Can GOP Conservatives Block Elizabeth Warren?

Conservative House Republicans are emerging as a bulwark against burgeoning left-wing populism at Washington. Feature, say, the opposition in the lower chamber to the so-called housing reform bill that passed the Senate by 89 to 10. A brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the bill endangers free market principles in an attempt to promote affordability. Among its faults is an attempt to bar private investors from owning single-family homes. The Senate legislation would “prevent any investor that owns at least 350 homes from buying more,” NPR reports. A pet project of Ms. Warren, this proposal was parrotted by President Trump, who in January signed an executive order on this head. “People live in homes, not corporations,” the president decreed, announcing a ban on investor purchases of single-family residences. Yet meddling in the free market is hardly a viable path toward more affordability. “We put this bill together with the deep-seated belief that it is families who should live in homes and that’s what homes are for,” Ms. Warren croons. “They’re not there simply as investment vehicles for Wall Street private equity.” In a capitalist economy, though, the invisible hand of the free market is the basis for allocating resources. Where is the logic in fencing off any form of private property from investment, whatever the source? Section 901 of the measure passed by the Senate is titled “Homes Are For People, Not Corporations.” The bill would foreclose home ownership for any “investment fund, corporation, general or limited partnership, limited liability company, joint venture, association, or other for-profit entity.” Putting aside the lack of economic logic of the proposal, would this attempt to crimp the rights of corporations pass constitutional muster? After all, under the 14th Amendment, corporations have long been understood to possess the same rights under the law as persons. It’s a principle that stems from English common law. Representative Richard McCormick of Georgia grasps the principles at stake. “When is it constitutional for us as a government to tell a business when they take the risk, they go out, they build something that we’re going to take away your right to do with it,” he asks. A “ridiculous overreach of the government,” Mr. McCormick sums up Ms. Warren’s proposal. “The more we get ourselves inserted into people and how they run their businesses, the worse it goes.” Congressman Keith Self of Texas cautions that “there are some really socialist policies” in the housing bill “that we’ve got to strip off.” Indeed, some of the other elements of the Senate bill, like streamlining housing regulations, could prove beneficial.Yet the effort to stifle private-sector investment in housing is of a piece with other measures that suggest a convergence between right and left on economic questions. Feature the push to stifle the free market by imposing price controls on drugs, a sure path to curbing pharmaceutical innovation. Or the call to cap interest rates on credit cards, which, economists Stephen Moore and Veronique de Rugy caution, could cut off millions from access to credit.It is jarring to see Republicans, long the party of free enterprise, warm to these intrusions into the workings of the private sector, the engine of America’s prosperity. Ms. Warren’s proposals echo Spain’s socialist premier, Pedro Sánchez, who demanded Saturday to “twist the arm of the people who think they are completely untouchable,” railing against “those who speculate with houses of people.” Is this where Mr. Trump and the GOP want to go?

Can GOP Conservatives Block Elizabeth Warren?

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