Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins will testify before House appropriators next week after lawmakers voted to withhold funding for the agency if he didn’t, according to two people familiar with the hearing that has yet to be officially announced.

“They were just being ornery,” Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), who chairs the VA appropriations subcommittee, said of the Trump administration in an interview Thursday afternoon.

The House plans to vote Friday to pass the annual bill that funds Collins’ department. Within that measure, lawmakers included a provision to withhold 25 percent of the department’s operating budget until Collins testifies before both chambers.

The secretary already appeared before Senate appropriators last month.

A spokesperson for the VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House on Thursday warned that the House’s amended bipartisan housing bill lawmakers plan to vote on next week may contain “serious policy concerns or implementation challenges.”

“The bill is under review. New provisions were added before the administration had a chance to review or provide technical assistance,” a White House official said in a statement to Blue Light News.

The House’s bill, released late Wednesday, is an amended version of the Senate-passed housing affordability legislation that received 89 votes in the upper chamber in March and earned the endorsement of the White House. Both bills broadly aim to increase housing supply and homeownership and have become a key policy goal for both parties going into a midterm election season dominated by affordability concerns.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday that the clearest path to getting legislation to the president’s desk is for the House to pass the Senate’s bill. He said the Senate language “was carefully constructed to get at what the president wanted to address.”

“We’ve done what we can do — it’s in the court of the House,” Thune said to reporters.

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott and ranking member Elizabeth Warren, architects of the Senate-passed package, on Thursday continued to urge the House to vote on the legislation as-is.

“The president of the United States has said he supports the Senate bill,” the Massachusetts Democrat told reporters. “We could make this law and go forward. Enough delay, let’s get this bill on through.”

“As Chairman Scott has said many times, it is time for the House to support President Trump and pass the 21st Century Road to Housing Act unamended,” said Jeff Naft, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Republican.

The lower-chamber’s version of the housing bill is expected to receive enough bipartisan support in the House to pass next week under an expedited process, addresses industry concerns and still keeps the Senate’s version “intact,” a GOP House Financial Services Committee aide said during a call with reporters Thursday.

House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters reached an agreement on changes, according to both the aide and Herline Mathieu, a spokesperson for the California Democrat.

There were concerns that the Senate’s language limiting so-called institutional investors in the housing market could curtail investment in the housing industry. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were especially concerned with a provision that would require single-family homes built as long-term rentals be sold to individual homebuyers within seven years.

Hill said the House bill addresses concerns from hundreds of lawmakers and stakeholders.

“This bipartisan amendment reflects that feedback,” the Arkansas Republican said in a statement Thursday. “It cuts unnecessary barriers to new home construction, modernizes [Housing and Urban Development] programs, and allows banks to more freely deploy funding into their communities. We must get this right – and I am committed to working hard to do that.”

Jordain Carney and Jasper Goodman contributed to this report.

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith: Mr. Bipartisanship?

Speaking at a conference Thursday sponsored by the Tax Council Policy Institute, the reliably partisan tax chieftain struck a conciliatory tone in saying he wants to spend the rest of this year working with Democrats on a number of issues.

The Missouri Republican had kind words to say about his panel’s ranking Democrat Rep. Richard Neal (“effective”), Alabama Democratic tax writer Terri Sewell (“a jewel”) and especially Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Finance committee.

“We’re not from the same cloth, but I love Senator Wyden — I really do,” said Smith, adding they’re supposed to have lunch next Monday. “He’s a good, good man.”

Smith had little to say about the third reconciliation package House Republicans hope to put together and, at one point, called it “reconciliation 10.0 or whatever.”

He emphasized instead areas where he said he could work with Democrats.

“We can do things on health care, trade and tax from a bipartisan perspective, and I intend to do that in the next few months,” he told conference attendees.

“Everything that we move forward on Ways and Means needs to be bipartisan, because I want to legislate,” Smith continued. “I don’t want to just like pass things just to pass things. I want them to become law.”

It’s a notable shift for Smith, who was one of the architects behind Republicans’ hyperpartisan tax cuts pushed into law last year, and comes even as his House colleagues still hope to pass yet another party-line reconciliation bill later this summer, in addition to the one now pending in the Senate that’s focused on funding immigration enforcement.

Smith noted that he had just arrived from a closed-door meeting with Democratic tax writers to discuss cryptocurrency tax issues. He’s spent months working on a still-unreleased plan to revise the tax code to account for the rise of digital assets, though he’s said he won’t move it without support from Democrats.

Smith has also been pushing to move a package of uncontroversial measures aimed at improving tax administration.