Senate passes major housing bill; nobody notices

0:00WNYC Studios is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the cost's at up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at odo.com. That's odo.com. From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, March 13th. Here's how weird and stuck a moment this is right now in Congress. Even after three presumed terrorist attacks in the last week in New York and Detroit in North of Virginia, Democrats can't agree on a way to reopen

1:01the Department of Homeland Security. I should say Democrats and Republicans, I meant to say can't agree on a way to reopen the Department of Homeland Security. The issue remains rules of engagement for ICE after its own deadly behavior in Minneapolis and disruption of so many families' lives nationwide. No body cameras, no face masks, no deal. President Trump is demanding that his election rules bill proof of citizenship to register, government ID to vote, other things, gets acted on before anything else except Homeland Security funding. He even wants Republicans to consider what's known as the nuclear option in Congress, abolishing the filibuster. So the voting bill can pass the Senate with 51 votes instead of 60. Of course with actual voter fraud vanishingly rare in this country, the rules would mostly create paperwork barriers for people who are perfectly eligible to cast ballots. Maybe Trump is so focused on making it harder

2:03for people to vote because he and his Iran war are so unpopular as we look at the polls and head toward the midterm elections. The president who ran on lowering gasoline prices and boasted about doing so in his State of the Union address is even trying to spin the now soaring gasoline prices from the war as a good thing. Here's 10 seconds from the State of the Union address on what he had been saying. Under my predecessor, it was quite honestly a disaster is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states and in some places $1.99 a gallon. And here's what Trump posted yesterday, however, on social media. Quote, the United States is the largest oil producer in the world by far. So when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. That's a new twist, right? Can you imagine it as a Republican Congressional candidates campaign slogan?

3:04Higher gasoline prices are making America great again. The party's main path to victory this November. Maybe the Democrats are also very unpopular right now and will cite a poll number on that. Democrats as a party are really unpopular. One of the bills stuck in the queue in Congress is actually bipartisan and actually addresses one of the country's main concerns, which voter fraud is not, the high cost of housing. It passed the Senate 89 to 10 yesterday. This isn't even getting a lot of attention. This passed the Senate 89 to 10 yesterday. This housing bill sponsored by the unlikely duo of Democrat Elizabeth Warren and Republican Tim Scott. As the New York Times describes the bill, it aims to boost the supply of new housing, a critical step toward bringing down housing costs by removing regulatory barriers, providing incentives and preserving the existing supply. It would also set new limits on the role

4:06institutional investors play in the single family housing market. Trump addressed that in the State of the Union too. We want homes for people, not for corporations, corporations are doing just fine. So that bill has now passed the Senate but faces uncertain prospects in the House and Trump won't sign it anyway, he says, until he gets his voting rules. Burgess Everett, Congressional Bureau Chief or Semaphore is with us now. Some of his recent articles address the things I just mentioned. He's got headlines like Trump threatens to block his own agenda over voting bill. Trump voting bill strains Republicans to the breaking point. Republicans watch the clock on Trump's Iran war and White House turns to a familiar promise of pain for gain as oil prices spike. Burgess, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC. Hey, good morning, Brian. Can we actually start with a bipartisan housing bill? I said I don't think it's getting as much attention as maybe it deserves. Can you tell us more about it and how

5:06in this partisan environment, they got to an 89 to 10 vote in the Senate? Yeah, I mean, I think part of the nature of this bill's success in the Senate is because it was so under the radar and because there was so much else going on. For example, yesterday one of the lead Democrats, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, he decided he didn't really left the way that that institutional investor provision was written. He ended up voting against the bill and a handful of Republicans did as well. But because this is really not front page news and not dominating sort of the social media and et cetera, I didn't feel like there was that much controversy about it. And so this kind of quietly slipped through while most of the senators are kind of distracted by that voting bill. And most of the public is watching the Iran war. But at 89 to 10, why isn't the bill a slam dunk to pass the House? I read that it isn't. Well, there's a lot of tension between the House and the Senate right now over that voting bill.

6:09These things are obviously not related. But the House members, first of all, some of them are starting to say they do not want to pass any Senate legislation until the Senate passes that voting bill. And we can get into that a little bit later. So there's that. There's also what Trump is saying, which is creating more of that tension, which is he doesn't care about anything else except for that voting bill. Now, obviously that kind of rings hollow because this contains a bunch of his priorities. It could give them something to campaign on because it may reduce costs and increase supply of housing. But Trump has fixated elsewhere right now. Now, I will tell you, I spoke to John Kennedy, Senator from Louisiana, a Republican yesterday. And he said that the White House has been encouraging the Senate to pass that bill. So it does seem possible, if not likely, that in the end, perhaps the bill gets altered a little bit in the House, but that it does get to the President's desk and that he does sign it. It doesn't seem like it's going to happen right now, but I could totally see that happening in the next few months.

7:09We'll get to some of those other things you mentioned. Certainly the voting bill will talk about the war. We'll talk about the Department of Homeland Security still technically shut down with the gridlock on the budget. But on the housing bill, the New York Times says policy disagreements on the housing measure remain profound. And an example they cite is the provision that would restrict how private investors can purchase, build, and own single-family homes. It says under a new proposed rules, be it headed by Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, investors who own 350, that's a lot. 350 single-family homes would not be able to buy more. And then it says, while the bill would allow investors to build single-family homes exclusively as rentals, it would require builders to sell those homes after seven years. And I realize we're getting in the weeds now,

8:09but that's a limit that critics of the provision, provision including some House Republicans, argue would make it harder for developers to build new rental housing at a time when the country desperately needs new supply. That from the New York Times. And anything more on that, because it sounds like a good populist thing when Elizabeth Warren or when Raphael Warnock say it, institutional investors shouldn't be allowed to own so many homes for ownership or rental, but then economists really debate whether it would be a net plus or not. Yeah, and I do think that there's plenty of folks, especially on the Republican side, who think that the free market could take care of this. And I don't mean to belittle the policy disagreements, but to me, it's really just more of a political one. And when I say that, I think that there's a little bit of a wrestling match between the two chambers of Congress, but I also think a lot of Republicans

9:11follow President Trump's lead. And so if and when he turns to this legislation, prioritize it, says here the changes I want or changes he doesn't want, I could see it passing the house. So I think if this was a huge policy disagreement among the two parties, you would not have seen that vote yesterday on the Senate, 89 to 10. I mean, I'm not sure a delicious cheese pizza can get that many votes in there. No pepperoni. Listeners, your comments or questions about Congress. Welcome for a semiforours congressional bureau chief Burgess Everett. 212-433 WNYC Caller Text, Congress in the War, Congress in the Housing Bill, Congress in the Voting Bill, the dismal approval ratings for both parties right now, the Homeland Security Funding Measure or anything else related, 212-433 WNYC Caller Text, 212-433-9692. So Burgess remind us what does Trump most want

10:14in the Voting Laws bill? And why does he consider it so important? Well, he, this bill primarily would require, as you said, at the start government ID to vote as well as proof of citizenship to vote. The president has cast this as existential for the midterms. He hasn't said it quite explicitly like that, except sort of the implication is the Republicans need to pass this to win the midterms. Now, he hasn't said that's because of the policy necessarily. But as you know, non-citizens voting in elections is pretty rare. Some states already have voter ID requirements. And four years ago, a lot of Republicans said they oppose the federalization of voting laws when Democrats were trying to pass a different measure. So I do think there is something to the online campaign that the president has sort of ginned up on this, which now includes folks like Elon Musk who are going after the Senate majority leader.

11:18I think it's a little bit of a test of Trump's political strength in the Republican party as much as that is about the policy itself. And we've done whole segments on this, but remind us, too, why do the Democrats so vociferously object to the voting bill? To many Americans, if you look at poll results, these don't sound like onerous provisions. Proof of citizenship, since citizenship has always been a requirement to vote anyway. And voter ID just prove you're you. Why did Democrats find it so toxic? They see this as creating hurdles, paperwork, for plenty of citizens of the United States, folks that do not have photo IDs right now that would be complied with this law, or the same thing for the proof of citizenship requirements. So they see it as creating barriers across the country for people to vote. But it is, of course, interesting to me how the two parties will often flip.

12:19They're talking points a little bit because as we just referenced, Republicans opposed any federalization of voting laws for years ago. And now if Democrats who oppose any federalization of voting laws, these policies are very different. But both parties have now tried to do this in some way. But if the lines are breaking down the way they are, then there must be some pretty good data out there that this would mostly reduce the turnout, the ability to vote among democratic constituencies. You have anything on that? I mean, I have also seen some analysts say that it's not as clear cut that this would help Republicans because their constituency has changed in recent years to include more working class voters, yes, working class white voters, but in the 2024 election, working class voters who are Latino or Black as well. And you had an article yesterday how the Senate will take up the voter ID bill. Why is how a question? How is a question? Because I do not want to bore your listeners

13:21with Senate procedure. But there is a question of, does it take 60 votes to come to the Senate floor or does it take 50? Senate Republicans have a 53 seat majority. So if it only takes 50 to bring it to the floor, they can at least consider it and perhaps vote on some amendments. So they've settled on a strategy to take up the House past legislation which requires only 50 votes to get on the floor. If they used a Senate bill, a new bill, and tried to put it on the Senate floor, they would need 60 votes just to open debate. So that's the key difference here. Now, what's really important is that even with this strategy that Senate majority leader John Thune is using, he's going to need 60 votes to end debate on the bill. And that's where this whole talking filibuster situation comes in because he does not have 60 votes to end debate on this bill because Democrats oppose it and will filibuster it. So here's a question. Why haven't Republicans with their Senate majority already abolished the filibuster,

14:22the ironic math there which you were getting at is that you only need 51 votes to abolish the 60 vote requirement for all those other bills. And there are more than 51 Republicans who among them has reservations and why. Yeah, I mean, I can name a bunch for you right now. People like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, Tom Tillis, even the majority leader John Thune likes the legislative filibuster. I would say historically the legislative filibuster has been a tool for conservatives to use more than for progressives to use. And when I say that, that's because we talk about the Republican Party, typically they want a smaller federal role in government and that means passing less legislation. They can do a lot of their agenda with 50 votes anyway. You can do tax cuts with 50 votes. You can approve new federal judges with 50 votes. The Democrats have a much more expansive view of what they want to do through legislation

15:22and that often requires 60 votes. So that's why a lot of Republicans like the legislative filibuster and they don't want to be the ones to break it. So why doesn't Trump share that concern, especially with the prospect that Democrats could take both houses as November, right, by Slim margins and hamper the Trump agenda quite a bit next year if the Republicans don't have filibusters to hold the Democrats back? In my view, President Trump does not see much beyond his own term. And so he's looking at the next nine months as probably his only time left with unified government given the likelihood that the Democrats at least take the House. A lot of senators, I mean, some of these folks like Chuck Grassley have been around in the Senate since the 80s. They've seen everything flip back and forth. They've seen the long arc of history and that's what they have in mind. Now, there are Republicans who say Democrats will change the filibuster as soon as they get majority.

16:24It's certainly possible, but it's really hard to get those votes. We saw that four years ago when Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema opposed changing the filibuster and there were a lot of other Democrats that had reservations as well, even though they voted to change that rule. So I think that there's a little bit of two parties trying to kind of blame each other and say the other guys are going to break it before we do but nobody's quite gotten to that point yet. Let me take one caller in favor and one caller opposed to the voter ID bill. Karina, my senior name right in Manhattan, you're on WNYC, hello. Hey, good morning, Brian. Thanks for your show and all your work. Yes, please. I was just saying that I left the Democratic Party. I was a lifelong Democrat, but I left last year because they just continuously focused on minuscule 1-100th type of issues for the greater voting population.

17:25And this voting ID, it's a win-win for everybody. I mean, we all know Trump is full of Malarkey when he says there's fraudulent voting, but that's not the point. I think Hakim and the rest of the Democrats are saying we're not giving this win to the Republicans, but the same thing, take the, in the 2024 election, Kamala and the Democrats are focusing on trans rights and that's again another 1-100th. And Trump was smearing that all over the, blowing it up to extraordinary proportions. And then he's sitting in the White House and I'm sure he's saying, hey, Kamala, how do you like those apples? Mind you, I can't stand Trump. I think he's, you know, nothing but the Charlotteson and the Snake Oil Salesman, but Democrats have to stop playing the Mike Logan. They need to like serve the greater, you know, population.

18:28Karina, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave it there. Call us again, thank you for that. And of course, Democrats would say it was the Republicans who were putting the spotlight on the tiny percent of the population that is trans and trying to vilify them and get everybody to vote based on that and the Democrats' position on trans rights. But okay, that's a big debate between the two parties. Staying on the voter ID law, David and Steve, David on the street in stivocentown, apparently, has the other point of view. Hi, David, you're on WNYC. Hey, yeah, I actually like all the Democrats' objections to the voter ID notion, but also, you know, I'm reminded of a sort of more fundamental, super fundamental principle that is in the opposition to it, I think, going back to stuff I used to, in line with stuff I used to hear back in the 80s

19:29when I thought I was a conservative myself. And that is like, what if you want to live as off the grid as possible? What if you want to have as little paper trail about your identity or as anonymous as possible? Right now Republicans want to, you know, and for, you know, encourage, and forings on that, they want to, they want to portray that ability. You can't just be whoever, you can't just be off in Montana and, you know, join some weird right-wing militia if you want to, because they'll want, you know, they'll want to know who you are. But, and if you want to do that stuff, then you can't vote. You want to be anonymous? No, then you don't get your vote. David, thank you very much. So interesting, Burgess, right? Because we had one caller who was a former Democrat and left for the reasons that they said and then the other caller, former conservative who left that camp for the reasons that he said, you know, pretty interesting. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I was meeting with some folks this week

20:30who were discussing all of the Obama Trump voters across the country. And that just shows you, can you think of two more different candidates ideologically, temperamentally, et cetera? And yet there are hundreds of thousands, millions of people that voted for each person for president. Burgess, Everett, congressional bureau chief for Semaphore. Thanks so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Brian. Brian Lerr, a daily politics podcast is an excerpt from my live daily radio show, The Brian Lerr Show on WNYC Radio, 10 a.m. to noon Eastern time if you want to listen live at WNYC.org. Thanks for listening today. Talk to you next time. Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924,

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