Trump scraps housing bill signing to pressure Senate GOP on SAVE Act

By — Geoff Bennett Geoff Bennett By — Kyle Midura Kyle Midura Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-scraps-housing-bill-signing-to-pressure-senate-gop-on-save-act Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio President Trump upended plans for a major housing bill, refusing to sign legislation that passed Congress with veto-proof majorities. He's trying to press lawmakers to adopt the voting bill known as the SAVE Act. The tactic is familiar. Earlier this year, the president derailed a bipartisan deal on intelligence and surveillance legislation. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Andrew Desiderio. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Amna Nawaz: Welcome to the "News Hour." President Trump has upended Congress' plans for a major housing bill, refusing to sign legislation that passed with veto-proof majorities as he tries to force action on his voting reform agenda. Geoff Bennett: The tactic is familiar. Earlier this year, the president derailed a bipartisan deal on intelligence and surveillance legislation while pressing lawmakers to adopt that controversial voting bill known as the SAVE Act. Now he's using a housing package that many lawmakers expected would be signed into law today as a new point of leverage. Andrew Desiderio covers the Senate for Punchbowl News and joins us now. Andrew, always great to see you. So, the White House had prepared for this signing ceremony. Lawmakers were gathered there on Capitol Hill, and then President Trump says via social media that he's not going to sign the bill after all. You have to tweet up on the screen right there. You were there with the news broke. How did Republican senators react? Andrew Desiderio, Punchbowl News: They were shocked, I mean, dumbfounded. As you mentioned, the president has done this a lot lately where he has blindsided Republican leaders. But a signing ceremony usually happens at the White House. This one was set up in the Capitol Building itself here in what's known as Statuary Hall. They had a stage set up. They had the presidential emblem there, a desk for him to sign it. And just about an hour before he was supposed to leave for the Capitol, he put this message on TRUTH Social, saying that he wasn't going to sign it into law until the Senate and the House sent him, as you mentioned, the SAVE America Act, which is legislation that has virtually no chance of passing either chamber, frankly, at this point, but especially in the Senate, where the filibuster exists. And what's fascinating about this particular rift between Senate Republicans and the president is that the president was already scheduled to attend a lunch meeting with Senate Republicans right after the signing ceremony, which he came to anyway. And the conversation ended up devolving into mostly an argument between himself and Senator