With voters signaling that pocketbook issues are top-of-mind ahead of November’s midterm elections, the White House has floated a series of test balloons aimed at lowering the cost of buying a home, only to see some shot down by Congress, the financial industry or even Trump himself.

The result: About six weeks after he promised “some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history,” the administration has struggled to get new policies in place as mortgage rates have soared. Trump acknowledged the corner he had painted himself into, confused about the very idea of ​​lowering housing costs if it meant hurting homeowners.

“We’re not going to destroy the value of their homes so that someone who doesn’t work hard can buy a home,” he said at a cabinet meeting Thursday.

Trump’s inertia on the issue comes as a majority of Americans say he has not done enough to address their broader concerns over the cost of living. A January CNN-SSRS poll showed that 64% of respondents said that Trump has not done enough to try to reduce the price of everyday goods. A New York Times/Siena poll found that 51% of registered voters think Trump’s policies make life less affordable, compared to 24% who think they make life more affordable.

Housing is a particular sore spot for many Americans.

Home prices rose more than 50% from before the pandemic on November 30, according to the latest reading of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index. Rents increased by about 35% during that period, according to Zillowwhile the median age of first-time home buyers rose to a record 40 years old, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Trump, meanwhile, has been repeatedly sidetracked, failing to articulate the affordability proposals the White House has signaled will be a central plank of his message heading into November.

Read: Trump Continues Trashy Cost of Living Message Pushed by His Team

In front of the president appearance this month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, aides promoted his speech as an opportunity to expand his plans. While Trump discussed some previously announced proposals, he offered no new details and the speech was swallowed up by his comments on Greenland.

Similarly, at a rally this week in Iowa — a key battleground in November’s election — Trump failed to mention several affordability proposals.

He also directly examined one of his administration’s ideas to help Americans buy a home. After the Director of the Economic Council Kevin Hassett expressed a future plan to allow workers to tap into tax-advantaged accounts to fund down payments, the president told reporters, “I’m not a big fan — some people like it.” People should leave their money in the market, he said.

The policies he still supports are the ones he has little power to create.

Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 is designed to prevent large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. But the order is relatively toothless: It leaves it up to the Treasury to determine what is considered a large investor while urging Congress to pass legislation banning such sales.

Even if Congress implements the request, it is unclear what effect such a move would have on prices. Larger institutional investors own less than 1% of the nation’s single-family housing stock, and only between 2% and 3% of its single-family rentals.

It’s not just housing policies that seem to be drifting.

House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected a proposal floated by Trump to a post on social media to set credit card interest rates at 10% for a year as an “out of the box” idea that should not be taken seriously. JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon said the cap will spell “Economic disaster.”Little has been said since.

A move announced by the administration as follows continues a plan with Fannie Mae and Freddie Macthe government-controlled companies that underpin the mortgage market, bought as much as $200 billion in mortgage bonds.

There is roughly $9 trillion worth of agency mortgage loans, so if Fannie and Freddie did all the purchases it would account for more than 2% of the market. The move could lower mortgage rates by up to 25 basis points, or 0.25 percentage points, according to analysts. the current rate on a 30-year fixed loan is 6.1%, according to Freddie Mac.

‘Needle-Mover’

Maybe that’s not enough.

“If the expected effect of this is to lower rates by 25 basis points, that’s not a needle-mover,” said Ed DeMarco, president of the Housing Policy Council and former acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency from 2009 to 2014.

The current FHFA Director Bill Pulte last week dismissed a AP reports that companies have been given the green light to expand their backed securities purchases to have a greater impact on the market. on post on Xhe said “the combined incremental total purchases of MBS will not exceed $200 billion.”

But keeping purchases limited means that mortgage expansion will expand once spending stops, according to Jim Parrott, a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute, who said the move “will only affect the cost of a mortgage as long as investors believe that additional demand is there.

After the funds are spent, “the administration will have to decide if they want to spend another $200 billion to keep prices down,” he added. “It might be hard for them to stop.”