President Donald Trump said Friday he will not sign a housing bill that Congress passed in June with overwhelming bipartisan support, setting the stage for it to automatically become law at 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday.
Trump said he was withholding his signature from the housing bill in protest over the Senate’s failure to pass the controversial election security legislation known as the SAVE America Act.
The president did not say he would veto the housing bill, which seeks to lower costs for homebuyers and rein in institutional investors.
And the Constitution says that if the president does not veto a bill within 10 days of receiving it, excepting Sundays, the bill “shall be a Law,” as if he had signed it.
The White House, when asked if Trump would veto the bill, referred CNBC to the president’s Truth Social post saying he would not sign it.
The bill, formally known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, was approved by a vote of 358-32 in the House of Representatives, and by a vote of 85-5 in the Senate.
Those margins are well in excess of the two-thirds supermajority vote required to override a presidential veto.
In his Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “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.”
“THE SAVE AMERICA ACT’S non-passage is CRAZY, and a serious threat to any politician who votes against it!” Trump wrote.
He also claimed that the bill has broad support from Americans, despite polls that have shown otherwise.
Trump’s announcement came one day after the National Association of Realtors reported that home prices last month rose to the highest level on record.
The median price of an existing home sold in June was $440,600, an increase of 1.8% from the year before, according to the association’s report.
Democrats pounced on Trump’s statement, calling it proof of his indifference to Americans’ concerns about the cost of living.
“Millions of Americans are being crushed by housing costs,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote on X.
“Donald Trump called their crisis ‘a big yawn’ — then refused to sign the most significant bipartisan housing bill in decades.” Schumer wrote, referring to the president’s prior characterization of the bill.
“His priorities couldn’t be clearer: higher costs for families and more power for himself.”
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., in his own X post, wrote: “The rising cost of mortgages and rent are hitting Americans hard. Yet Trump refuses to act.”
Trump has pushed his fellow Republicans in Congress to make the SAVE America Act their top priority before November’s midterm elections.
Democrats, who have centered their political messaging around affordability ahead of the midterms, hope to retake control of both chambers of Congress in those contests.
Trump has previously suggested he will refuse to sign other bills until the SAVE America Act is passed. He abruptly canceled a scheduled signing ceremony in June for the housing bill, citing that demand.
The SAVE America Act is aimed at reducing the chance of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections. The bill would require voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot and proof of citizenship to register for elections.
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. And it is extraordinarily rare for noncitizens to cast a ballot, research has found.
Trump, in his Truth Social post on Friday, demanded that Senate Republicans eliminate filibuster rules in order to pass the election bill and other GOP priorities.
The rules require most legislation to clear a 60-vote procedural threshold, rather than advance by a simple majority, which is 51 votes if all 100 senators are present.
