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Congress is under new pressure to keep millions of Americans in their homes after the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s latest eviction moratorium, The Hill reported. The court said in its 6-3 ruling late Thursday night that it is up to Congress to authorize a freeze on evictions, but lawmakers have been unable to make that happen. Members of Congress are urging state and local governments to quickly get federal rental assistance funds into the hands of eligible recipients. They are also weighing additional legislative action to extend the moratorium and speed up the delivery of rental aid. Democrats narrowly control both the House and the Senate, making congressional action challenging on divisive issues like the eviction ban. But they say they want to prevent a wave of evictions at a time when coronavirus cases have increased due in part to the highly contagious delta variant and the number of unvaccinated Americans.

The Federal Reserve will start dialing back its ultra-low-rate policies this year as long as hiring continues to improve, Chair Jerome Powell said on Friday, signaling the beginning of the end of the Fed’s extraordinary response to the pandemic recession, the Associated Press reported. In a speech given virtually to an annual gathering of central bankers and academics, Powell said the economy had improved significantly this year, with average hiring in the past three months reaching the highest level on record for any similar period before the pandemic. Fed officials are monitoring the rapid rise in infections from the delta variant, he said, but they expect healthy job gains to continue. The Fed has been buying $120 billion a month in mortgage and Treasury bonds to try to hold down longer-term loan rates to spur borrowing and spending. Powell’s comments indicate the Fed will likely announce a reduction — or “tapering” — of those purchases sometime in the final three months of this year. Most economists expect the announcement in November, with tapering actually beginning in December. Powell stressed that the Fed’s tapering of its bond purchases does not signal that it plans anytime soon to start raising its benchmark short-term rate, which it’s kept near zero since the pandemic tore through the economy in March 2020. Rate hikes won’t likely begin until the Fed has finished winding down its bond purchases, which might not occur until mid-2022. Powell said the Fed would need to see much further economic improvement before it would begin raising its key rate, which influences many consumer and business loans.

Manufacturers are stacking up unfinished goods on factory floors and parking incomplete vehicles in airport parking lots while waiting for missing parts, made scarce by supply-chain problems, the Wall Street Journal reported. Shortages of mechanical parts, commodity materials and electronic components containing semiconductor chips have been disrupting manufacturing across multiple industries for months. Companies determined to keep factories open are trying to work around shortages by producing what they can, at the same time rising customer demand has cleaned out store shelves, dealer showrooms and distribution centers. As a result, manufacturers are amassing big inventories of unsold or incomplete products such as truck wheels and farm tractors. Companies that are used to filling orders quickly now have bulging backlogs of orders, waiting for scarce parts or green lights from customers willing to take deliveries. Executives expect the shortages and delivery bottlenecks, exacerbated by overwhelmed transportation networks and a lack of workers, to stretch into the fall. The delays are costing manufacturers sales and pushing some companies to revamp the way they put together their products, executives said.

A divided Supreme Court has ended a national moratorium on evictions in parts of the country ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, removing protections for millions of Americans who have not been able to make rent payments, the Washington Post reported. A coalition of landlords and real estate trade groups in Alabama and Georgia challenged the latest extension of a moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued Aug. 3 and intended to run through Oct. 3. In an unsigned opinion released last night, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority agreed that the federal agency did not have the power to order such a ban. “It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant,” the majority’s eight-page opinion said. “But our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends. . . . It is up to Congress, not the CDC, to decide whether the public interest merits further action here.” The court’s three liberal justices dissented and said the majority’s rush to end the moratorium was inappropriate and untimely. “The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90% of counties are experiencing high transmission rates,” wrote Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The National Association of Realtors said the court’s action was correct “from both a legal standpoint and a matter of fairness. It brings to an end an unlawful policy that places financial hardship solely on the shoulders of mom-and-pop housing providers, who provide nearly half of all rental housing in America, and it restores property rights in America.” The moratorium had already been considered once by the high court. A district judge in D.C., and several other courts around the country, said in a series of rulings that powers granted to the CDC to protect public health during a pandemic did not include a ban on evictions for those who fell behind on their payments. But U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich stayed her most recent order so that the administration could appeal.

States and localities have only distributed 11% of the tens of billions of dollars in federal rental assistance, the Treasury Department said yesterday, the latest sign the program is struggling to reach the millions of tenants at risk of eviction, the Associated Press reported. The latest data shows that the pace of distribution increased in July over June and that nearly a million households have been helped. But with the Supreme Court considering a challenge to the federal eviction moratorium, the concern is that a wave of evictions will happen before much of the assistance has been distributed. Some 3.5 million people in the U.S. as of Aug. 16 said they face eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Lawmakers approved $46.5 billion in rental assistance earlier this year and most states are distributing the first tranche of $25 billion. According to the Treasury Department, $5.1 billion in Emergency Rental Assistance has been distributed by states and localities through July, up from $3 billion at the end of June and only $1.5 billion by May 31. Several states, including Virginia and Texas, have been praised for moving quickly to get the federal money out. But many others have still only distributed a small percentage of the rental help.

Tix Corp. filed for bankruptcy after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Las Vegas discount ticket seller to close its Tix4Tonight-branded booths on the Strip and its online ticket-sales operations for more than a year, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company filed yesterday for chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Las Vegas, saying that it would sell substantially all its assets. Chief Executive Mitch Francis has expressed an interest in buying the company out of bankruptcy, according to court papers filed by Kimberly Simon, Tix’s chief operating officer. Founded in 1993, the company sells tickets to shows, tours and attractions out of three booths operating on the Las Vegas Strip, according to court filings. The company said it was forced to close its ticket booths in March 2020, when the pandemic shut down all restaurants, bars, hotels and entertainment venues in the city, and lay off its employees. Even after reopening the booths in June 2021, Tix continued to struggle financially, in part because as shows and tours resumed, high demand meant there were fewer tickets available for discounters, Simon’s filing said. Tix said that it expects normal operations to continue without affecting customers.

Despite an incredibly challenging previous 18 months that included a global pandemic and tumultuous weather, higher commodity prices and well-timed government support have finally turned the tide on year-over-year increases in chapter 12 bankruptcy filings, the Wisconsin State Farmer reported. According to data from the U.S. Courts, from June 2020 through June 2021, there were a total of 438 chapter 12 bankruptcy filings, down 24%, or 142 bankruptcies. The number of chapter 12 filings over the previous 12 months is the lowest since 2015’s 357 filings. The decrease in bankruptcy filings is a noteworthy shift given the significant increases in the number of bankruptcies over the previous three years. The ongoing impact of the severe drought in the West and Upper Plains is evident in the number of chapter 12 bankruptcies filed in those regions. The region with the largest increase in the number of chapter 12 filings by both absolute number and by percentage increase was the Southwest, which had 13 more chapter 12 bankruptcies in the past year, an increase of 41% from the 12-month period ending June 2020. Total bankruptcies filed by state vary significantly, from no bankruptcies in some states to as many as 48 filings in others. Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Nevada, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wyoming had no chapter 12 bankruptcies filed in the past year. These states have consistently had low numbers of bankruptcies in the past decade. In contrast, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Kansas led the nation in chapter 12 filings; though there were fewer filings in each of these states than there were in the previous year.

House Democrats yesterday approved a roughly $3.5 trillion budget that could enable sweeping changes to the nation’s health-care, education and tax laws, overcoming their own internal divisions to take the next step toward enacting President Biden’s broader economic agenda, the Washington Post reported. The 220-to-212 party-line vote came after days of delays as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) scrambled to stave off a revolt from her party’s moderate-leaning lawmakers. The outcome immediately set in motion a laborious effort on Capitol Hill to transform the $3.5 trillion blueprint into a fuller legislative product. Much like the proposal the Senate adopted this month, the House budget is essentially an outline that does not require Biden’s signature. Rather, it is a congressional document that unlocks for Democrats a longer legislative process known as reconciliation — a tactic that allows them to write a tax-and-spending bill that can bypass a Republican filibuster. As part of the forthcoming package, Democrats have pledged to expand Medicare, invest sizable sums in education and family-focused programs, and devote new funds toward combating climate change — fulfilling many of the party’s 2020 campaign pledges. And they have aimed to finance the tranche of new spending through tax hikes targeting wealthy corporations, families and investors, rolling back tax cuts imposed under President Donald Trump. Also, Democrats committed that the House would consider the separate infrastructure package by Sept. 27.