With national and swing state polls indicating support between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump is fairly even, casual political observers could be forgiven for not realizing that House and Senate races are also tight; there could even be a historic switch in the House and Senate majorities this November.
On March 11, President Joe Biden submitted his FY 2025 Proposed Budget to Congress. Unlike prior year budget proposals, this one is a setup for an unavoidable tax debate in 2025, when many of the tax provisions enacted during the Trump administration in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 will expire.
Local permitting processes vary and too often become unnecessarily delayed. Because of this, NAIOP chapters across the U.S. are using Georgia’s legislation as a template in advocating for reforms that bring predictability, consistency and transparency to the local permitting processes within their respective states.
Last week, hundreds of NAIOP members from the U.S. and Canada attended NAIOP’s Chapter Leadership and Legislative Retreat (CL&LR) in Washington, D.C., with the conference culminating in countless meetings with their elected representatives to advocate on behalf of the commercial real estate industry.
In any year with divided government, it is a challenge to achieve agreements on appropriations and tax policy, but this Congress is also faced with challenges of reaching agreements on border security, along with assistance to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine. Margins in both the House and the Senate are narrow and the presidential election year shortens the legislative timeline before congressional re-election campaigns start in earnest.
As 2023 comes to a close and we look ahead to the challenges facing commercial real estate in 2024, it is clear that persistent advocacy on the public policy front will be more important than ever to ensure that the interests of NAIOP members are protected. This is true of course at the state and local level, but it is at the federal level, where government gridlock has been most on display, that maintaining our strong advocacy will be critical.
For the first December in recent years, Congress is no longer facing a government shutdown deadline. Prior to the Thanksgiving recess, Congress approved a two-tiered appropriations package. This “laddered” approach primarily funds domestic programs (such as housing, agriculture, transportation and infrastructure) until Jan. 19, 2024, and the remaining programs, including defense and homeland security, until Feb. 2, 2024. Year-end 2023 is not without its share of must-pass legislation, however.
NAIOP hosted a Texas summit meeting in Dallas last week for members of our Austin, Houston, and North Texas chapters to discuss the major issues facing the industry in the state. The summit provided members with the opportunity to engage in discussions on major trends and topics of importance to NAIOP and the commercial real estate industry.
Following three weeks of negotiations and squabbling, House Republicans elected Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson to serve as the 56th Speaker of the House. This was a difficult time for House Republicans, who struggled to find a new speaker after eight of their members joined all House Democrats to abruptly oust McCarthy on Oct. 3.
On Tuesday, Kevin McCarthy became the first speaker in the history of the United States to be removed from his office when eight Republicans, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, and all 208 Democrats present in the House voted to support the motion to vacate. The final vote was 216- 210.
