Why did Trump kill Congress’s housing bill?

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Congress recently did something right. He passed an important bipartisan bill to address one of voters’ biggest bipartisan concerns: housing affordability. Everything was done the right way. The relevant House and Senate committees each passed their own versions, cleaned up the draft concert product, and produced a final version that, while it will not solve the housing shortage on its own, takes a step forward in making it easier to find affordable housing. It’s a political victory for both parties, and it could be a political boon for a ruling party that needs to show voters, ahead of tough midterm elections, that it can deliver results.

So President Donald Trump just had to step through it all. In an article published Wednesday morning, he called the legislation an “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren-centric housing bill” and of “minor importance.” Shortly after, he canceled a planned bill signing ceremony at the Capitol “until we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider a national emergency.”

This is the latest episode in which the president intentionally sabotages Senate Republicans until they do what he wants — or because he’s in a situation where they haven’t. What he wants them to do is eliminate or weaken the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, the GOP election bill that Democrats oppose because it unduly restricts voter rights and access to the ballot. Since Republicans won’t do what he wants, the net effect is simply that the president is intentionally sabotaging Senate Republicans in a midterm year.

“It’s sort of inexplicable to me,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn, an ousted incumbent who is suddenly much more willing to speak his mind, told reporters. “I don’t know if there’s any precedent for this.”

The only precedent for the president’s decision on the housing bill is his similar behavior, on a regular basis, over the past several months. In his frustration with the Senate’s inability to eliminate the filibuster, or get him his ballroom money, or allow him to have his “anti-arms” slush fund, the president withdrew his own nominees from hearings, supported outgoing presidents’ primary opponents out of spite, and threatened on numerous occasions not to sign anything else until the SAVE Act was passed. After initially ingratiating him, Senate Majority Leader John Thune became more explicit in telling the president that the votes simply aren’t there to pass the GOP’s partisan elections bill. Trump didn’t understand.

Trump’s decision to deprive himself and Congress of an easy political victory is surprisingly counterproductive. But for Senate Republicans, what else is new? He makes their lives hell too regularly for them not to see this latest political mistake coming.

“I don’t know why you’re holding a bill hostage that’s ready to be signed instead of a bill that will never pass this Congress,” said North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. “There’s a large group of people who really appreciate what the president is doing right now. And that’s the Democratic Party.” Indeed, Democrats on Wednesday delighted in filming content on the empty Capitol stage where Trump was expected to sign the housing bill.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Tillis said.

Other Republicans, who will not be out of work in January, have tried to phrase things more delicately.

“I will stand on one leg and bark like a dog if that’s what it takes” to pass the SAVE Act, Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy told reporters. “But you can’t get people to vote in a way they don’t want to.”

Trump’s insistence that the Senate pass the SAVE America Act is real and profound. But his desire runs even deeper for the Senate to simply do what he is told, whether on a bill or otherwise. Trump doesn’t like separate branches of government that are technically outside of his control. He thinks that if they are to exist, they must obey him. So when the Senate passed a privileged war powers resolution to end the war in Iran on Tuesday, it caused him to spit on his housing bill.

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Although Trump canceled signing the bill on the Hill, he showed up at the Senate Republicans’ weekly Tuesday luncheon, to which Florida Sen. Rick Scott had invited him — without informing Thune. Everything went as planned. Republican senators let out dry smiles when reporters asked them questions immediately afterwards; an unusually high number of them found it necessary to hold their phones to their ears as reporters hounded them. Among those willing to talk, passionate and energetic, were common descriptors — standard euphemisms for Trump just bitched about for a while.

This is the strangest and dirtiest military tradition. Pete Hegseth would hate that. It’s perfect. The conservative majority has destroyed one of the greatest myths about this Supreme Court

Trump, according to Cornyn, said “there wasn’t really an opportunity” to ask him questions because he “spoke for an hour and 15 minutes.” But another senator Trump despises — Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, whom the president managed to oust in a primary last month — found opportunity by getting into what was described as a dispute with the president over Iran. Cassidy, who at one point referred to the president as “brother,” told Trump that he had failed to clearly explain to the American people why the war was necessary and that it had not produced the results the administration claimed.

“As I recall, he didn’t particularly like my comments” and “raised his voice,” Cassidy told reporters. “I lost my temper.”

Otherwise, Trump would have faced no resistance.

It’s unclear how this impasse – Trump wanting the SAVE America Act passed and the Senate unable to pass the SAVE America Act – will be resolved. Most likely, it won’t. It’s also unclear how Trump’s underlying problem, that the Senate has difficulty obeying instructions 100 percent of the time, will improve. In fact, Senate Republicans in competitive reelections will continue to have to separate themselves from the excesses of the unpopular administration as Election Day approaches, while aggrieved incumbent senators like Cornyn, Cassidy, and Tillis will continue to express dangerous (greater than zero) levels of free thought. Senate Republicans believe that the longer this feud continues, Trump will reap the true cost of his sabotage: a Democratic Senate.

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