Republican senator floats second housing bill amid rift with House

With the House and Senate at odds over housing affordability legislation, Sen. Pete Ricketts pitched a potential path forward Wednesday: pass the Senate’s bill, then enact the House’s changes in a subsequent measure.

“A normal process might involve doing a conference report,” the Nebraska Republican said at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC. That’s what lawmakers in the lower chamber have been calling for.

“Another alternative could be that the House passes our bill, and then we address some of the issues the House has in a different bill,” Ricketts said. “I think that there’s some feedback we’ve gotten on some of the things like the institutional investors that we could pick up in a further iteration.”

The White House has signaled it supports the bill, which includes the president’s proposed ban on institutional investors in housing.

But that language also includes a controversial provision that requires institutional investors to sell any rental properties they build to individuals within seven years, which some industry groups have warned could deplete supply. Already-skeptical House Republicans plus Trump’s own Treasury Department have privately pushed back on the language.

“Let’s not let the perfect become the enemy of the good here; let’s get something done,” Ricketts continued. “If we have to make adjustments to it, we can work on trying to figure out maybe another bill that would come along later this year to kind of fix those things.”