🗓️ What’s Up Next
Congress
The House and Senate are in session this week.
The PA General Assembly
The House and Senate are in session this week.
Want a deeper dive?
If there’s a topic you’re interested in our analysis of, feel free to drop us a line. We’ll be doing deeper dives on the big stuff as it happens, but we’re always happy to hear what you want to know.
Welcome back to the Bellevue Compass. Developments in the Iran conflict and Congress’s housing bill are taking top priority in the news this week. We break it all down below.
The Latest on Iran
There have been significant developments on all fronts of the Iran conflict, both at home and abroad. Just days after President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding in France to begin the process of ending the war, the Senate voted 50-48 to pass a resolution that demands the withdrawal of armed forces from hostilities against Iran. Passed earlier this month by the House, the Senate’s passage of the bill marks the first time both chambers have united to oppose the ongoing conflict. It took ten attempts.
The bill’s passage came as four Republicans broke ranks to join the Democratic majority: Sens Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Paul Rand of Kentucky. The lone Democrat in opposition was Sen. John Fetterman. The passage, in part, may have been due to a few Republican absences—Senators Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky both missed the vote, which would have shown a likely 50-50 tie.
The White House dismissed the vote as symbolic and ineffective, as the bill doesn’t go to the president’s desk to receive a veto or a signing under the 1973 War Powers Act. In the meantime, the week started off with Vice President Vance leading the US delegation to Switzerland for talks to end the war. Vance has returned to the US, but talks continue with Iranian officials on Iran’s nuclear program.
The Congressional Breakdown
The Senate passed the long-awaited 21st Century ROAD to Housing bill on Monday, marking the end of a months-long debate and back-and-forth over its contents. The issues on the table were language establishing new restrictions on large Wall Street investors purchasing single-family homes, a ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a new digital currency, and community banking deregulation initiatives, to name a few.
GOP hardliners railed against the bill, still hoping at the eleventh hour to insert language related to the SAVE Act—the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act”, legislation that would require citizens to show valid government IDs to vote. Ultimately, the fringe push didn’t prevail. The House passed the bill as-is on Tuesday. In late-breaking developments, President Trump is refusing to sign the bill until the SAVE Act is passed. (President Trump has also tied the passage of the SAVE Act to the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which so far has been met with resistance.)
If signed, the bill would increase the U.S. housing supply by:
Streamlining environmental reviews to speed the process of home construction;
In conjunction, it would mandate that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offer guidance on how communities could reform zoning and land-use policies to reduce barriers to development.
Expanding the definition of “manufactured housing”, which would “unlock” a segment of the housing market made cheaper and easier by mass-producing homes in factories before transporting them to their sites;
Providing various grants and loans aimed at supporting the development of new housing or the improvement of existing properties;
Increasing certain banks’ Public Welfare Investment cap, allowing them to invest in more low-income and affordable housing communities.
The bill also seeks to help more Americans rent and buy homes by:
Creating a program for small-dollar mortgages to help buyers obtain lower-cost homes;
Helping veterans access potential housing opportunities;
Restricting the number of single-family homes that large institutional investors can own and requiring them to report their controlled properties (the goal here is to promote homeownership opportunities for American families rather than corporations).
We’ll go into more detail about how the housing bill will impact local markets in the Pennsylvania Impact section.
The Sector Breakdown
AI: The bipartisan deal on kids’ online safety that the House Energy and Commerce Committee rolled out Monday threatens to derail hopes of passing major tech and AI legislation this year, reports Politico.
Food/Agriculture: A federal judge has blocked bans on the usage of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for soda enacted by the Trump administration.
Healthcare: l U.S. citizens on a cruise ship that was the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak are out of quarantine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reports The Hill.
Energy: The Trump administration will loan $17.5 billion out to try to speed up the construction of 10 large-scale nuclear power plants, according to Energy Department leaders.
The Pennsylvania Impact
Overall, the passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act could be a positive for Pennsylvania. The bill would provide a federal boost to the state’s ongoing efforts to increase affordable housing units, bolstering Governor Shapiro’s Pennsylvania Housing Action Plan, which seeks to build and preserve 450,000 new housing units by 2035. The bill’s focus on lowering costs and cutting red tape would likely reduce regulatory burdens and long lead times for affordable housing projects in the state.
Similar to the Housing Action Plan, the federal bill focuses on preserving existing housing and building new units. Pennsylvania could see that impact in programs that help families to maintain their homes. Additionally, the provision barring large institutional investors could be significant in PA, particularly in neighborhoods where investment firms have been active.
The Title 6 section of the bill focuses solely on veterans. Pennsylvania’s former service members might see an increase in loan options and eligible housing programs, as well as fewer barriers to income eligibility for the HUD-VASH program.
Generally speaking, Pennsylvania might see positive effects—importantly, in the mid- and long term rather than the short term—of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.
What We’re Watching
Did you know? The first paper mill in America was established in 1690 by William Rittenhouse near Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Till next time,