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The head of a group representing major U.S. passenger airlines and a senior union official will make the case today to lawmakers for a third round of government assistance, according to testimony seen by Reuters. Since March 2020, Congress has awarded passenger and cargo airlines, airports and contractors nearly $90 billion in government assistance and low-cost loans, including two prior rounds of payroll assistance for U.S. passenger airlines totaling $40 billion. The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package approved by the U.S. House last week includes another $14 billion for passenger airlines to keep workers on payrolls for an additional six months. It awaits action by the U.S. Senate. Nick Calio, who heads Airlines for America, a trade group representing American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and others, will tell the House Transportation and Infrastructure’s aviation subcommittee that tens of thousands of aviation workers will “lose their jobs — or experience reductions to wages and benefits — effective April 1.” Calio’s testimony adds that “funding is an explicit recognition that the industry remains in dire straits, even before factoring in the certainty that it will be inundated with debt for years to come.” In 2020, U.S. airlines saw passenger traffic fall by 60% to 368 million passengers, the lowest number since 1984 and reported pretax losses of $46 billion. They continue to burn “an estimated $150 million of cash every day,” Calio will say.

A group of Democratic senators is urging President Biden to include recurring direct payments for some Americans in his forthcoming coronavirus recovery plan, The Hill reported. A letter spearheaded by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) calls for Biden’s forthcoming Build Back Better proposal to fund recurring direct payments and automatic unemployment insurance extensions that are tied to economic conditions. That would be on top of the one-time payments of $1,400 per person that are included in the $1.9 trillion relief package the House passed last week. The letter has attracted at least nine other signatories, including the chairs of the Senate’s three major financial committees, and will be circulated on Capitol Hill today to garner further support. The letter does not specify a dollar amount for the recurring payments.

Senior Democrats are abandoning a backup plan to increase the minimum wage through a corporate tax penalty, after encountering numerous practical and political challenges in drafting their proposal over the weekend, the Washington Post reported. On Thursday, the Senate parliamentarian said that the $15-an-hour minimum wage included in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan was inadmissible under the rules Democrats are using to pass the bill through the Senate. After that decision, Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said they would instead seek to add tax penalties on large corporations that fail to pay $15 an hour — an idea viewed as less likely to be struck down by the parliamentarian and still helpful to some minimum-wage workers. But now senior Democrats — including Wyden and Sanders — are walking away from that backup effort, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal discussions. Economists and tax experts have said that the tax outlined by Sanders and Wyden could be easily avoided and difficult to implement, with large corporations able to reclassify workers as contractors to avoid potential penalties.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, yesterday introduced the COVID-19 Bankruptcy Relief Extension Act, bipartisan legislation to temporarily extend COVID-19 bankruptcy relief provisions enacted as part of the March 2020 CARES Act and December 2020 omnibus appropriations bill. The bill would extend for an additional year CARES Act bankruptcy provisions that are set to expire on March 27, 2021. Click here to read the full press release on the legislations provisions.

Get the insight, analysis and statistics you need on the Small Business Reorganization Act and subchapter V elections by visiting ABI’s SBRA Resources website.

In a blow to Democrats, the Senate parliamentarian ruled the chamber cannot include President Joe Biden’s proposed $15-an-hour minimum wage in a $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill the party aims to pass without Republican votes, Reuters reported. Democrats and progressives had hoped to include the minimum wage increase in the legislation to help cushion the economic blow of the coronavirus pandemic and better compensate low-wage workers who have spent months on the front lines of the health crisis as essential workers. Democrats are trying to advance the COVID-19 bill under a special “budget reconciliation” process that would allow them to pass it in the Senate using a simple majority, so they will not need Republican support. But there are rules that limit what can be included using that process, and it is the job of Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to determine what is allowed.

A tsunami of fraudulent unemployment claims sweeping the nation has cost states and the federal government tens of billions of dollars in payments, many to overseas crime syndicates and nefarious hackers who have gained access to Americans’ Social Security numbers and other identifying information, The Hill reported. The scope of the crisis is not yet known, though the early estimates are eye-popping: California officials have identified at least $11.4 billion in fraudulent claims, and they suspect another $20 billion may be fraudulent. New York officials have referred more than 400,000 fraudulent claims to federal investigators, totaling $5.5 billion in claims, most of which were caught before they were paid. In Ohio, more than 100,000 people have reported potential fraudulent activity in their names to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio and Michigan officials each estimated the potential fraud cost their states hundreds of millions of dollars. Colorado’s Department of Labor and Employment has flagged more than a million applications for benefits as potential fraud. Maryland has identified a quarter million phony claims. Massachusetts reported last year it had paid out $242 million in improper claims.

Senior executives from more than 150 companies are voicing support for President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package in a letter to congressional leaders urging them to pass coronavirus relief, Bloomberg News reported. The letter is signed by leaders across industries, including David Solomon, chairman and chief executive officer at Goldman Sachs; Stephen Schwartzman, the chairman and CEO of Blackstone; Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google; and John Stankey the CEO of AT&T. “We write to urge immediate and large-scale federal legislation to address the health and economic crises brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the executives wrote in the letter. “Congress should act swiftly and on a bipartisan basis to authorize a stimulus and relief package along the lines of the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed American Rescue Plan.” The letter’s signatories included several past supporters of former President Donald Trump, including Schwartzman, one of the biggest contributors to Trump’s re-election bid from the world of high finance, and New York real estate magnate Richard LeFrak. Biden’s bill includes a range of spending measures, including for distributing vaccines, reopening schools, support for state and local governments and the direct payments that the president promised during the campaign season. Democrats are moving forward with the bill despite not having much support from Republicans, who have called the measure too expensive and unnecessarily broad.