J. Hill

Rep. French Hill (R-Little Rock), the Heights-dwelling millionaire banker-turned-congressman, almost never concerns himself with the plight of working-class folks, preferring instead to focus on how he can help his rich banker friends make more money. So if he’s out here talking up legislation about housing affordability, you know campaign season must be in full swing.

Too bad President Donald Trump undermined any hopes Hill had of engendering good will among his constituents with that bill.

Hill joined other House members on Wednesday to promote the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which would bring down home costs, boost the construction of new homes and ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes. For the vast majority of Americans, this bill would be an objectively good step. And Hill was more than happy to take credit for all of these good parts:

“Tim Scott and I found a way to put that into law that, in our view, meets the president’s test, but absolutely will not reduce capital flowing into housing, which has been my top goal: lower the cost of housing, make it more affordable, more accessible, encourage the banks to lend more than have been shut down since the global financial crisis of 2008,” Hill said. “This bill does that, and so I’m proud of the work that both chambers struggled through … . I’m proud of the work of the House and Senate to get people to ‘yes.’”

To Hill’s credit, the bill, which passed both chambers with large bipartisan majorities this week, is a significant first step in tackling the nation’s housing problems. It was also a rare bit of bipartisanship from an increasingly fractured branch of government.

Unfortunately for Hill, just before he took to the lectern to deliver his remarks, President Trump took to Truth Social to tell people that he would not be signing Hill’s bill unless and until Congress passed Trump’s SAVE America Act, a voter-suppression bill that makes it more difficult for people to register to vote and which changes voter ID requirements ahead of the November midterms.

The SAVE America Act lacks the necessary votes to pass, with lawmakers from both parties saying they cannot support the bill due to how unpopular it is with their constituents. (It is also largely unconstitutional, not that that has slowed down Republican passage of other Trump-backed bills in the past.) That lack of support has led Trump to couple passage of the SAVE America Act to all sorts of stuff in an effort to strongarm lawmakers, to no avail (so far).

Given that Trump’s previous threats — from broadly claiming he wouldn’t sign any new legislation until the SAVE America Act was passed to specifically saying he wouldn’t re-authorize the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act if the SAVE America Act wasn’t passed at the same time — have not moved the needle, it seems likely that today’s tantrum will not have much effect. After all, if Trump doesn’t veto the housing bill, it will become law without his signature in 10 days anyway.

Of course, that’s cold comfort to Hill, who probably hoped that he’d be able to brag to Arkansas voters about his efforts to “work with President Trump to improve housing affordability.”