We pressed Warren Wednesday afternoon about whether the House bill would actually lack sufficient support in the Senate. Warren declined to answer. “We have work to do,” the Massachusetts Democrat said.
Hunker down. Here’s the fuller joint quote from Scott-Warren.
“We worked closely with the White House and our colleagues in both chambers on a bill that puts families first and addresses the housing crisis. There’s still work to be done and we are committed to continuing to work with the White House and our colleagues in the House on a housing bill that can pass the Senate and get to the President’s desk.”
Warren and her staff have made clear in recent days they’re strongly opposed to one key component of the House’s reworked housing bill: banking deregulations.
Warren said on Wednesday the Senate was not prepared to embrace those provisions.
“We’ve never had any community bank deregulation hearings or text over here,” the Massachusetts Democrat added. “We’ve got to figure out how to work through that. That’s a very different issue from the housing supply issue that we’ve been working on for a year and a half.”
Warren declined to answer a question about why the four corners of financial policy could not sit down and hammer out their differences informally.
Warren was also asked whether it would take a significant amount of time for the House and Senate to resolve their differences over housing reform.
“Yes,” Warren said.
