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The Hill
an hour ago
- Business
- The Hill
Senate confirms Hurley as under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence
The Senate voted 51-47 Wednesday to confirm John Hurley, President Trump's nominee to serve as under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department. Hurley is the managing partner at Cavalry Asset Management and managing member for TGK Ventures and has been a long-time lecturer in finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) applauded the confirmation. 'I am thrilled to have John on the team as Treasury's under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence,' Bessent said in a statement. 'John's extensive private sector experience, military service and previous service on President Trump's Intelligence Advisory Board make him uniquely qualified to serve the American people in this very important role.' Scott said Hurley would help the administration fight money laundering and terrorist financing. 'The Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence is one of our government's most important national security and intelligence arms, and I'm confident John Hurley will work diligently to protect the integrity of our markets and hold malign foreign actors accountable,' Scott said in a statement. Hurley also serves on the board of governors of the Middle East Institute, the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution and the board of trustees of the American Enterprise Institute. He graduated with honors from Princeton where he served as chairman of the Daily Princetonian, the campus newspaper. Sens. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) and Katie Britt (R-Ala.), two other members of the Senate Banking Committee, also praised Hurley. 'In an age of increased competition and escalating geopolitical tension, Under Secretary Hurley's experience will be pivotal in advancing U.S. foreign policy objectives and protecting our economic system from abuse by bad actors,' Hagerty said. Britt said she looks forward to working with Hurley on 'our aligned priority of returning to a maximum pressure sanctions regime — to cut off terrorist financing networks and advance U.S. national security.'
Vox
2 days ago
- Business
- Vox
Cutting five words from this law could make houses cheaper
is a policy correspondent for Vox covering social policy. She focuses on housing, schools, homelessness, child care, and abortion rights, and has been reporting on these issues for more than a decade. There exists an almost absurdly simple fix that could help ease the housing crisis. It would cost the government nothing, require deleting just five words from a 50-year-old federal law, and has enjoyed quiet support from housing researchers and leaders for decades. The target is an obscure regulation that requires every manufactured home to be built on a 'permanent chassis' — a steel trailer frame that can attach to wheels. The idea was that the chassis was necessary — even after the home was installed and the wheels taken off — because manufactured houses, which trace their roots to World War II trailers, could theoretically be moved. Yet by the mid-1970s, most never left their original site, and the chassis remained unused, notable only as a design feature that made the homes stick out. Getting rid of this 'permanent chassis' mandate could make manufactured homes — already home to 21 million Americans, most of whom earn under $50,000 a year — more attractive, more socially accepted, and even more affordable than they already are. Roughly 100,000 new manufactured homes are produced each year, but production is down sharply from the 1970s, just before the rule took effect. With 152 existing factories already capable of producing these types of homes, industry leaders say striking the chassis requirement could help scale up manufacturing by hundreds of thousands of houses, especially if paired with zoning reforms. The policy tweak could offer real relief for the housing crunch, especially for first-time buyers and older adults looking to downsize. Although the change seemed simple to implement, lawmakers failed to amend the mandate for over three decades. There wasn't overwhelming opposition to the proposal, but just enough resistance to nudge politicians toward issues more likely to boost their political capital. But as the housing crisis has intensified nationwide, pressure on Congress to use one of its few direct tools to boost housing supply has become harder to ignore. Advocates of eliminating the chassis rule think victory might finally be in reach: The Senate Banking Committee is expected to take up the issue in a hearing later this month, as part of a housing package sponsored by Tim Scott, the committee's Republican chair. The permanent chassis rule and its history offer a window into how smart ideas that could solve real problems can still languish for decades in the fog of federal process. But it also shows what it takes to move even obvious reforms from inertia to action. The rule Nearly 40 years ago, policy experts began to notice a troubling trend: For the first time since the Great Depression, homeownership rates were dropping and home prices were going up, partly due to higher interest rates. In 1990, the typical first-time homebuyer earned about $23,400 annually — enough to afford a home up to $59,600, according to the Los Angeles Times, citing data from the National Association of Realtors. But the median price of a new single-family home was roughly $129,900, and existing homes weren't much cheaper, with a median price of $97,500. But there was a bright spot: manufactured homes. Built in factories on assembly lines, these homes benefit from standardized materials, streamlined labor, and weather-controlled conditions, making them significantly less expensive than traditional site-built housing. Though long associated with dingy mobile trailers, by the late 20th century many manufactured houses were nearly indistinguishable from site-built ones, offering full kitchens, pitched roofs, and front porches. Nearly 13 million people lived in them. Consumers buying manufactured homes 'are demonstrating a preference for new construction that is less spacious, has a simpler design with fewer amenities, and uses less expensive materials,' read one HUD-commissioned report from 1998. 'Any perception that consumers today would not be interested in new conventionally-built starter homes with very basic designs and fewer 'extras' is mistaken.' Yet despite evident consumer demand, the chassis mandate held the sector back. It made production more expensive, restricted architecture flexibility, and gave state and local governments a pretext to exclude the homes through zoning. The permanent chassis feature allowed cities to more easily ban the housing in a given area for being 'mobile' structures, even when they were permanently installed. The chassis requirement originated in the Mobile Home Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1974, Congress's first and only national housing code. Lawmakers justified the need for federal standards both to streamline manufacturing and to protect consumers, especially from fire hazards. The law was modeled on the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, reflecting the industry's roots in homes on wheels. RIVERSIDE, CA – SEPTEMBER 23: Workers weld a chassis together at a Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc. factory on September 23, 2005 in Riverside, California. Getty Images Yet many advocates believe that the chassis rule was included as sabotage by the powerful National Association of Home Builders, which saw manufactured housing as a fast-growing rival to its site-built homes. 'They put it in the original law in 1974 because they were worried about a competitive disadvantage and it's lived there ever since,' said Lesli Gooch, the head of the Manufactured Housing Institute, the largest trade group for the industry. Regardless of whether one believes the site-built housing industry was originally responsible for hobbling manufactured housing with the chassis rule, it's indisputable that NAHB was one of the most ardent champions for keeping it there. The fight Following a failed lawsuit in the mid-1980s to eliminate the rule, the first major legislative attempt came in 1990, when Rep. John Hiler, a Republican from Indiana, introduced amendments to the law. Despite backing from the manufactured housing industry and initial subcommittee approval, the effort ultimately died. Democrats caved to consumer groups concerned that striking the requirement could lead to lowering other safety standards and to opposition by both the site-built housing industry and HUD. Whether through bureaucratic complacency or regulatory capture by traditional homebuilders, the federal housing agency rarely pressed, and in some cases actively opposed, amending the law, despite its own research detailing again and again the problems a permanent chassis posed for manufactured housing. Four years later, the National Commission on Manufactured Housing formally recommended eliminating the chassis requirement, affirming that the homes could be built just as safely without one. (Homes without a chassis would still be subject to all HUD construction standards.) But the report arrived just months before the 1994 midterm elections, and Congress was already consumed by fierce partisan battles over budget and crime bills. Some critics believe the two main trade groups — the Manufactured Housing Institute and the less prominent Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform —often failed to be as politically aggressive about removing the chassis rule as they could have been. When I asked Gooch why it's taken so long for Congress to tackle this issue, she acknowledged her group didn't really start applying pressure until eight years ago. 'In 2017, I had a dialogue with our technical activities committee, and we said, 'Okay, what is it that we need to do to move manufactured housing forward?' and the chassis issue was raised,' Gooch recalled. It was then, she said, that MHI started to really discuss how to change the legislation. MHI now takes credit for neutralizing opposition from traditional homebuilders, and notes some of its biggest members are also members of NAHB, which likely helped too. Other advocates I spoke to argue that NAHB just is in a weaker place politically to fight these kinds of reforms than in the past, given the scale of the housing crisis. Liz Thompson, a spokesperson for NAHB, told me that while her group is not 'publicly lobbying' against changing the chassis rule, they do still have 'concerns' that the manufactured housing sector is being held to less stringent wind and energy standards, creating 'an economic disadvantage' for their site-built home members. Mike Kinsella, who leads Up for Growth, a federal housing supply advocacy group, said his lobbying over the last eight years has led him to conclude there's no such thing as a straightforward fix in Congress. 'Even the most practical and well-reasoned proposals face uphill battles and significant delays,' he said. Many housing advocates working at the state level are used to a more linear legislative process, where bills move predictably through committees to a governor's desk, Kinsella noted. But in Congress, where standalone bills rarely advance, the whole process becomes a more intense battle of competing priorities on larger, must-pass packages. So for decades, the issue has languished, too technical to generate public pressure, too threatening for quiet passage, and not high-profile enough for any politician to really champion it. New urgency to solve the housing crisis Manufactured housing has never lacked a compelling economic case — but today, it's become far harder to dismiss. Factory-built homes stand out as one of the most obvious ways to move the needle on affordability—and one of the few housing tools within the federal government's reach. That it doesn't deepen the deficit is an added plus. The buzzy 'abundance' movement, fueled by Ezra Klein (a Vox co-founder) and Derek Thompson's bestselling book, has also helped shift the politics around regulatory reform — including most recently in California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to weaken a state environmental law long blamed for blocking housing construction. And Barack Obama, who spoke about the need to build more housing at the Democratic National Convention last August, came out harder this month with a blunt assessment, telling donors that 'I don't want to know your ideology, because you can't build anything. It does not matter.' Removing the old rule? Even with everyone supposedly on board, legislative reform can still move surprisingly slowly. In 2023, Republican Rep. John Rose of Tennessee introduced a bill to strike the five words 'built on a permanent chassis' from the definition of a manufactured home in federal law. But MHI withdrew its support. The trade group, which represents not just manufacturers but also lenders, retailers, and insurers, cited the need to further study the proposal to assess potential ripple effects that could hurt state and local players. This vague stance puzzled advocates, given that any federal change would still include a transition period for states and cities to align their regulations. Similarly stymied — though for different reasons — was Sen. Scott's Road to Housing Act last year, a package of bills aimed at boosting affordability that included striking the chassis rule. Then-Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, blocked the package because it also included a bill that could have required minor changes from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and possibly the Dodd-Frank Act — a can of worms Brown preferred not to open. Brown lost his election in November, and Scott now sits as chair. Scott's bill proposes a somewhat softer version of Rose's 2023 legislation. Scott's would offer states flexibility around chassis requirements, with the idea that states would have time to harmonize whatever other laws and rules they needed to. Though this offers a less immediate fix, most advocates are cautiously hopeful about this state opt-in strategy, so long as it doesn't include legislative poison pills — meaning provisions that would make the policy unworkable in practice. 'We're open to multiple approaches, we just want to make sure that there aren't any drafting errors in a state-by-state certification approach that might permanently prevent states from certifying their compliance…in the event that they miss their first certification deadline,' said Alex Armlovich, a Niskanen Center housing analyst who has been advocating for the change. Sean Roberts, the CEO of Villa, a company that produces factory-built accessory dwelling units, says removing the permanent chassis rule will result in more homes getting built across the board. 'People could afford the homes more easily. Kind of everybody wins, you know, there's not a whole lot of downside to it,' he said. 'So we're very supportive of it, and we see it as being a really positive thing.'
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump signs stablecoin bill into law in key crypto milestone
President Trump signed the first major cryptocurrency bill into law Friday, marking a key milestone for an industry that has found a crucial ally in the president. He touted the GENIUS Act, which establishes a regulatory framework for dollar-backed digital tokens called stablecoins, as 'a giant step to cement the American dominance of global finance and crypto technology.' 'This could be perhaps the greatest revolution in financial technology since the birth of the internet itself,' he said at the signing ceremony, flanked by congressional and industry leaders. The stablecoin bill faced a lengthy and sometimes halting path to the White House. After sailing through the Senate Banking Committee earlier this year, the GENIUS Act — Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins ACT — hit its first snag in the upper chamber in May, when a group of crypto-friendly Democrats pulled their support from the legislation and blocked a procedural vote on the floor. Several weeks of negotiations produced an updated version of the bill that won back support from most of the crypto-friendly contingent on the left. After initially promising an open amendment process, GOP leadership scrapped plans to move the bill via so-called regular order when several controversial amendments threatened to derail progress. The GENIUS Act ultimately passed the Senate by a 68-30 vote in late June. Trump, who has become a key ally to the crypto industry in his second term, urged the House to quickly pass a 'clean' stablecoin bill and send it to his desk. The president's request frustrated efforts by some in the House who had hoped to tie the GENIUS Act to a broader crypto framework, allowing the lower chamber to put its stamp on legislation and preventing additional crypto legislation from losing momentum. House leadership ultimately opted to move the GENUIS Act to the floor alongside two other crypto bills without formally tying them together in what it labeled 'crypto week.' However, crypto week proved much more tumultuous than expected. A group of hard-line Republicans blocked a procedural vote Tuesday, bringing the House floor to a standstill and leaving the trio of crypto bills in limbo. The key frustration for the GOP holdouts was the lack of a clear pathway into law for a measure blocking the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). One of the three bills up for consideration in the House was the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency. However, the bill seems unlikely to garner enough support to clear the Senate. Trump reached a deal with the hard-liners late Tuesday in which they agreed to support the procedural vote in exchange for adding anti-CBDC provisions to a third crypto bill — the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. That legislation is the House's crypto market structure bill, laying out regulatory rules of the road for the broader market by drawing bright lines between oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Trump recalled his late-night push to get the hard-liners on board at Friday's bill signing. 'I am so tired of making phone calls at 2 ,3, 4 o'clock in the morning, getting calls from our great Speaker, 'Sir, we have 12 hard no's.' I say, 'Mike, Mike, it's 2 o'clock in the morning,'' he said. However, the president's deal failed to appease all the holdouts and created new pushback from members of the House Financial Services Committee. A procedural vote remained open on the floor for more than nine hours Wednesday, breaking the record for longest House vote. After hours of negotiations, GOP leadership reached a new deal with the various factions of the conference to add the anti-CBDC language to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), boosting its chances of reaching Trump's desk by tying it to the must-pass legislation. The House voted 308-122 to pass the GENIUS Act on Thursday, with 102 Democrats supporting the legislation. Twelve Republicans, including several of the original hard-line group, voted against it. The chamber also passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in a 294-134 vote, while the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act cleared the House in a 218-210 vote Thursday. The GENIUS Act's signing marks a key win for the crypto industry, which has seen its circumstances improve significantly under the second Trump administration. 'This signing is a massive validation of your hard work and your pioneering spirit and your ability to never give up, because a lot of people would have given up two, three years ago,' Trump said to crypto leaders Friday. The industry had a tenuous relationship at best with the Biden administration. Former SEC Chair Gary Gensler brought numerous enforcement actions against crypto firms, which accused him of failing to set clear rules and attempting to regulate by enforcement. Trump embraced crypto during his 2024 campaign, despite once dismissing it as a 'scam.' After taking office, he made the industry a key priority, naming David Sacks as his artificial intelligence and crypto czar, inviting crypto leaders to the White House and signing an executive order creating a bitcoin strategic reserve and digital asset stockpile. His administration also vowed to pass two key pieces of legislation long sought by the industry — a stablecoin bill and a crypto market structure bill. While administration officials initially sought to get both across the finish line before Congress leaves for its August recess, it became increasingly clear that only the GENIUS Act would be able to clear both chambers. The White House and key GOP senators have since said they hope to pass crypto market structure legislation by the end of September, as the upper chamber moves at a slower pace. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate Republican campaign chief says Trump's megabill not polling as well as hoped
The News National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott said Friday he's urging colleagues to tout pieces of the GOP's new tax-and-spending law, rather than the whole proposal, to help bolster its standing with the public. The newly enacted megabill includes massive tax cuts and credits as well as extra spending on defense and stricter immigration policies, offsetting the cost of both with cuts to social safety-net programs. Democrats have zeroed in on those cuts, including to Medicaid and food assistance, as they look to reclaim congressional seats in next year's midterms. Right now, the polling on what President Donald Trump dubbed the 'big, beautiful bill' is 'breaking even, which is not where I want to keep it,' Scott told reporters. 'However, the polling that I've seen has shown that when you talk about the component parts of the bill, the bill goes up in popularity significantly,' the South Carolinian added, saying he's encouraging fellow Republicans 'to spend their time talking about the big, beautiful bill as an answer for most of the issues and concerns that we have around the country.' 'That's how we make this bill more popular, because people love the benefits that are in the bill. They have not had the opportunity to understand all those benefits,' he said. 'President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill is an encapsulation of the countless campaign promises he was specifically elected to enact,' White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. 'He has kept his promise, and the One Big Beautiful Bill is full of extremely popular policies — tax cuts for working families, no taxes on tips or overtime or Social Security, a secure border, modernized air traffic control, and more.' Know More Scott, who also chairs the Senate Banking Committee, pointed to lower taxes for small businesses; an expanded Child Tax Credit; tax breaks for tips and overtime; more spending on defense; and energy provisions as examples of popular components in the new law. He also offered notable candor as he referenced Trump's first-term tax cuts, which are now permanent under the new law — taking issue with Republicans' sales job on tax cuts in 2017 and 2018. 'That is really important,' Scott said. 'We didn't do a very good job in 2018 of selling the [initial] tax cuts, and I think that cost us some seats. This time around, I'm encouraging us to sell the permanence of the tax cuts.' Notable We took at Scott's nascent chairmanship of the NRSC back in January.
The Hill
5 days ago
- Business
- The Hill
Trump seals the deal on stablecoin bill
He touted the GENIUS Act, which establishes a regulatory framework for dollar-backed digital tokens called stablecoins, as 'a giant step to cement the American dominance of global finance and crypto technology.' 'This could be perhaps the greatest revolution in financial technology since the birth of the internet itself,' he said at the signing ceremony, flanked by congressional and industry leaders. The stablecoin bill faced a lengthy and sometimes halting path to the White House. After sailing through the Senate Banking Committee earlier this year, the GENIUS Act — Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins ACT — hit its first snag in the upper chamber in May, when a group of crypto-friendly Democrats pulled their support from the legislation and blocked a procedural vote on the floor. Several weeks of negotiations produced an updated version of the bill that won back support from most of the crypto-friendly contingent on the left. After initially promising an open amendment process, GOP leadership scrapped plans to move the bill via so-called regular order when several controversial amendments threatened to derail progress. The GENIUS Act ultimately passed the Senate by a 68-30 vote in late June. Trump, who has become a key ally to the crypto industry in his second term, urged the House to quickly pass a 'clean' stablecoin bill and send it to his desk. The president's request frustrated efforts by some in the House who had hoped to tie the GENIUS Act to a broader crypto framework, allowing the lower chamber to put its stamp on legislation and preventing additional crypto legislation from losing momentum. House leadership ultimately opted to move the GENUIS Act to the floor alongside two other crypto bills without formally tying them together in what it labeled 'crypto week.' However, crypto week proved much more tumultuous than expected. A group of hardline Republicans blocked a procedural vote Tuesday, bringing the House floor to a standstill and leaving the trio of crypto bills in limbo.
