Senator Marshall will be meeting with President Trump Wednesday, and he expects the SAVE Act will likely come up. He said if there is one bill he’d like to see passed in his Senate career, this would be it.
“I think election integrity is so important to the future of the republic,” the Senator told Kansas reporters in a Tuesday morning media call. Getting the SAVE Act passed would require 60 votes in the Senate… there are about 50 Republican votes for it now… and while breaking a likely filibuster would be difficult, Marshall and President Trump aren’t giving up on it yet.
Marshall said there are four key factors why he in principle supports the Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the Trump Administration. “No nukes, next no “forever wars”, number three keep the Strait (of Hormuz) open, and number four is affordable groceries and gas for Americans.
The senator said while he doesn’t want to be overly optimistic about the chances of a peace deal holding together, he is hopeful. He told Kansas journalists “the talks are going along better than I expected them to, but at the end of the day I realize we may have to bomb them back to kingdom come as my grandma would say. I hope we don’t have to do that”
Another topic Marshall covered during the conference was housing, and the 88-5 passage of a housing bill by the Senate Monday, which he said shows Congress can get something done. The bill streamlines environmental reviews, modernizes rules on manufactured housing, unlocks private investment and empowers community banks, and updates multi-family financing tools to expand housing supply and bring down costs for American Families.
Another key part of the bill imposes limits on hedge fund and Wall Street firms in terms of single-family home ownership, limiting them to a maximum of 350 units, one of the compromises in the bill.
The Senator said perhaps the key part of the bill is the regulatory relief, something he’s heard a lot about in Kansas going back to his days as a Rotary District Governor in 2015. It was a big issue then and a big issue now. He explained developers have told him from the time they purchase a green lot until construction starts can take as long as two years.
Marshall added he would encourage local governments to take a similar approach, citing recent efforts undertaken in such Kansas communities as Abilene, Hutchinson, Russell, Salina, and Kansas City, Kansas He pointed out this is something each community will have to solve in their own way.
