The legendary Speaker of the House of Representatives from Texas, Sam Rayburn, once mused to a member of his Democratic Caucus who referred to Republicans as their enemy: “The Republicans are the opposition. The enemy is the Senate.” Rayburn, who was a Member of Congress from 1913 to 1961, was the longest-serving Speaker in history. A lot has changed since then, but not the idea that the distance across the Capitol is much greater than the distance across the aisle. We’re getting a refresher course on this with the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (ROAD), which passed the Senate on March 12 by an overwhelming 89-10 vote, after its House counterpart cleared the chamber by a similarly bipartisan margin of 390-9.
While last year, the Senate moved its original housing bill, the ROAD to Housing Act, as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, the chambers are advancing the latest iteration of their housing bills through “regular order.” In this case, that means the process in which legislation is approved by each chamber, after being reconciled in a conference committee, and then enacted in identical form by the House and Senate before being sent to the President for signature. This approach is backed by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill (R-Ark.) and Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), among others.
On the Senate side, however, Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have insisted that the House accept their version of the bill, arguing that if it goes to conference, it will die. While I agree with Senators Scott and Warren that the bill is too important to risk failure, I disagree that enactment is less likely if it proceeds to conference. In fact, from my experience in the room for several conference negotiations, I believe that process makes passage more, not less, likely. Members sit together, debating each title of the bill and negotiating practical compromises. Because both chambers passed their versions with such strong bipartisan support, there’s not much to fight over. Between the two, there’s a lot of good legislation—so it’s difficult to imagine any provision that commanded overwhelming Senate support won’t earn the House’s backing or, at least, acquiescence.
Yes, the Senate will likely lose the prohibition on Build-to-Rent housing construction. Still, they will secure a significant win on investor-owned single-family rental homes. A few provisions outside the four corners of either bill could prove problematic, but conferees can always agree not to introduce new items. This is far simpler than the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—the last major housing and banking bill to go through conference.
In the five Congresses preceding 2010, an average of 28 bills went to conference. In the five that followed, that number fell to fewer than five. Legislative productivity dropped as well: before 2010, Congress passed an average of 379 bills per term; over the next decade, that average fell by more than 100. During the most recent 118th Congress (2023–2024), only 255 bills became law—and just one went to conference.
It’s not too late to reverse that trend, and it can start by convening a conference on this bipartisan housing legislation.
One factor behind this decline was the Obama Administration’s reliance on executive orders, prompted by the Senate’s refusal to consider his legislative proposals under Republican leadership. Saturday Night Live captured this shift in a 2014 “cold open.” Presidents Trump and Biden expanded the practice.
There is a better way. It’s called negotiating. “Take it or leave it” is not negotiation.
“If we could get [Chairmen French Hill and Tim Scott and Ranking Members Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters] in the room, around a table, we could navigate these issues, and that’s what I’m an advocate for,” House Financial Services Housing and Insurance Subcommittee Chairman Mike Flood (R-Neb.) said at POLITICO’s Economy Summit last week. Flood added that Hill “needs to have that sit-down” with Scott—and “not as much of that has happened.”
NHC’s position on the housing bill is clear: we support enactment, notwithstanding concerns over individual provisions. We trust the House and Senate to get it right if they simply agree to work together—and we will support whatever consensus they reach.
Do we have our preferences? Of course. We disagree with the Senate’s provision that would significantly restrict the production of single-family Build-to-Rent housing. National Multifamily Housing Council President Sharon Wilson Géno, recently elected to NHC’s Board of Governors, wrote about this issue earlier this month. We also strongly support the Senate’s language expanding the Rental Assistance Demonstration program and formally authorizing HUD’s Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement (PRICE) Program, which appear only in the Senate version. The same goes for the Whole-Home Repairs Pilot Program, permanent authorization of the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, and several other provisions which were left out of the House bill in February. Ranking Member Waters has her own list. “Unfortunately, the Senate removed several critical housing and banking provisions that House Democrats fought hard to include and that make the legislation stronger,” she wrote to colleagues on March 22. “Additionally, we need to address stakeholder concerns that have been raised since passage in the Senate, especially about whether the bill now curtails the construction of new homes and creates other unintended consequences. Given these changes, we must reconcile the House and Senate versions to produce the strongest possible housing legislation for our communities at home.”
Enterprise Community Partners CEO Shaun Donovan told The New York Times, “Congress is going to act on housing this year—it’s a question of when, not if… Housing is the No. 1 economic issue in the country… It is the single most important affordability challenge Americans face. And, as we’ve all come to recognize in the last few months, affordability is at the center of our politics.” We won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good—and neither should Congress.
“We’ve come a long way using regular order, and there’s no reason why the House shouldn’t get an opportunity to make changes,” I told Bloomberg’s Katy O’Donnell. “There’s no such thing as ‘take it or leave it’ in negotiations… The president wants to sign good legislation, and we should send that to him.”