President Trump said on Friday that he would not sign a major bipartisan housing bill, a decision he framed as a protest against Senate Republicans for failing to pass a voting restriction bill that does not have enough support to clear the Senate.
“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, referring to the voting bill.
Mr. Trump’s decision appears to be symbolic. The measure, the first major legislative effort to address the nation’s housing crisis in more than three decades, will become law at midnight even without his signature unless he vetoes it, which he did not say he would do.
But Mr. Trump’s pronouncement reflects the growing rift between the president and Senate Republicans as he continues to push for a voter identification bill that has stalled because it does not have enough support to advance.
The housing measure adjusts a host of federal regulations to make it easier and cheaper to build housing. That approach won broad support from economists and policy experts, and the bill passed Congress last month with overwhelming bipartisan support, an increasingly rare accomplishment in a starkly polarized legislature.
The bill, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, was poised to deliver congressional Republicans a significant victory ahead of November’s midterm elections, as they try to blunt Democrats’ attacks over rising costs.
But Mr. Trump clouded the achievement. Hours before a planned signing ceremony at the Capitol last month, he dismissed the bill as “of minor importance” and said he would only sign it only if Congress passed a bill tightening voting restrictions that he has pushed for months.
Republican leaders did not expect Mr. Trump to block the housing bill, and Speaker Mike Johnson sent it to his desk on June 29, starting a 10-day clock for the president to sign the bill, veto it or allow it to automatically become law.
Still, the president’s approach, in which the bill appears likely to effectively limp across the finish line, robbed congressional Republicans of the fanfare they had sought to help make their case to voters as polls show that affordability is a top concern and that Americans increasingly blame them for economic woes.
Though Republicans are expected to trumpet the housing legislation on the campaign trail, they will do so after weeks in which Mr. Trump — who once issued a proclamation calling the bill “comprehensive and consequential” — publicly downplayed it as a “yawn” compared with his elections measure.
Democrats have seized on Mr. Trump’s remarks to bolster their arguments that the president is unresponsive to, if not outright dismissive of, Americans’ concerns about affordability. Mr. Trump has described the affordability issue as a “hoax” or a “con job,” comments that Democrats pointed to to portray him as out of touch.
