With support for housing bill, Democrats show how governing parties operate
This week, the Republican-led House easily passed a landmark housing bill on a 358-32 vote, following a similarly lopsided 85-5 vote in the GOP-led Senate. The grand total of Democrats voting against the legislation across both chambers? Zero.
As it turns out, the legislative success story was derailed, at least for now, by Donald Trump’s latest tantrum, but there’s another element to the developments that has gone largely overlooked.
In the aftermath of the president’s cancellation of Wednesday’s bill-signing ceremony, The New York Times reported that some congressional Democrats “had been anxious about helping Republicans pass a major housing bill that would give the G.O.P. a notable win on the affordability issues at the center of the midterm campaigns, and dilute Democratic attacks on rising costs.”
A day later, Democratic Rep. Ro Khana of California appeared on MS NOW and emphasized a related point on his party’s support for the housing bill:
Here’s the irony: I got asked by conservatives and some independent journalists, “Why are the Democrats giving Donald Trump a win right before the midterms?” And I said, “You know, Democrats actually do policy.” The fact is that this is going to stop Wall Street from buying up homes; this is going to help us build more homes; and we actually do things because we believe it will help people.
There is no way a Republican Congress would’ve done this for Joe Biden or a Democratic president.
It’s a fair point, but just as notably, it’s an underappreciated one.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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