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A group of Senate Republicans plans to present their latest offer to the White House on a major new infrastructure package on Thursday, with one member saying it will weigh in at almost $1 trillion, Bloomberg News reported. “This is going to be a very good offer,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said yesterday. The latest counter will be “close” to $1 trillion, spread over eight years, he said. Democratic lawmakers have warned that time is running short to determine whether a bipartisan deal on infrastructure is possible, with progressives already calling for a go-it-alone approach using fast-track budget procedures. A new offer around $1 trillion would still be well short of Friday’s $1.7 trillion proposal from the White House. West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the lead Republican negotiator, said that the group may request a meeting with Biden, since he seemed more open to a deal in a gathering last Thursday than his staff later did. Wicker similarly said that if Biden is able to decide on a response to the new GOP plan, rather than administration staff, the president would accept it.

The Senate yesterday passed a resolution to repeal a rule governing partnerships between banks and third-party lenders that allow consumers to take loans with interest rates above their states’ maximum, The Hill reported. Senators voted 52-47 to pass a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to revoke the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's (OCC) “true lender” rule and forbid the agency from issuing similar regulations, with 49 Democrats and GOP Sens. Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.) Susan Collins (Maine) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) voting in favor of repeal. All 47 other Republican senators voted against repeal. The resolution now heads to the Democratic-controlled House, which is expected to pass the measure for President Biden’s signature. The White House said Tuesday that it supports the passage of the repeal resolution, arguing that the OCC’s rule “undermines state consumer protection laws and would allow the proliferation of predatory lending.” The OCC in October issued a rule intended to specify who is the true lender of a loan issued to a customer through a partnership between a nationally chartered bank and a third party, typically a non-bank lender.

No region of this nation has been spared the steep emotional, physical, and financial toll of the opioid addiction epidemic, a crisis fueled in part by drugmaker Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of highly addictive OxyContin. While the cost of the estimated 450,000 lost lives to the drug epidemic is incalculable, state and local officials estimate the economic toll to be in the trillions of dollars. Massachusetts is among the states that have filed suits against the company, according to a Boston Globe editorial. Purdue Pharma is bankrupt. But the Sacklers, the family behind the company and its practices, are worth $11 billion, according to congressional estimates. And they are seeking to exploit a loophole in bankruptcy law that could shield a large portion of their personal wealth, amassed in part from the drug’s sale, from creditors including states and municipalities, according to the editorial. That can’t be allowed to happen. Bankruptcy judges should heed the formal objections filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and dozens of other state officials seeking to stop the family, which is not party to the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, from shielding the majority of their fortunes from it in exchange for a $4 billion payment and forfeiture of company control, according to the editorial.

*The views expressed in this commentary are from the author/publication cited, are meant for informative purposes only, and are not an official position of ABI.

Many concert venue owners have been waiting on relief from the government, which in December passed a bill that set aside $16 billion in grants for venues that host live events. Eligible applicants include concert halls and theaters. But more than five months have lapsed since the bill created the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program (SVOG) and venue owners still haven't received any money, Bloomberg News reported. The Small Business Administration took four months to open the portal that allowed eligible businesses to apply. The portal then shut down just four hours after it opened. When the portal reopened in late April, venue owners thought they’d finally reached the promised land. Only now they are being told they have to wait until late May, at the earliest, to get their money. Time is of the essence for many of these clubs. After a year in hibernation, the live music business is expected to come roaring back. Outdoor venues are planning to open back up again in the summer, while indoor arenas aim to open in the fall. Promoters, venue owners and agents all believe the concert business will come back stronger than ever. Most people who bought tickets to shows postponed by the pandemic have held onto those tickets. “There’s a tremendous amount of pent-up demand with fans,” Dan Beckerman, the chief executive officer of the second-largest promoter in the U.S., Anschutz Entertainment Group Inc., told me. “There’s a lot of pent-up supply as well from artists who want and need to get back on the road. It’s going to be an incredible return in the next 18 months.”

The Labor Department is rescinding a rule that made it harder for gig and contract workers to argue they were entitled to minimum wage and overtime protections, part of a push to undo Trump-era decisions that favored businesses and employers, the Washington Post reported. The withdrawal of the “Independent Contractor” rule, which limited the ability of workers to argue that they were misclassified as contractors when they should have been employees, will be published in the Federal Register yesterday and become effective today. Companies have increased the use of contractors in recent decades in part to lower labor costs. Employees are entitled to a range of benefits not afforded to contractors, including a minimum wage and overtime pay. Labor advocates say that many of these workers are misclassified, and should be counted as employees. The Labor Department has the power to investigate these cases and rectify violations when they are found. “By withdrawing the Independent Contractor Rule, we will help preserve essential worker rights and stop the erosion of worker protections that would have occurred had the rule gone into effect,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in a statement. “Legitimate business owners play an important role in our economy but, too often, workers lose important wage and related protections when employers misclassify them as independent contractors. We remain committed to ensuring that employees are recognized clearly and correctly when they are, in fact, employees so that they receive the protections the Fair Labor Standards Act provides.” The rule change is likely to add to speculation about how the Biden administration plans to deal with the question of gig work — one of the most closely watched questions about labor policy in the new administration. Companies such as Uber and Lyft typically classify the workforce their apps rely on as contractors, while aggressively pushing back against state officials, courts and Democratic lawmakers who say that their workers are misclassified.

Four weeks before its scheduled end, the federal government’s signature aid effort for small businesses ravaged by the pandemic — the Paycheck Protection Program — ran out of funding yesterday and stopped accepting most new applications, the New York Times reported. Congress allocated $292 billion to fund the program’s most recent round of loans. Nearly all of that money has now been exhausted, the Small Business Administration, which runs the program, told lenders and their trade groups on Tuesday. While many had predicted that the program would run out of funds before its May 31 application deadline, the exact timing came as a surprise to many lenders. “It is our understanding that lenders are now getting a message through the portal that loans cannot be originated,” the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders, a trade group, wrote in an alert to its members Tuesday evening. “The PPP general fund is closed to new applications.” Some money — around $8 billion — is still available through a set-aside for community financial institutions, which generally focus on lending to businesses run by women, minorities and other underserved communities. Those lenders will be allowed to process applications until that money runs out, according to the trade group’s alert. Some money also remains available for lenders to finish processing pending applications, according to a lender who was on a call with S.B.A. officials yesterday. Since its creation last year, the Paycheck Protection Program has disbursed $780 billion in forgivable loans to fund 10.7 million applications, according to the latest government data. Congress renewed the program in December’s relief bill, expanding the pool of eligible applicants and allowing the hardest-hit businesses to return for a second loan. Lawmakers in March extended the program’s deadline to May, but they have shown little enthusiasm for adding significantly more money to its coffers. With vaccination rates increasing and pandemic restrictions easing, Congress’s focus on large-scale relief effort for small businesses has waned.

Following minor league baseball’s constriction last year and a 2020 without revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal is proposing roughly $500 million in federal assistance for the sport, the Hartford Courant reported. “Minor league baseball is in peril,” Blumenthal said yesterday at Dunkin’ Donuts Park, home of the Hartford Yard Goats, the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. “These teams have not played since September, 2019…. The teams have struggled. Many of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. We need to come to their aide. That’s why I am leading a congressional effort. We did it for restaurants, theater, live music. Baseball deserves it as much.” Blumenthal said the fund “ought to be flexible,” and compared it to the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Program, created to provide restaurants and bars with compensation for their reduced revenues of the past year. He cited the importance of minor league baseball to the communities, restaurants and local economies of the cities which they reside in.

Lawmakers and administration officials signaled on Sunday that they expected negotiations over an infrastructure package to ramp up this week, as Republicans and President Biden work to see if a bipartisan agreement is within reach, the Wall Street Journal reported. White House chief of staff Ron Klain said that Mr. Biden had invited Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, one of the lead GOP negotiators on the infrastructure package, and others to meet this week. “We’re going to work with Republicans. We’re going to find common ground,” Mr. Klain said on CBS. Republicans said they wanted to see that Mr. Biden was willing to make some concessions to prove his willingness to work across the aisle. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a centrist Republican involved in the discussions, said it was up to Mr. Biden to make the next offer in negotiations with GOP lawmakers. Republicans last month proposed spending $568 billion on infrastructure, offering a far narrower and less expensive alternative to the plan Mr. Biden unveiled in March, which would spend $2.3 trillion over eight years on programs and services that go beyond transportation, among them home care for seniors and technology and manufacturing research. In addition, Mr. Biden announced a $1.8 trillion child-care and education plan in his joint address to Congress last week. GOP lawmakers have said they think it might be possible to reach a bipartisan agreement on a more limited package focused on roads, bridges and other elements of physical infrastructure.