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House Republicans Are on a Collision Course With Trump on Housing

It’s the “narcissism of small differences,” a senior administration official said of the policy fight.

Mike Johnson

Lawmakers said House Speaker Mike Johnson is allowing for changes to the Senate housing bill. Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP

“The House lost, the Senate won,” is how one congressional aide described the mood of the Senate after President Donald Trump urged Congress again this week to pass the bipartisan housing proposal that cracks down on Wall Street investors.

The House isn’t conceding the fight.

Republican leadership in the lower chamber is ignoring Trump’s request that Congress pass the Senate’s bill and is teeing up a vote on a new, yet-to-be-made-public version of the bill for next week, NOTUS has confirmed. Politico first reported the timing of the vote.

The House’s problems with the Senate’s proposal? The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which was negotiated between Sens. Tim Scott, Elizabeth Warren and the White House, requires institutional investors to sell build-to-rent single-family homes seven years after construction.

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House Republicans and Democrats alike oppose this. House Republicans also want the bill to deregulate community banks and institute a permanent ban on a central bank digital currency (the Senate proposal’s ban expires in 2030).

Two House Republicans and two House Democrats who have been involved in discussions on the new bill told NOTUS the amended package tweaks the provision on the forced sale of build-to-rent homes.

“I don’t see a world where [the provision] would exist in its current form,” one House Republican said.

Lawmakers have been told that Speaker Mike Johnson “is letting [Rep. French Hill] fix the bill,” one House Democrat said, referring to the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, who is leading the legislation in the chamber.

“What I understand is that they’ve ‘fixed it’ in a way that’s satisfying to housing people,” said a second House Democrat of the Senate’s forced-sale provision. It has been changed “in a way that there’s broad bipartisan support,” though not “fully removed,” they said.The White House is currently evaluating the House’s changes, two House Republicans told NOTUS.

A senior administration official told NOTUS the White House had “objections” to some of the newly proposed changes to the Senate package.

Ultimately, any changes to the bill go directly against what the White House — and Trump in a Monday night Truth Social post — have called for: passing the Senate’s bill as it stands.

“What we think is we have the best path forward to deliver an affordability win for the administration, for congressional Republicans,” the administration official said of favoring the Senate bill over the House’s.

If the House passes its own amended version of the Senate’s bill, that would mean the legislation has to go back to the upper chamber for approval.

The administration official said that the House’s continued push for changes to the Senate bill was about the “narcissism of small differences” between two bills that are otherwise “extremely similar.”

One of the House Republicans said the amended bill may include changes to the central bank digital currency ban, but the White House might take issue with that.

“There’s not a bicameral process that’s going to result with the administration signing provisions that it knocked out of the previous negotiation,” the senior administration official said. The official added that deregulating community banks should not even be part of the current discussion.

House Republican leaders, however, are staying the course.

“We have a bill that Chairman Hill and ranking member Waters have worked on. It could be bipartisan, alleviate some of the concerns and get [a] bipartisan, bicameral bill to the president’s desk. I think everybody feels like it’s important, so we’re just working out some nuances,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday.

Hill has been working with Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat in the House Financial Services Committee, on amending the policy to reflect some of the House’s demands.

Dan Schneider, a spokesperson for Hill, told NOTUS in a statement, “We remain committed to advancing a bicameral housing bill that reflects the views of both chambers to President Trump’s desk.”

The tension between the House and Senate over housing policy dates back to last year, when Hill “walked away” from negotiations around housing policy included in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2026 and prevented provisions from a previous housing package from passing in December, according to a senate aide, who spoke to NOTUS in March.

The tensions exploded at House Republicans’ retreat in Doral, Florida, when House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told lawmakers in a closed-door meeting that leadership was ready to shut down the Senate bill: “If the Senate thinks we’re going to take this medicine, we’re not.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday that Trump’s push for House leaders to accept the Senate bill is a positive step. “That’s a good outcome,” Thune said while holding finger guns. “They need to pass it over there. It would be a win.”

The Senate bill passing would be a major feat for Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee. It would be a rare moment where a progressive manages to get legislation passed under a GOP trifecta in Washington.

“The House should pass the bill. The president is right,” Warren told NOTUS on Tuesday. “This bill could pass today if the House would just put it on the floor and vote on it. We need to get started, and if the House has more ideas that they’d like to add, start another bill rolling, but get this bill passed.”

Scott declined to comment on the status of his legislation.