The White House wants to eliminate housing funds. Republicans aren’t having it.

Republican lawmakers are publicly criticizing White House proposals to scrap federal programs that help build and rehabilitate housing for low-income Americans ahead of a midterm election dominated by affordability frustrations.

President Donald Trump’s proposed budget last month suggested entirely cutting housing and community development funds used by state and local governments to improve neighborhood conditions and boost housing supply.

As Capitol Hill kicks off its own budget season, Republicans have advanced a spending bill retaining the grants and are working with Democrats to pass housing affordability legislation that would build on those programs.

“I am disappointed to see [the Office of Management and Budget] propose the elimination of these important programs,” Senate Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee chair Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) told the department’s Secretary Scott Turner at a hearing last week reviewing the administration’s request to cut $10.7 billion from his budget — a 13 percent reduction to its discretionary spending.

The cost of living is a defining issue in the 2026 elections. Congress is hoping housing affordability will be a bipartisan project it can tackle before the midterms. And Republicans are working to show they are focused on Americans’ economic wellbeing.

The president’s budget proposal seeks to entirely eliminate long-standing HUD programs including the Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnerships. Those programs provide billions in flexible funding that states and localities can use to improve neighborhood conditions and boost housing supply.

The White House, OMB and HUD did not return requests for comment.

The administration argued in its proposed budget that the grant programs have been misused to fund ideologically liberal initiatives, citing projects that prioritized energy sustainability or included diversity, equity and inclusion goals.

But congressional GOP appropriators are painting a different picture.

“I can tell you from where I sit in West Virginia, it has been a very effective program,” said Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito at the Senate hearing with Turner this month.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) dropped in on a House Transportation-HUD subcommittee meeting and reminded his colleagues to “remember the power of the appropriation committee is here, and we will make those decisions.”

“I can assure you, we're not going to sustain cuts of that kind of magnitude in these programs,” he added, referring to popular bipartisan block grants as well as funding for Native American housing.

House Republicans have subsequently advanced a draft HUD budget this week that retains the grants, although it recommended lowering HOME’s funding level next fiscal year.

House Transportation-HUD appropriations chair Steve Womack (R-Ark.) told POLITICO that the federal budget is “going to need to be bipartisan, and anybody that fails to realize that is just not living in reality.”

Mike Wallace, a legislative director with the National League of Cities, said the grants are popular across the aisle in part because of their flexibility and broad application to communities of varying sizes across the country. Republican and Democratic lawmakers hear from local governments and community nonprofits about how those funds contribute to developments in their districts.

“Members have to know, ‘What’s the benefit to my district?’” Wallace said. “If they can see it, that makes it a lot easier.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), an appropriator and a member of the Banking Committee that oversees HUD, has advocated to utilize Community Development Block Grant funds to incentivize states and localities to promote increased housing supply.

“I think it’s a program worth fixing,” Kennedy said in an interview, when asked what he makes of the administration’s argument that the grant should be eliminated.

Although the termination of these housing programs also appeared in last year’s White House proposal, Trump hasn’t demonstrated deep commitment to the budget cuts. The president is backing a bipartisan housing affordability bill that includes provisions using and updating the grant programs. A version of the legislation overwhelmingly passed the House this past Wednesday.

Still, Democrats say that the suggested cuts prove their argument that Trump is out of touch with the needs of most Americans.

“He mostly cares about the arch and ballroom and other things,” top Democratic appropriator Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) told POLITICO. “He really doesn’t care about what’s happening to the American people.”