Tax reform. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Housing policy changes. Managing optics. These were just some of the topics explored Wednesday during a discussion at the Housing Economic Summit hosted by HousingWire at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas.
Bill Killmer, senior vice president for legislative and political affairs at the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), and Jeb Mason, partner at public policy firm Mindset, sat down with HousingWire Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler to discuss the Trump administration’s early impacts on housing policy and the federal government.
The trio also discussed potential moves that could be made considering the wider dynamics in the housing industry, Congress and regulatory agencies.
Growth agenda
Beginning with a pointed question on what the administration has done so far to lower mortgage rates, Mason said he was encouraged by recent comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about his stated focus on the 10-year Treasury yield.
This focus is constructive, but Mason dismissed any idea that there’s an effort to deliberately slow the economy.
“My interpretation is that a lot of what’s going on with Elon Musk and DOGE is part of a real, very public drive toward efficiency and cutting costs,” Mason said, “which is in part designed to signal that we’re serious about belt tightening and keeping Treasurys under control. I think that’s positive.”
Killmer added that the markets are paying close attention to what’s emerging from the White House, and he referenced old remarks from James Carville, a political commentator and adviser to former President Bill Clinton.
“I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter,” Carville told the Wall Street Journal in 1993. “But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everyone.”
Avoiding a potential recession and causing one are two different things, Mason said, but the focus of the upcoming tax debate also shows that the White House is focused on a growth agenda. Markets may have gotten ahead of themselves by expecting an inflationary growth agenda. But they’re starting to change their tune as the administration acts.
In recapping the potential questions that housing professionals are likely to ask about economic decisions from the administration, Killmer acknowledged that the interconnectedness of the global economy is likely to play a role.
“How are tariffs going to impact housing? Because there is an impact on construction costs and playing over the long-term contracts,” he said.
Tariffs as negotiating tactic
When asked if the discussion around tariffs was a negotiating tactic on the part of the president, Killmer said there could be some validity to the idea.
The president, Killmer said, likes to litigate these ideas in the public square to gauge reactions, and the inflow of world leaders for meetings at the White House could be seen as evidence of that.
Mason added that the White House knows that what it’s discussing, if wholly implemented, would have negative effects on the economy.
“You can get increased revenue from tariffs, and you can get economic behavioral change, or you can get non-economic behavioral changes,” he said. “The president and his team have said they’re going to get all three, but the reality is you get one or two of those three in any given negotiation.”
The president is concerned about where markets — particularly the stock market — stand. Mason believes the administration is “cognizant that actually implementing everything they’re threatening would have really negative ramifications.”
Tariffs are also a part of the tax debate, Killmer said, marking a first in his memory for such a scenario.
“That would be a means of raising revenue that could potentially be storable and would offset the way that they’re going to move tax policy around,” Killmer said. “Now that the House and Senate seem to be moving, we’re getting ready for that big tax policy debate.”
CFPB actions
But the housing industry is naturally watching developments with the CFPB. While the pause and “winnowing of focus” at the bureau is deliberate, Killmer said, there is not uniform agreement among Republicans on a path forward.
While some Republicans want to dismantle the agency entirely, he pointed out that others are instead seeking smarter and “more transparent” regulation that critics say has not been a hallmark of prior CFPB enforcement efforts.
But “personnel is policy,” Killmer added. The addition of Mark Calabria to the ranks of the agency alongside director-designate Jonathan McKernan — whom Killmer described as “a pretty conventional Republican choice” with deep housing policy experience — shows that the agency could have a more tempered role without actively dismantling it. And any move to actually do away with the agency would require action by Congress.
Mason agreed, saying that McKernan will offer a more pragmatic enforcement attitude compared to Democratic-appointed CFPB leaders like Richard Cordray or Rohit Chopra.
“He understands the need for regulatory clarity and certainty,” Mason said of McKernan. “I think he also recognizes that the CFPB, whether it’s housed in a building labeled ‘CFPB’ or somewhere else, that there’s a need to have competent people take action, to go back and review and revise certain regulations.”
But “compliance is still important,” Killmer added. “We’ve seen these pendulums swing back and forth, and in four years, things could be entirely different.”
