fortune--2020-09-30--President Trump refuses to urge supporters to “remain calm” while ballots are counted after election

President Trump refuses to urge supporters to “remain calm” while ballots are counted after election day

During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, President Donald Trump refused to agree to urge his supporters to stay calm while the vote is counted after the November 3 election. He also would not say that he would wait for the election to be independently certified to declare victory.
Recent polling found that 32% of voters want to vote by mail this year and another 17% want to drop their ballots off in boxes, largely due to the threat of contracting COVID-19 through voting in person. That’s nearly double the 26% of voters who did the same in 2016. The surge will make it more difficult to count ballots and declare a winner the night of the election, and results could be delayed for weeks, especially in swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where mail-in ballots can’t legally be processed until election day.
Moderator Chris Wallace asked the question of both Trump and presidential candidate Joe Biden before the end of the debate, and Biden agreed to both stipulations. Trump instead urged his supporters to go to polling sites and act as vigilante poll watchers, an act of voter intimidation that has been called illegal by voting rights experts. The President also falsely stated that vote-by-mail led to a significant increase in fraud, a statement that has been proved to be untrue.
In reality, vote-by-mail fraud is exceedingly rare in the United States. The right-leaning Heritage Foundation maintains a database of all recent instances of recorded voter fraud and found just 204 reported cases involving the fraudulent use of absentee ballots over the past 20 years— only 143 resulted in convictions. That means that over the last two decades, about 0.00006% of total vote-by-mail votes cast were fraudulent—far from the rampant manipulation that the President often describes.
In April, right-leaning legal group The Public Interest Legal Foundation released a report that the President often cites stating that more than 1 million ballots sent out to voters in 2018 were undeliverable, which they called a “catastrophe” for the vote-by-mail system. A ProPublica investigation, however, found that the organization had doubled official government numbers, and PILF later corrected the report to show that the number of ballots rendered undeliverable actually dropped between 2016 and 2018.
The President also once again refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power should he lose the election. Trump said that he himself had not been granted that peaceful transition—which is is false as Hillary Clinton conceded and he took office on January 20th, 2017—because he said Clinton and the Obama administration “tried to do a coup and spied on my campaign.” The President was likely referring to the Special Counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections conducted by Republican special prosecutor Robert Mueller which led to Trump’s impeachment in December of 2019.


fortune--2020-09-30--Biden focuses on his COVID plan in the first debate—here’s the key points

Meghan , The Duchess of Sussex : ‘ If you listen to what I actually say , it ’ s @ @ @

In the first presidential debate on Tuesday night, Democratic candidate Joe Biden said President Trump “has no plan” to overcome the coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 7 million Americans and left 200,000 dead.
“I laid out back in March exactly what we should be doing and again in July what we should be doing,” Biden said. “We should be providing all the protective gear possible, the money the House has passed in order to be able to go out and get people the help they need to keep their businesses open.”
What exactly is Biden’s plan for combatting COVID-19, then? Here are three key points from the former vice president’s coronavirus plan.
Reopening
Biden’s plan calls for a temporary small- and medium-sized business loan program. The proposal would be coordinated with the Small Business Association and Treasury Department to offer interest-free loans to qualifying businesses “through the duration of the crisis.” Along with increased funding for the Small Business Association, the plan calls for a new program that gives states funding to directly increase lending to small businesses.
In addition to these federal measures, a State and Local Emergency Fund would be created to provide employer assistance for job maintenance, which Biden says could help keep workers on the job. The fund would also allow states and cities to create new job initiatives to address declines in employment.
Schools
Biden’s plan emphasizes remote learning and pledges to provide federal child care centers and assistance to schools—especially low-income Title I schools—for schools burdened by additional costs. These funds could be used to further remote education or after-school remote activities, the plan says.
An expanded, federally-funded food relief program would also allow schools to submit waiver applications to provide meals for children even if the school remains closed for education.
Vaccine distribution
Biden, during the debate, said that while a vaccine may be completed in the coming weeks, “every serious company is talking about” distribution not occurring until early to mid-next year. His plan calls for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to “swiftly accelerate the development of rapid diagnostic tests, therapeutics and medicines, and vaccines” in partnership with the Food and Drug Administration.
Biden’s plan pledges that “every person, whether insured or uninsured, will not have to pay a dollar out-of-pocket” for an eventual vaccine. The administration intends to do this by amending the Public Health Service Act, which would require commercial health insurers with no copayments or deductibles.


fortune--2020-09-30--Trump and Biden joust over their economic records in first presidential debate

In a hectic, back-and-forth exchange typical of what was a highly contentious debate between the two men, Trump praised his administration for building “the greatest economy in history”—one that he said was only derailed because of the coronavirus pandemic (or “the China plague,” in the President’s words), and which has shown signs of recovery as states across the country have loosened lockdown restrictions imposed amid the pandemic.
As moderator Chris Wallace noted, the U.S. unemployment rate has recovered somewhat from its peak during the pandemic, falling to 8.4% last month.
“He wants to shut it down again,” Trump said of Biden, while also criticizing “Democrat-run states” that have maintained lockdown restrictions as COVID-19 continues to spread across the country. “They’ve gotta open these states up.”
Biden countered by claiming that the beneficiaries of Trump’s economy have been “millionaires and billionaires like him” who “have done very well,” thanks to what Biden termed a “profligate” tax plan that hasn’t benefited ordinary, working Americans. Biden also criticized Trump for “insisting that we should go forward” with reopening parts of the country still battling the spread of the virus.
“You can’t fix the economy until you fix the COVID crisis,” Biden said. “[Trump] has no intention of making it better.”
The topic of Trump’s own financials were also raised, in the wake of a New York Times report on Sunday that shed new light on the President’s previously undisclosed federal income tax returns—including the revelation that he paid only $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017.
When asked bluntly by Wallace whether that $750 figure is correct, Trump claimed that he has “paid millions of dollars in taxes,” and used tax loopholes and benefits to reduce his tax liability “like every other private person—unless they’re stupid.” Trump made a similar claim during his 2016 debates with then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Biden said he would “eliminate the Trump tax cuts” (referring to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) and “make sure we invest in the people who need help.” He promoted a “Buy American” proposal that would prioritize American manufacturers, and reiterated his commitment to return the corporate tax rate to 28% (from 21% currently).
Trump countered by criticizing the Obama administration’s economic record in the wake of the Great Recession, and pointing to the success of the stock market as proof of his administration’s economic success. “When the stock market goes up, it equals jobs,” Trump claimed, despite recent evidence to the contrary.
Biden, meanwhile, claimed that the President has “done very little” in terms of economic achievements, particularly as far as his heated trade war with China is concerned. “[Trump] talks about the art of the deal… China’s perfected the art of the steal,” Biden said.


fortune--2020-09-30--Biden highlights the Supreme Court debate as a women’s issue

Democratic candidate Joe Biden attempted to frame the potential appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett as a women’s issue during Tuesday night’s first presidential debate. If Barrett’s nomination is pushed through, he argued, women could see healthcare prices rise as Americans with pre-existing conditions—like pregnancy—are no longer protected from higher premiums and Roe v. Wade could be challenged.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments over the Affordable Care Act on November 10, where the Trump administration has filed briefings supporting those who seek to overturn the law. Barrett has spoken out against the court’s 2012 decision to uphold it.
Before Obamacare, insurance companies were not required to charge men and women the same price for care. Before the law was passed, 60% of insurance plans charged non-smoking women more than men who smoked, and only 13% of plans offered maternity benefits charge-free, which is now required, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
Biden also mentioned that the legal right to abortion could be at risk with the appointment, which Trump challenged, saying Biden didn’t know Barrett’s official position on abortion.
Many worry that Barrett, who is opposed to abortion and has spoken at length about her Catholic faith, will be the deciding factor in overturning Roe v. Wade. “I think don’t think the core case – Roe’s core holding that, you know, women have a right to an abortion – I don’t think that would change. But I think the question of whether people can get very late-term abortions, how many restrictions can be put on clinics – I think that would change,” she has said.
Both Democrats and Republicans have sought to galvanize female voters with the Supreme Court fight. Suburban women, who were once thought to be a solid demographic for Republicans have been at play in the 2020 election, and the GOP is hoping to appeal to them with the nomination of a female justice. The majority of Americans (and suburban women), however, support Roe v. Wade.
President Trump announced his nomination of Barrett this weekend, following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The President reportedly offered Barrett, who is 48, the opportunity on the same day he met her, just three days after Ginsburg passed away.
Barrett delivered her 69-page nominee questionnaire to the Senate on Tuesday evening just hours before the debate. The document discusses monumental cases, includes financial disclosures (her net worth is $2.6 million), work history, and the nomination process itself. She also spent the day meeting with nine GOP senators on Capitol Hill in what was seen as a largely ceremonial gesture. Republicans, meanwhile, have been working at a rapid clip to get her nomination through the Senate as quickly as possible. At least three days of confirmation hearings will begin on October 12. Democrats, meanwhile, will use the next two weeks to attempt to search deep into Barrett’s history, looking for reasons as to why Barrett may be unqualified for the job all while objecting to the expedited process and figuring out how to delay a vote until after the election on November 3.
In February 2016, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell argued that the Senate shouldn’t confirm a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia until after the election, a historic rebuke to the authority of the Obama administration. “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said. He’s since changed his tune, saying that this situation is different because the Senate and the presidency are both held by the same party, which wasn’t the case in 2016.
“Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year,” McConnell said. There is no official rule of constitutional regulation that stops the seat from being filled as soon as the President issues a nomination for the seat.
In Tuesday’s debate, Trump argued that Ginsburg herself said the President had a four-year term and could do whatever he wanted within it. “We won the election, and elections have consequences. We won the Senate and White House,” Trump said.
Biden argued that the 2020 election has already begun in earnest and that tens of thousands of Americans have already cast their votes. “We should wait,” he said.


fortune--2020-09-30--Asana is valued at $5.5 billion after direct listing debut

Workplace management software maker Asana attained a market value of about $5.5 billion after a direct listing, one of two Wednesday to go public via the initial public offering alternative.
Shares of San Francisco-based Asana, which didn’t sell any shares, opened trading in New York at $27 apiece and closed up 6.7% from that price at $28.80 a share. The $5.5 billion valuation is based on a fully diluted share count.
Palantir Technologies, the data-mining company founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, also went public via a direct listing on Wednesday, with its shares falling 5% from its opening price to $9.50 a share. Only two major companies had previously gone public through direct listings, Spotify Technology SA in 2018 and Slack Technologies Inc. last year.
Asana, whose founders include Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, was valued at $1.5 billion in a 2018 funding round led by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management. More recently, it has fetched a valuation of about $5 billion on the secondary market, Bloomberg has reported. It has also received funding from Thiel’s Founders Funds, according to the company’s filings.
‘Democratic Process’
Moskovitz, Asana’s chief executive officer, said the company, which didn’t need to raise money, was attracted to the “efficient pricing” of a direct listing.
“We thought it’s a more fair, democratic process for employees and shareholders to have the opportunity for liquidity at the same time,” he said in an interview.
Moskovitz added that Asana hasn’t done any acquisitions and doesn’t see that changing.
About 40% of Asana’s revenue comes from outside the U.S. and it’s present in 190 countries, its executives said during the presentation. It has a gross margin of 87% in the first half, similar to 86% in the last fiscal year.Loss Grows
The company reported $99.7 million in revenue for the six months ended July 31, compared with $61.1 million for the same period last year. Its net loss more than doubled in that period to $76.9 million as research, sales and marketing costs shot up.
The New York Stock Exchange had set a reference price of $21 a share for the stock. Unlike the offer price in a traditional IPO, no shares changed hands at the reference price, which is intended only as a guide for investors and is needed for the stock to begin trading on the exchange.
Asana’s shares are trading under the symbol ASAN. While banks don’t underwrite shares as they do in a traditional IPO, they do serve as advisers in a direct listing. Morgan Stanley served as Asana’s lead adviser. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Credit Suisse Group AG and Jefferies Financial Group Inc. also advised Asana.


fortune--2020-09-30--How the pandemic is shaping tech’s approach to education

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Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, knew she didn’t have a choice. With the COVID-19 crisis shutting down the thousands of programs offered by the nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in technology, Saujani was determined to not let the last eight years of work towards inspiring and teaching the next generation of female coders go to waste.
“As an organization, because we have a deep commitment to our girls, had to quickly think about what we were going to do,” Saujani said. “Are we going to wait to see what could happen? Or are we going to pivot and develop a virtual programming model so that we make sure our girls are not left behind….So we quickly had to develop a two-week virtual program that replaced our summer immersion programs, and we taught 5,000 girls––half of which were under the poverty line, and half of which were Black or Latinx. We designed a program for them, because we knew that many of our students didn’t have computers at home or were accessing Wi-Fi in Burger King parking lots.”
While the pandemic may have brought unprecedented changes and challenges to K-12 schooling, shutting down schools, and forcing students to struggle with the often-miserable task of online learning, it at least has exposed the many inequities that had already been plaguing the U.S. education system for years, according to Saujani, Ebony Beckwith, and Avni Shah who spoke at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women virtual summit on Wednesday.
Beckwith, Chief Philanthropy Officer at Salesforce, said that the pandemic has forced us to reconsider what equal access to learning looks like.
“For example, we can’t encourage computer science classes if students aren’t able to even have a laptop at home,” Beckwith said. “As leaders, we really need to be narrowly focused on this right now. We know from our experience at Salesforce with working school districts serving diverse populations that there isn’t just a one-size-fits-all solution. We have to take an individualized approach to ensure that all students are receiving the right support and are on the path to success.”
Now, with those issues brought to light by the pandemic, there is hope that increased awareness will in turn lead to long-overdue change. Shah, VP of Google for Education, believes that tech companies have a significant role to play in terms of helping students bridge gaps, whether its providing access to learning devices like Chromebooks or developing educational programs like Read Along.
Still, Shah was quick to note that it will take more than an innovative technology company or product to make lasting change.
“This is not something any one tech company, nor tech companies together, can really solve alone,” Shah said. “It’s really going to take a broader community and societal effort to make this happen….Hopefully, because this is shining such a huge light on these inequities, we can get ahead of this and come up with solutions. ”


fortune--2020-09-30--What voters need from the 2020 election: Common ground

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Tuesday night’s televised cage match between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was less of a debate than a debasement—a 90-minute stretch of boorishness, belligerence, and petulant interruption that left much of its audience annoyed. But worse than that: It left too many essential questions unanswered, less than five weeks before the election.
As is always the case, American voters want different things from their government—and no election can or will satisfy everyone. What Wall Street executives crave from policymakers is not likely to be the same as what unemployed restaurant workers want; Silicon Valley titans may well argue for a different set of laws than privacy advocates. But then, as a team of Fortune reporters discovered, there is surprising common ground—even among those with uncommon backgrounds—on a host of critical financial and business issues facing the country today.
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
While views on taxes differ sharply across the social and political landscape, most Americans—small business owners, unemployed workers, pin-striped execs—want more fiscal stimulus and more economic relief for those hardest hit by the pandemic and shutdowns. Businesses, in general, are eager for more stability (not continued uncertainty over trade and public policy); they want long-term solutions for infrastructure development and job growth and helping the unemployed. As Bernhard Warner writes, “there is actually plenty of bipartisan support for vast spending measures to rebuild America.”
That rebuilding, of course, has to include restitching the social fabric that holds America together—the ties of civility and, hopefully, shared success that bind one neighbor to another. If the unpresidential debate in Cleveland showed us anything, it is that the national conversation can no longer afford to mirror the one that took place on stage Tuesday night.
And so, with that in mind, let us open a serious and respectful discussion about what business—and those who drive it—need over the next four years from the President of the United States and Congress. Read our full package of stories in this special report.
We want to hear from readers, too. So please email us at letters@fortune.com and let us know what you need most from the 2020 election.


fortune--2020-09-30--What small-business owners need from the 2020 election

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There are a few numbers that represent the impact of the pandemic to Jesse Jacobs: 90% down, 100 to six, four to zero.
Those figures encapsulate the hit his small business, Samovar Tea, has taken in revenues, employee count, and number of stores open, respectively.
“Now we’re essentially using our own life savings and credit cards,” he tells Fortune of his San Francisco–based business, which has now pivoted to online sales. “That’s basically where we’re at.”
With numbers like those, small-business owners like Jacobs are a little preoccupied, even as the election looms in November. As a blanket wish, he says, “our needs would be met best by the right leader who has a calm, optimistic outlook with tactical solutions that benefit small business.”
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
Indeed, a presidential election is a spotlight-stealing event every four years, but 2020 is different. A pandemic has encompassed the U.S. for the better part of six months, and many small businesses are zeroed in on their own survival and how the economy might shape up next year. In fact, that’s the top concern for small-business owners this election, according to a new survey by business lobbying group U.S. Chamber of Commerce and MetLife.
Yet while small-business owners report having a heightened interest in the 2020 election (62% report being more interested this year than in the previous election, per the U.S. Chamber–MetLife survey), many small-business owners’ principal concern right now may well be their income statement.
“Because they’ve seen such a deep decline in revenue, I don’t think there’s been much discussion as it relates to a national election and…the ramifications of a Democrat or a Republican being in the White House,” Bill Wilkins, a manager at the East Brooklyn Business Improvement District, tells Fortune of the small businesses in his community. “I’m working in an underserved, financially challenged community where everyone has to grind and make it. People are in survival mode.”
It’s impossible to capture the needs of millions of small businesses across dozens of different industries, but Fortune explored a few key areas that may still impact the small-business vote in 2020.
Economic recovery and assistance tops small-business needs
When Fortune asked small-business owners what they needed from the 2020 election, one thing was repeated across many conversations: more certainty and more financial help.
After expediently passing a massive $2.2 trillion relief package back in March, Congress has been tied up in a battle over a fresh round of support for small businesses—and owners are facing a time crunch.
“If economic trends continue at this rate, one in five business owners anticipates they won’t make it until the end of the year,” says Kevin Kuhlman, the vice president of federal government relations for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a nonprofit small-business advocacy group.
Even in parts of the country that are largely reopened, getting another loan, like those through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), will be “integral” for small businesses “making it in next steps,” Jennifer Hensley, the executive director of the Downtown Boise Association in Idaho, says of her community. Meanwhile, businesses in hard-hit industries like retail, which already received funds, “need more loans, they need more forgiveness, they need automatic forgiveness for small loans, they need less paperwork,” says David French, senior vice president of government relations at trade group National Retail Federation.
But many small-business owners don’t want the same kind of “Band-Aid,” as they describe it, that the CARES Act placed on their businesses’ bleeding gashes. For many of them, something more long-term is essential to seeing their businesses through the indefinite period of time the pandemic will affect them.
“We need a commitment for the duration, not just a small stint, so that we have the confidence to move forward and plan, which is so much a part of running a small business,” says Sara Conklin, the founder of Glasserie, a restaurant in Brooklyn. Conklin’s business got a PPP loan, having seen revenues drop roughly 50% during the pandemic, but with winter coming, she’s nervous. That extra aid is perhaps especially crucial for businesses in the hospitality and retail industries who have been among the hardest hit by shutdowns, representatives for the National Restaurant Association and the National Retail Federation tell Fortune.
Public policy think tanks like the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) have advocated for long-term, low interest loans (the group has suggested 20- to 30-year terms at fixed interest rates at around 0% to 1%) to give small-business owners more than just a few months of support, the group’s president and CEO John Lettieri said on a recent press call.
That longer-term support may be key, because, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and MetLife’s new poll, more than half (55%) of small businesses said it would still be “six months to a year” for business in the U.S. to get back to normal.
But longer-term support needs to look a bit different for Black-owned small businesses, argues Ron Busby, the president and CEO of the U.S. Black Chambers. Black-owned businesses were some of the hardest-hit by the pandemic, with a more than 40% drop in active Black business owners early in the pandemic. With those businesses closed, “we don’t want loans,” Busby says. That’s why he suggests Black business owners need “money for startups, money for start-over firms, and that’s what the PPP and other programs have left out of the conversation.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber’s vice president of small-business policy Tom Sullivan points out (per the group’s newest survey) that one-third of small businesses actually report plans to increase investment in 2021, noting that “if they’re going to be putting their money where their optimism is, they want 2021 to be pretty darn good, and their elected leaders are the ones who are going to either make or break that environment.”
While the economy ranked as the top election issue “by far” based on the U.S. Chamber–MetLife poll, most of the trade and policy groups (as well as small-business owners) that spoke with Fortune did not view stimulus or economic aid as a partisan issue. But if a fresh stimulus doesn’t get passed before the election, the U.S. Chamber’s Sullivan believes small-business owners may well punish the incumbent in the polls.
Second-tier concerns: Health care, taxes
Yet as in any other election year, small businesses are always concerned with a few key issues: health care costs and taxes chief among them.
Every four years, the NFIB releases a Problems and Priorities survey of small businesses—and this year, like most others, the cost of health care (ranked No. 1 overall and by industry) and taxes (ranked No. 3 overall) topped the list. That’s also what the U.S. Chamber–MetLife survey found, with taxes (27%) and health care (25%) as top areas of focus for the election this year behind the economy.
For David and Dawn Replogle of Resolution Group Inc., a civil engineering and construction consulting firm founded by partners including David and based in Indiana, health care was an unexpectedly big charge in 2020. “We had a [28%] increase this year. It was huge, it was a big hit,” Dawn says. “I don’t think that was normal. I think 15% was more normal, but 15% cost increase just on health care, one line item, that’s a big chunk of our budget every year.” Their business goes through the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Trust for their 23 employees’ health care (“It’s kind of our only option right now”), and the Replogles say they want more options for plans for smaller businesses.
“I think there is a desire to see a little bit more from both campaigns, to see what their policies and plans would be and perhaps a little bit less about personality,” NFIB’s Kuhlman suggests.
In terms of those plans, former Vice President Joe Biden says he will uphold and build upon the Affordable Care Act passed by his White House counterpart President Barack Obama. (Kuhlman, for one, suggests the Affordable Care Act has made health care more expensive and led to declining offer rates among small businesses in the past 10 years.) Perhaps one of the bigger changes Biden has proposed may be a so-called public option, which would be a government-funded addition seeking to cut costs and offer an alternative choice for employees, which his campaign claims would relieve the burden for small businesses struggling to provide insurance. Rosemary Boeglin, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, told Fortune in a statement that “Biden has laid out robust and detailed plans to build the economy back better, for all of us, by fortifying small businesses as the backbone of the American economy.”
The Trump campaign, meanwhile, just announced a long-awaited health care vision (though not necessarily a comprehensive new plan) that has largely been hinged on repealing the Affordable Care Act—a longstanding promise yet to materialize—and includes executive orders to protect those with preexisting conditions (a provision already in the ACA) and intentions to prevent “surprise” billing. A representative for the Trump campaign did not comment further to Fortune about the President’s health care plan.
For businesses in his purview, “issues like joint employer or health care…are important [for] midterm and long-term planning,” says Sean Kennedy, the executive vice president for public affairs at the National Restaurant Association.
On the other side of the health care spectrum, Dr. Marianna Weiner, who owns a cosmetic dentistry practice in New York, needs the fees insurers themselves pay to increase alongside the rising costs dental offices are paying. “The rent, salary, dental supply bills are going up,” she says, not to mention the added cost of personal protective equipment (PPE). That’s adding to the burden her business is already feeling after closing for three months this spring.
Meanwhile, some small businesses also report taxes high on their list of election needs. NFIB’s Kuhlman singles out one of the provisions passed in Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the 20% pass-through business tax deduction, set to expire in 2025. Of his members, Kuhlman argues, “We would hope in the next administration…that permanency becomes a priority.”
At present, the candidates’ two tax plans vary considerably, especially regarding corporations. Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28% on “day one,” but aims to leave taxes for people earning $400,000 or less per year unchanged, and has suggested he won’t raise taxes on small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Trump, on the other hand, has said he wants to reduce capital gains taxes (Biden wants to raise them), while also having promised a “Tax Cuts 2.0” currently light on details. Without providing specifics, Samantha Zager, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, told Fortune, “the President knows small businesses are the lifeblood of American society, and in the midst of a pandemic he is working to ensure they are able to stay afloat and prosper once again.”
With roughly a month to go before small-business votes will be tallied, owners have a lot to think about. But those like the Replogles can sum up their needs in two tidy words: “Stability. Certainty.”
More from Fortune ‘s special report on what business needs from the 2020 election :


fortune--2020-09-30--What restaurants need from the 2020 election

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There was arguably no industry hit harder or faster by the coronavirus pandemic than restaurants. The urgent need for economic relief to keep small—and not-so-small—businesses afloat has turned restaurateurs, chefs, and servers into de facto activists for their own livelihoods.
So the upcoming November election is top of mind for owners and workers throughout the industry. While many are more concerned with staying afloat in the week ahead than with policy that won’t take shape until January, members of the field are certainly keeping an eye on which administration—and which local lawmakers—will be controlling their fates in four months’ time.
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
From takeout-only storefronts to fine-dining establishments, the single universal requirement of eating at a restaurant—that, to consume your food, you need to remove your face mask—has made the industry’s reopening during the coronavirus pandemic especially fraught. With restrictions on indoor dining capacity and colder weather in many parts of the country soon to make outdoor dining—thought to be a less likely setting for transmission of COVID-19—less appealing, getting these businesses through the upcoming months is more important to operators than ever.
These restaurant industry professionals—from Top Chef judge and restaurateur Tom Colicchio to the owner of a business shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic—told Fortune which issues are most important to them this election cycle.
Economic relief
The top priority for many throughout the restaurant industry is the urgent need for economic relief. One in four unemployed workers since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States have been restaurant workers, according to the Independent Restaurant Coalition.
The group, formed to protect the interests of independent owners in the industry, is lobbying for the Restaurants Act, which would provide $120 billion in relief for the industry. Advocates are calling for that legislation in addition to the Paycheck Protection Program, which was available to all sorts of businesses.
The bill is endorsed by operators at all levels of the industry, from mom-and-pop shops up to representatives of national chain establishments. “We’re comfortable asking for special treatment,” says Sean Kennedy, executive vice president for public affairs for the National Restaurant Association, “because we are uniquely affected.”
President Trump has heard from restaurant operators over the past several months, including through a May roundtable. “The Trump Administration has undertaken unprecedented actions to alleviate the burden coronavirus has imposed on the restaurant and hospitality industry,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said in a statement to Fortune. “From launching the Paycheck Protection Program to providing employers the option to defer their payroll taxes, President Trump has been on the front lines providing flexibility and relief for America’s restaurateurs throughout this pandemic.”
As a candidate, rather than an officeholder, Democratic nominee Joe Biden has not as directly addressed the restaurant industry, but the Biden campaign points out that his proposals to aid small businesses would apply to much of the sector.
“Small businesses, especially restaurants, are the beating heart of our communities, but across the country they are struggling to keep their doors open,” Biden campaign spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin said in a statement to Fortune. “The Trump Administration has left them out to dry, siding with big corporations and largely shutting minority-owned businesses out of COVID recovery funds. This translates to millions of jobs lost and far too many businesses permanently shuttered. Joe Biden has a restart plan for small businesses like restaurants to get back up and running and get workers back on payroll.”
Economic relief includes not just saving these establishments, but also supporting workers who remain laid off as restaurants downsize or who don’t feel safe enough to return to work as their employers reopen. People throughout the restaurant industry say they are eager to see more federal relief in the form of unemployment funding.
And in an open letter published September 24, 150 restaurant owners and chefs endorsed Biden in the 2020 presidential election, arguing that Trump’s COVID-19 response is what put the restaurant industry at risk.
“The perception of job security has been snatched from us,” says Christy Perera, a former maître d’ at a New York Michelin-starred restaurant who was laid off in March. Perera relied on the extra COVID-19 unemployment funding, which expired in July. Now she’s continuing to look for jobs outside of the restaurant industry, translating her customer service experience to remote customer service positions.
Trump signed off on enhanced $600 weekly unemployment benefits at the beginning of the pandemic and okayed a $300 weekly benefit following the lapse of the original agreement. Biden has a proposal to overhaul the unemployment system to create “employment insurance” that would place the cost of the program on the federal, not state, government.
Kennedy is eager to make clear that workers at some of the nation’s chain restaurants face these same concerns. “If you’re a franchise owner and you own just one restaurant, you face the same issues as any other independent,” he says. “If you’re an employee at a chain, it doesn’t matter what logo is on your vest—your job is not assured.”
Local legislation
The federal government, however, can’t solve every problem the restaurant industry faces. While government relief would overwhelmingly help restaurants make it through this year, many have been forced to close, in part because of factors that are controlled by state and local lawmakers.
Many restaurateurs have cited struggles with their landlords as one reason why they couldn’t remain open. Camilla Marcus, the owner of the restaurant west~bourne in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, closed her business in early September after failing to negotiate a percentage-of-sales rent agreement with her landlord. She was forced to make a decision this month because of a personal guarantee that would have kicked in, making her personally liable for any missed rent.
“Tenants are being leveraged as a backstop for a pandemic,” she says. “Most closures are because tenants and landlords don’t see the situation in the same way.”
Marcus says she believes that city and state lawmakers should intervene to reform tax structures that incentivize landlords to have a vacant storefront rather than a struggling tenant. These kinds of regulations vary widely by city and by state. In New York City, where Marcus was forced to close her business, Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed a vacancy tax that would tax building owners who leave storefronts empty for longer than six months. The proposal would require the support of New York’s state government. New York’s City Council is considering recovery measures that include making sidewalk dining permanent in a bid to boost business.
Deepti Sharma, the founder of the food tech startups FoodtoEat and Bikky, has come to a similar conclusion after working with restaurant owners. Sharma is running for City Council in New York and hopes to address city issues from increasing the minimum wage for tipped workers to those landlord and tenant issues. “To me, what’s important is, What do these lawmakers believe in? Do they believe in fair wages?” Sharma asks.
Big-picture issues
But the restaurant industry had political concerns long before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Tom Colicchio, the Top Chef judge and restaurateur, has been a leading voice calling for economic relief for the industry, but also in food policy; he launched a podcast about the subject earlier this year.
The top political concerns on the minds of many in the industry? Health care and childcare, Colicchio says. Restaurant owners—like most small-business owners—say they don’t have good options for providing health care. Restaurant workers, in turn, often lack access to employer-sponsored plans. Trump has criticized the Affordable Care Act—and has said he has a replacement plan—but has not yet introduced any concrete proposals. Biden has pledged to protect the Affordable Care Act and supports creating a public health insurance option, the likes of which could be accessed by workers in the restaurant industry without employer-sponsored coverage.
When it comes to childcare, restaurant servers and cooks often work late at night, without reliable options for their children’s supervision, Colicchio says. Neither presidential candidate has put forward proposals that would close that gap in care, but both have addressed childcare as an issue. Trump, during his presidency, increased the size of the tax code’s childcare tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000. Biden supports an $8,000 tax credit and enhanced funding for after-school programs and community centers.
The other issues that most affect the industry? Immigration policy and climate policy. “It’s no secret that a lot of immigrants work in the restaurant industry—most of them on the books, paying taxes,” Colicchio says. “We need immigration policy to bring workers in where they have the same protections as anyone else in this country. We need a guest worker program that works.”
Biden generally agrees with Colicchio’s assessment of the shortcomings of these programs; his campaign’s immigration platform notes that the U.S.’s current temporary worker program is “cumbersome, bureaucratic, and inflexible.” He pledges to work with Congress to reform the temporary work visa system.
Trump’s immigration policy generally runs counter to the kind of protections for immigrant restaurant and food industry workers that Colicchio describes. The President supports a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and other restrictions on both authorized and unauthorized immigration. At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the White House moved to suspend programs for temporary foreign workers, citing high unemployment within the U.S.
“And it goes without saying that climate affects everything” from food supply to national security, Colicchio says. “If we’re not going to have a planet, it doesn’t matter what happens to restaurants.” Trump’s climate policies prioritize “balanc[ing] environmental protection with economic growth,” and the administration has reversed or weakened several regulations intended to address climate change. Biden’s climate proposal aims for the United States to achieve a “100% clean energy economy” and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
These big-picture issues are hard for restaurateurs to think about when their immediate crisis is so urgent. But policies on health care, climate, and immigration are all on the table in November alongside economic bailout proposals—and will be influencing the votes of the people in this industry.
Economic relief, still, remains an important first step. Says Perera: “Restaurants need an injection of capital so when you pull up Seamless in six months, you won’t have just McDonald’s and Burger King as your options.”


fortune--2020-09-30--What Silicon Valley needs from the 2020 election

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During the 2020 presidential campaign, both Democrats and Republicans have found a mutual target: big tech companies. And while they propose different policies, neither party is expected to be Silicon Valley’s savior.
“Regardless of who wins, Silicon Valley has been able to unite the parties in their distrust in the tech sector,” said Scott Stern, a management professor at MIT who has researched government innovation policy. “You see that generally across a swath of issues.”
As behemoths, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple have been targeted with intense criticism for their business practices. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have laid into various big tech companies over their data collection practices and failure to police misinformation on their services and for allowing hate speech to flourish.
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
Liberals like Sen. Elizabeth Warren have called for Big Tech to be broken up. They say that tech companies have become too powerful, used people’s private information for profit, and stifled innovation by squashing their competition.
Meanwhile, Republicans including President Trump claim social media companies have unfairly censored conservatives. The President has also tried to shut down Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat, suggesting that they’re national security threats. Additionally, Trump has repeatedly called for the U.S. Postal Service to charge Amazon more to deliver its millions of packages. Amazon’s CEO happens to be Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, a frequent thorn in Trump’s side.
“We shouldn’t be surprised if [politicians] of whatever camp have political axes to grind,” said Nathaniel Persily, codirector of Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center.
In the upcoming year, tech companies plan to push a smorgasbord of policy changes, each of which will have its own political implications. They want to close the digital divide by making the Internet accessible to more people, and they want the government to invest more in IT infrastructure and reduce obstacles to trading with international customers—issues that don’t appear to be partisan. But tech companies also plan to focus on more divisive topics like loosening visa rules so they can more easily hire foreign workers; prohibiting Internet service providers from delivering certain services and apps more quickly; and establishing rules for user privacy and what users should and shouldn’t be allowed to post.
Finally, the biggest battle for Big Tech will be over antitrust law, an increasing source of tension during the Trump administration. Federal regulators, whose leaders are appointed by the President, are already investigating Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
It’s unclear whether a Biden administration or a Trump administration would be more favorable to Silicon Valley, experts and lobbyists say. “It’s nuanced, rather than a simple answer,” said Angie Kronenberg, chief advocate and general counsel at tech lobbying group Incompas, which represents companies including Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
The Trump administration hasn’t released a list of proposed tech policies for the 2020 election, leaving many to guess what it may focus on during a second term. But the administration’s track record provides a guide.
For example, in June, Trump announced a temporary ban on H-1B visas that allow U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in certain jobs. Silicon Valley has notably depended on these visas to employ large numbers of programmers and other technicians.
Trump has also taken aim at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a key law that protects companies from being held liable for what their users post. When the Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality rules, which prohibited broadband providers from slowing Internet speeds or charging extra for speedier delivery of their services, Trump considered the ruling a “great win.”
Finally, Trump is no stranger to executive orders, many of which directly affected tech companies. Since 2016, he’s signed 183 orders, or 36 more than President Barack Obama and 12 more than President George W. Bush during their first four years in office.
“I would think that these tech companies are going to be very nervous about Trump being reelected because of his authoritarian tendencies…the willingness of him to take them on,” said Ray Horton, a professor at Columbia Business School who teaches a course about the intersection of politics and business. “He’s going to go after them the minute they cross him in a much more fundamental way than Biden or his colleagues.”
Biden has more support from the mostly left-leaning employees of Big Tech. Tech billionaires including Laurene Powell Jobs, Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, and Zynga founder Mark Pincus have all donated the legal maximum of $620,600 to the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee. And when Biden chose Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, tech moguls like Powell Jobs and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg voiced their support on Twitter.
But a Biden administration poses its own challenges to the tech industry. On the campaign trail he’s already raised the issues of hate speech and online misinformation, demanding that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg clean up the “rants of bad actors and conspiracy theorists.”
Biden also plans to raise corporate tax rates to 28% compared with the current 21% and suggested he would take a harder line on China, working with traditional U.S. allies to try to force change in areas like climate change.
Though Biden has said he plans to use diplomacy to further his agenda, Jason Oxman, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based tech advocacy group Information Technology Industry Council, said he worries about Biden’s “aggressive” stance on China. “We know that China has a policy of forced tech transfers and a history of not fighting intellectual property theft,” he said. “What we don’t want to see is a decoupling from China … a market of $1.3 billion people.”
Finally, some political and tech experts suggest a Biden administration may empower antitrust regulators and push for more aggressive measures against Big Tech.
“Joe Biden is not Elizabeth Warren,” Stanford University’s Persily said of the Massachusetts Democratic senator. “But there is a renewed appetite for greater regulation of Silicon Valley coming from the left.”
Regardless of who ends up in the White House following the November election, one thing is clear: Big Tech will have some big obstacles in the years ahead. And lobbyists are already working with the campaigns to understand the issues that they need to prepare for.
“We think that for the most part the candidates are aligned on one thing: to meet the challenges” of the industry, said Mike Lemon, counsel for one of the tech industry’s biggest lobbying groups, the Internet Association. “We look forward to continuing to work with them regardless of who takes the office.”


fortune--2020-09-30--What Wall Street needs from the 2020 election

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No matter how you look at it, 2020 has been rough on Big Finance.
Financial stocks are the second worst performer in the S&P 500, down more than 24% year to date as of the Sept. 23 close. There are plenty of culprits. Interest rates are near zero, cutting into banks’ bread-and-butter lending business. Meanwhile, the pandemic has put a big fat pause on economic activity, squeezing investment banking fees and ratcheting up the risk of underperforming loans.
Making matters worse, even as the economy begins to recover, and M&A picks up, investors continue to punish Wall Street. The KBW Nasdaq Bank Index has slumped 38% this year while the benchmark S&P 500 is up slightly.
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
In other words, Big Finance needs a big lift. Could it possibly come from Washington in an election year?
It’s not such a wild question. Every four years, Wall Street lobbyists draw up a wish list to put in front of the incoming administration. They usually start working on it well before Inauguration Day. This is what could be on such a memo this year.
Taxes
It’s no secret that President Trump has been a tax hawk, slashing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a move that went into effect in 2018. The positive result was a boom for the stock market, and a windfall in trading revenues for the banks. The downside? Mammoth deficit-spending that will have to be paid off down the road—either through increased taxes or through fiscal austerity measures. (Spoiler: Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the economy just wasn’t growing fast enough to magically plug that deficit hole.)
Just about every Fortune 500 CEO, Wall Street bosses included, wants to see this corporate tax rate hold steady. And so they’re a bit concerned with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s proposal to increase the rate businesses have to pay the tax man.
“If Biden wins and you get the Senate to flip, then there’s a good chance you get the corporate tax rate to go from 21% to 28%. Just doing the simple math takes the S&P 500 earnings down in the neighborhood of 10%,” Jeff Buchbinder, vice president and market strategist at LPL Financial Research, said on the Market Signals podcast this week.
(Remember that 10% figure. We’ll come back to it in the “Free trade” section.)
The rest of the Biden tax plan seeks to weaken Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by raising taxes on a combination of income, Social Security, long-term capital gains, and qualified dividends for the upper-income brackets.
Unless it’s a clean sweep by the Democrats, none of this will happen. But the finance pros are still running the numbers on any and all possibilities, and what it would mean.
“I think if there was really to be a significant increase on taxation, on dividends, it would hurt dividend-paying companies and those sectors—utilities, consumer staples, and financial—that rely more heavily on them,” says David Bahnsen, founder and managing partner of the Bahnsen Group, a private wealth management firm with $2.5 billion in client assets under management.
But, Bahnsen adds, Wall Street—and by Wall Street, he’s also including investors like his clients—is not freaking out about the prospect of higher taxes. There’s concern, but not full-on alarm. “Obama,” he notes, “had all the political capital to let Bush’s tax cuts sunset in 2010. And he punted it out two years and cited, accurately, that it would be a bad thing to do in the midst of an economic recovery. I have every expectation that Biden would do the same thing.”
And besides, he adds: “What we do know is that not a single President in American history has had a tax plan in their campaign that then got photocopied and became a tax law. Ever.”
So at the top of the wish list you might see the words “1) Taxes: Don’t do anything drastic.”
Infrastructure spending
The irony of this one is well known to Washington insiders—and Wall Street too is now grasping the cruel twist. It goes something like this: Unlike with tax policy, there is actually plenty of bipartisan support for vast spending measures to rebuild America. And yet there’s little to no chance that, say, a Democrat-controlled Congress would give a Republican President the pleasure of signing such a spending bill into law. And vice versa.
It would almost certainly require one-party control to get a massive fiscal stimulus spending package to come to fruition.
And yet Wall Street can still dream of one.
Corporate America would love a big fat spending bill to jump-start the U.S. economy. And Big Finance would be among the industries to benefit most from any incentives that led to a building boom, particularly one that got America back to work. If nothing else, such a reality would conceivably lead to the conditions needed for the Federal Reserve to eventually raise interest rates again, a move that would help banks’ balance sheets dramatically.
Any spending measures—whether it be to modernize America’s roads and airports (Trump deplores the state of American airports, particularly LaGuardia Airport in New York) or Biden’s $1.7 trillion promise to build a “clean energy future”—would be most welcome to Big Finance.
So, here’s point No. 2: Spend, spend, spend.
“I promise you,” Bahnsen says, “there is nobody that’s going to let the debt get in the way of spending more money.”
Free trade
Trump’s trade wars have put the chill on global business, and that’s come home to roost on the bottom line of America’s biggest businesses. Yes exporters are hit, but the impact can be felt across the economy, to Wall Street too. Consequently, LPL Financial’s Buchbinder calculates that the removal of trade tariffs with China would add billions to the earnings of S&P 500 companies.
Under a Biden presidency, Buchbinder reckons, “you’d get spending potentially—green energy spending, infrastructure spending, and the like—plus reduction or elimination of some China tariffs. That would offset some of the drag on corporate earnings that you’d get from the possible corporate tax increase.”
This is spelled out in the chart below, furnished by LPL Financial.
At the moment, the consensus estimate is for the earnings per share of S&P 500 companies to climb nearly 20% year over year in 2021—that’s in a world of low taxes and free(r) trade. For example, the EPS boost alone from the removal of Chinese tariffs would amount to a 16% increase in corporate profits. Keeping the corporate tax rate as is would result in a smaller, but still meaningful, 10.6% rise in profits.
Dear President, the letter might then read, let’s go back to free and open global trade. It’s good for growth. And see point No. 1 about taxes.
Wall Street regulation
Wall Street is always wary of further regulatory scrutiny. This year is no different. But as long as the economic recovery is job one of the President, the concerns about additional red tape or stepped-up oversight are on the back burner.
There just doesn’t seem to be the political will at the moment to rein in Wall Street. “An attempt to re-amplify pressures around the Volcker Rule, capital requirements, etc., will not be viewed favorably” by Washington, Bahnsen says.
That said, one hot-button issue that’s getting bipartisan attention is stock buybacks. If Wall Street reform is on the agenda of Congress or the White House next year, this could become a casualty.
But otherwise, Wall Street will be looking to present itself to the new administration as part of the solution in getting America’s economy off the floor.
There’s an obvious motive: The bosses of Big Finance are desperate to avoid a repeat of 2020.


fortune--2020-09-30--What low-wage workers need from the 2020 election

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Going nocturnal helped boost Courtenay Brown’s pay—all the way to $17.30 an hour.
Brown is an “essential worker,” a 30-year-old supervisor at an Amazon food warehouse in New Jersey, where she has spent the duration of the pandemic making sure that Americans get their contactless grocery deliveries. Her recent pay raise for supervising night shifts is admittedly an improvement from where she started three years ago, a little over $13: “You can’t live off that—and even now, it’s still not enough. It’s still the bare minimum,” says Brown, a Navy veteran and Brooklyn native who is trying to get out of debt from a period when she was homeless.
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
Her warehouse recently had a worker test positive for COVID-19, Brown says. Although Amazon has ended the “hazard pay” bonus of $2 per hour it offered for working through the pandemic this spring, the threat of the coronavirus “hasn’t gone away,” she says. “We’re pretty much playing a waiting game.” (An Amazon spokesperson says via email: “Nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our employees, and we are doing everything we can to keep them as safe as possible.”)
For Brown—a member of the retail-worker organization United for Respect—and for around 53 million other minimum- and low-wage workers, the coming election will be a referendum on the federal minimum wage (which is still at its 2009 floor of $7.25 per hour), but also on their broader working conditions and benefits. Large employers across retail, restaurants, food processing, health care, and many other service industries exist because of this labor force, which has shown up in person and powered the economy during the pandemic—often for very little pay and at very high risk.
“The share of workers who earn low wages, who can’t make ends meet, who are suffering, is very big—and was even before COVID-19,” says Tsedeye Gebreselassie, an attorney and the director of work quality at the National Employment Law Project, a nonpartisan think tank.
“A lot of what people are calling ‘essential’ work? Those have always been jobs that paid really low wages, with a disproportionately Black and brown workforce. And many of those jobs were always dangerous,” she adds. “They’re even more dangerous now—and there hasn’t been compensation to address that.”
Some 44% of U.S. workers between the ages of 18 and 64 qualify as “low-wage,” earning a median hourly rate of $10.22 per hour, or $18,000 per year, according to an analysis published last year by the Brookings Institution. Those workers include most of the 1.6 million Americans who earn the federal minimum wage or less (including the wage for tipped workers, who have been federally grounded at $2.13 per hour since 1991). Others live in states and cities that have raised their local minimum wages above the federal level, or work for private companies (including Amazon), which have in recent years increased their internal hourly minimums to $15.
Many of these workers are affected by systemic racism and sexism, and by anti-immigrant policies; while about half of low-wage workers are white, according to Brookings’ analysis, workers who are Black, Hispanic, and/or women are much more likely to be low-wage than their white and male counterparts. Meanwhile, even workers who earn more than the federal minimum are continuing to face wage theft and hazardous working conditions, which their advocates hope will help decide the coming presidential election.
“It’s a moment of just extraordinary crisis—and also just incredible opportunity for change,” says Saru Jayaraman, the president of One Fair Wage, which advocates on behalf of restaurant employees and other tipped workers who earn the subminimum wage.
Raising the minimum and subminimum wages has some bipartisan support—a majority of Americans are in favor of a $15 minimum, and some red states have enacted increases. But when it comes to the presidential election, the policy divide gets rather stark. Democratic nominee Joe Biden supports raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and ending the tipped minimum wage; his campaign platform also includes promises to enforce stronger labor protections, including those relating to overtime pay and gig economy workers and undocumented immigrants, as well as support for workers’ rights to organize in labor unions.
President Donald Trump has in the past expressed occasional support for raising the federal minimum wage—but he and the Republican-controlled Senate have not taken any such action during his four years in office. Worker representatives and academics who study labor movements have generally negative reviews of his presidency’s impact on low-wage workers, criticizing his weakening of protections for overtime pay and his administration’s decision not to issue a national work safety standard from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) during the pandemic.
President Trump “didn’t allow OSHA to have COVID-19 standards; he hasn’t been interested in raising the minimum wage; and he’s tried to roll back some of the really good progress that was made under the Obama administration,” says Janice Fine, a professor at Rutgers University and director of research and strategy for its Center for Innovation in Worker Organization.
Stronger governmental oversight is especially necessary during a recession, when the rate at which employers underpay their minimum-wage workers skyrockets, according to research Fine oversaw this year. This practice, known as “wage theft,” especially targets undocumented immigrants, people of color, women, and other vulnerable workers who may be reluctant to complain, for fear of losing their jobs or being reported to immigration authorities.
Now Fine hopes that, if former Vice President Biden wins this election, he’ll prioritize doing more to protect these workers—and can improve upon his years as President Obama’s deputy. “I’d like to see Biden expend political capital and say that raising the minimum wage and passing labor law reform are going to be priorities for the first 100 days,” she says.
Worker representatives are also hopeful that, beyond an increased federal minimum wage and greater enforcement of labor protections, a Biden victory would mean policy improvements in terms of the unemployment, health care, and other benefits guaranteed to the country’s most vulnerable workers.
“Conditions have gotten much worse for low-wage workers in the last four years, and the reelection of Trump would be a disaster for underpaid essential workers all across the service and care sector,” says Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which has endorsed Biden for President.
Her organization represents 2 million workers in health care, janitorial, airport, and public-sector jobs, who “have been on the front lines of multiple crises for the whole year: the pandemic, the economic crisis, the climate crisis, and the racial injustice crisis,” she says. “They want good jobs, with wages they can support their families on; they want the ability to get a seat at the table through their union so they can bargain for a better life; they want a coordinated federal response to the pandemic and health care that allows them to keep themselves and their families safe and healthy. And they want actionable change on racial inequality.”
Still, despite his campaign pledges, Biden has more work to do in the next five weeks to win over some workers with these priorities. Including Courtenay Brown, a Black woman who says that “justice for Breonna Taylor” and larger action against systemic racism are her priorities for the election.
She won’t be voting for Trump. But “I don’t even know how I feel about voting for the man who said I’m not Black if I don’t vote for him,” she adds, referring to a remark Biden made in May (and soon called “too cavalier”). “We’re voting for the lesser of two evils.”


fortune--2020-09-30--What the unbanked need from the 2020 election

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Over 6% of Americans—20.5 million people—are unbanked, according to the FDIC’s latest data, meaning they have no checking or savings account. Nearly 50 million more are underbanked: They have at least one bank account but still use alternative financial services like payday loans and check cashers outside the banking system.
Many go unbanked because they don’t have enough money to open a bank account or continue incurring overdraft fees. And going un- and underbanked isn’t cheap: Over the course of a lifetime, being unbanked can cost a person $40,000 just in fees, David Rothstein, a principal at the Cities for Financial Empowerment (CFE) Fund, says.
“Whether it’s cashing a check every time you get paid, whether it’s having to pay a bill, whether it’s overdraft fees, or insufficient fund charges that can occur monthly,” Rothstein says, “these are all things that take money away from the people who can generally least afford it for financial services.”
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
Lower-income customers pay higher interest rates and incur more fees, too, which subsidize the perks and rewards that “prime” customers—those banks deem the most creditworthy—get. Banks and their prime customers reap the rewards from the “subprime” customers, a system which often forces the latter out of the banking system in frustration.
When the Financial Health Network breaks down the data by demographic, it becomes clear how disproportionately this exclusion impacts certain groups. The study found that 15% of Black adults are unbanked, while 8% of Latino Americans and 4% of white Americans are. Similarly, only 11% of white people are underbanked, while 23% of Latino people and 32% of Black people are. This is one of the many ways redlining has continued to impact communities of color since it began in the 1930s. Since the nation’s inception, Black and brown Americans have experienced disproportionate suffering economically, which compounds as white, wealthy communities bounce back from recessions, and nonwhite, lower-income communities do not.
“Supposedly there’s been a major recovery since the Great Recession, but communities of color haven’t recovered,” Ashley Harrington, the federal advocacy director and senior counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, says. “They lost over a trillion dollars in wealth that has yet to be regained. We have been most impacted by every single pandemic and recession that has hit this country; and this pandemic, this recession is no different.”
Financial institutions are chartered and regulated by the federal government, making financial inclusion a task for politicians. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 obligates banks to meet the financial and credit needs of the communities they serve, including low- and middle-income neighborhoods. Bank regulators are then charged with examining the banks’ compliance with the CRA.
The next President will have the responsibility of setting economic policy priorities and appointing leaders for the federal banking regulators, both of which have implications that will trickle down to the lowest levels of government.
Democrats and Republicans agree that financial inclusion is an issue, but they often butt heads on how to address it. The politicians, nonprofit leaders, and financial services professionals Fortune spoke with make it clear that movement here is gravely needed.
What’s needed
“Change!” shouts Aaron Klein, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution who serves as policy director of its Center on Regulation and Markets.
“A banking system that works for [the un- and underbanked] and not banking that exploits them,” says Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center.
“A bold policy agenda that centers racial and economic justice,” says Harrington.
“Certainly not more of the same,” says Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform.
The suggested solutions range from targeting overdraft fee abuse to data use reform to public banking to improved education on the current financial system—and everything in between.
Experts say the most effective way a President could increase financial inclusion, though, is to simply make it a priority. Whether 2021 brings President Donald Trump’s second term or former Vice President Joe Biden’s first, the victor needs to acknowledge that there’s a problem and set policy goals to address it, says John Thompson, chief program officer at the Financial Health Network.
“The FDIC has done a terrific job measuring [unbanked and underbanked rates], and in the process of measuring it, we’ve seen improvement,” Thompson says. “But we really haven’t set at any policy level a goal that we’re going to eliminate it, or we’re going to try to make it equitable.”
In setting those goals, Thompson says, the data needs to be broken up by demographics to make sure the outcomes help the communities most affected.
Beyond measuring the problem and making financial health an issue of importance at the national level, Rothstein says that the President must ensure whomever he appoints to lead regulatory agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) values financial inclusion, too.
As American adults faced economic hardships brought on by the pandemic this year, a real-time payment system—which many countries around the world have already instituted—could have saved money and prevented suffering, Klein says. Anyone receiving their stimulus check by direct deposit, including those who are underbanked, had to wait several days before being able to actually use their money because of the way clearinghouse settlements work in America. This was not ideal for many who lost their income during the pandemic and were just scraping by, desperate for the stimulus funds to hit their accounts. Situations like this often result in crippling overdraft fees that turn swaths away from formal banking altogether. Many people choose to use check cashers instead of bank accounts to gain access to their money more quickly, but a chunk of the check’s value is taken as a service fee.
Real-time payments technology has existed for quite a while now, Klein says, but the federal government chose to build a new system, the FedNow Service, which will not roll out for at least a couple of years. When available, though, the Fed says it will “enable financial institutions in the U.S. to clear and settle transactions in virtually instantaneous fashion.”
Jodie Kelley, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, noted that many companies in the private sector like Square, Venmo, Zelle, and PayPal have real-time payment systems already, giving users access to their funds much faster than traditional paper checks.
Many Americans who opted to get their stimulus checks mailed—thus waiting even longer for access to their money than those who chose direct deposit—chose to do so because they did not have a bank account. To fold them into the formal banking world, Rothstein suggests that the federal government work on integrating banking programs into its systems. For instance, the IRS could provide an option to open a simple, no-fee bank account on the website used to choose how to receive stimulus checks. He says integration like this could be worked into many government-citizen interactions, such as unemployment compensation, taxes, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as food stamps.
“Having the ability to open and facilitate that bank account opening during the enrollment process…would certainly help individuals come into the banking system and save them a lot of money,” Rothstein says.
While fintech often spurs important innovation like real-time payments, New Economy Project codirector Deyanira Del Río notes that some fintech companies are also known to develop “disruptive” alternative products that are high-cost, unregulated, and exploitative to the un- and underbanked.
“Some policymakers and regulators are so enamored with the rhetoric and promises of fintech that they don’t see the harms that they’re perpetuating against low-income people, immigrants, and others,” she says. Those harms are numerous and varied, Del Río says, and can include practices like issuing loans with triple-digit interest rates because fintech companies are often unregulated by the usury laws banks must follow.
On the flip side, congressman Patrick McHenry, ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, believes that technology is the best way to make banking and other financial services cheaper, thus lowering a common barrier to entry. He says he’s in favor of a “less onerous” regulatory environment to encourage that, pointing to the way Trump’s administration has loosened financial regulations over the past four years.
“It is generally a lessened weight of regulation versus a heavier weight of regulation on financial institutions. That’s the difference between these two candidates,” he says. “And one has shown in his first term a model at modifying regulation and lightening the burden of Dodd-Frank, and using more technology in the process of COVID and enhancing the technological shift.”
But Americans for Financial Reform’s Jun says that regulation is much needed after Trump’s first term, which has been chock-full of deregulation. According to Trump’s campaign website, “860 regulatory actions have been withdrawn or removed from active status,” in his first term. That includes the rollback of Dodd-Frank—enacted under President Obama after the market crash of 2008 to prevent any similar events—which eased rules on liability and data reporting on all but the largest banks. Americans are more vulnerable now than ever before, Jun says, and the CFPB seems to be focusing on giving companies flexibility rather than giving citizens relief.
This is generally the crux of the disagreement between Democrats and Republicans on how to approach financial inclusion. Democrats tend to believe that operating a bank comes with the responsibility to provide services to un- and underbanked people in the community that may not maximize profits, while Republicans believe the bank has no such obligation, or at least a looser one, experts say. Republicans also tend to think the market will correct itself, and regulation will fail, while Democrats are often in favor of more rules.
Deputy national press secretary for the Trump 2020 campaign Ken Farnaso wrote in an email that the President has spearheaded “pro-growth policies, deregulation, and tax cuts” in an effort to strengthen the American economy through his first term. The Trump campaign directed Fortune to the White House for more details, which did not respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has been busy in this arena for the past four years. Trump installed Kathy Kraninger as director of the CFPB, who is attempting to remove Obama-era protections for consumers against predatory lending. The OCC also proposed the True Lender Rule, which would effectively allow the circumvention of state usury laws by fintech companies, leading to loans issued with no interest rate caps, according to Raquel Villagra, staff attorney at the New Economy Project. Del Río says there’s been “a long, slow gutting” of the CRA under Trump and several of his predecessors. Harrington says the OCC’s recent changes to the CRA “will actually not help the communities that the Community Reinvestment Act was envisioned to help serve.”
Many of the regulations that have been rolled back under Trump were proposed under President Obama, for whom Biden served as Vice President. Biden has laid out economic policy plans that prioritize racial equity, strengthen and enforce regulations on banks and fintech companies, roll back Trump administration policies aimed at destroying fair lending, and provide student debt relief to increase financial inclusion.
“Even before Trump drove our economy into a recession, left frontline and essential workers to fend for themselves during a dangerous pandemic, and turned a blind eye to the disproportionate impacts of COVID in communities of color, he was already giving bad actor lenders a free pass to exclude neighborhoods and borrowers who have repeatedly been locked out of investment and economic opportunity,” Biden campaign spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin wrote in a statement. “Joe Biden has a real plan to build our economy back better, and that means bringing every community along. Biden will ensure that we all have a fair shot to pursue our own American dream by opening the doors to financial inclusion and closing gaps in access, for instance by setting aside future PPP [Paycheck Protection Program funds] for the smallest small businesses that often don’t have the necessary banking relationships.”
As evidenced in Tuesday night’s debate, policy specifics are rarely focused on when Trump and Biden meet, let alone the specific policy approaches each campaign has for financial inclusion. But as America weathers the historic crises of COVID-19, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and a racial reckoning, economic justice concerns will continue to wrestle their way to the forefront in politics.


fortune--2020-09-30--What the unemployed need from the 2020 election

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Kevin Williams saw his Uber and Lyft drives disappear overnight after Ohio issued stay-at-home orders in late March. The Columbus resident would go on to join the more than 30 million Americans receiving unemployment benefits over much of the spring and summer.
While the easing of restrictions in his state is bringing back some of those rides, Williams earns only one-third of what he made prior to the orders. So he still qualifies for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance—which expanded unemployment to contractors and part-time workers through the CARES Act.
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
Even as the economy improves—adding more than 10 million jobs since the end of April—more than 25 million are still receiving some form of unemployment insurance. What many Americans assumed was a temporary jobs crisis has in fact turned into a long-term unemployment crisis as we cross the six-month threshold since the start of the pandemic.
As the country prepares to head to the ballot box, Fortune took a look at some of the solutions Capitol Hill is considering to help the unemployed.
More economic stimulus
The U.S. moved from contraction to recovery back in the spring, and since then the unemployment rate has fallen from its peak of 14.7% in April to 8.4% in August. However, that economic recovery is showing signs of slowing. By late September we learned another 870,000 new unemployment claims had been filed as employers continued to turn to layoffs to make up for pandemic-related losses.
Goldman Sachs lowered its expectations for U.S. fourth-quarter GDP growth from 6% to 3% on a quarterly annualized basis. Why? Goldman Sachs researchers point to the lack of additional fiscal support from the federal government.
“We’re in a lull of economic activity as the recovery moves sideways,” says Ryan Sweet, head of monetary policy research at Moody’s Analytics. “The effects of the stimulus have faded, and the secondary effects of the recession are enforcing themselves: more businesses failures, more layoffs.”
The best way to reduce unemployment, Sweet says, is for Congress to pump in more stimulus that will speed up the recovery.
The $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March helped to keep the economy afloat in the spring and drive the recovery once stay-at-home orders were eased. But that money is largely spent now, and talks to allocate more have been unfruitful: Democrats refuse to lower their stimulus ask of $2.2 trillion, and the White House won’t come up from its offer of $1.3 trillion. On Thursday White House officials and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced they’d resume stimulus talks after a three-week hiatus.
Both parties support the next package including a second round of stimulus checks, an extension of enhanced unemployment benefits, and more aid for small businesses and hospitals. They’re in disagreement on items like COVID-19 lawsuit immunity for businesses, which Republicans support, and more than $1 trillion in federal aid to state and local governments, which Democrats support.
Presidential candidate Joe Biden supports another massive stimulus package—although he doesn’t give a price tag. The Democrat would like it to include funding for another round of stimulus checks, aid for small businesses, forgiving $10,000 per person of federal student loans, and increasing monthly Social Security checks by $200 per month.
Extended enhanced unemployment benefits
More than 29 million Americans were receiving $600 enhanced weekly unemployment benefits, paid on top of state benefits, when it expired the week ending July 25. That benefit was replaced by a $300 enhanced payment that President Donald Trump issued through a memorandum in August. But that $300 payment is set to expire before the end of the month as funding runs out.
Without that enhanced benefit, unemployed Americans are likely to cut back on consumer spending—which accounts for two-thirds of the economy.
If the enhanced unemployment benefits are to be extended again, it will likely take an act of Congress. Democratic House leaders and Trump both want to extend the benefit through the end of the year; they aren’t in agreement on the amount, however. Democrats and Biden would like to see the benefit go back to $600 per week, while the White House prefers something closer to $300.
The holdup for Republicans is that the $600 weekly benefit—when combined with state aid—paid 7 in 10 unemployed Americans more than they made while working. GOP lawmakers argue that could take away the incentive for jobless Americans to find work.
Researchers aren’t finding strong evidence that the enhanced benefits discourage work. Indeed, Yale researchers found the benefit did not elevate unemployment during the spring, while JPMorgan Chase researchers found the benefit boosted consumer spending this spring and summer.
Fix the broken unemployment benefit system
When the pandemic hit, the jobless rate soared from the lowest in 50 years to the highest in 80 years. That quickly overwhelmed unemployment offices. Some states saw their unemployment websites crash for days, while others took weeks—sometimes months—to process unemployment insurance claims.
Karen Engels immediately applied for unemployment benefits in Florida after losing her job at a country club in March. The 44-year-old called the state hundreds of times and waited two months before getting her first unemployment check.
“For people not to get paid for months is detrimental. Some people can’t survive without getting payments for two months,” she told Fortune.
But with more than 25 million still getting some form of unemployment benefit, those issues are still here. Ohio’s unemployment office reached out to Kevin Williams this month to tell him that his income was incorrectly calculated, and the state had been overpaying him since March. Instead of giving him a window to pay it back, the unemployment office will just pull the money from his future benefits. Ohio has effectively thrown Williams off unemployment insurance.
Outdated technology affects everything from customer service to payments. In fact, one of the reasons the government turned to a blanket $600-for-all unemployment benefit is that states lacked the capabilities to calculate a plan that would replace a percentage of your regular weekly pay.
Help the long-term unemployed
Millions of Americans have been out of work since the start of the shutdown. For these folks, it’s unlikely at this point they’ll return to their previous employer, or maybe even their previous career.
That means millions of unemployed Americans could need retraining or new skills, something that could require help from the federal government.
Pavlina Tcherneva, an associate professor of economics at Bard College, says a massive retraining program would only do so much. The author of The Case for a Job Guarantee argues the federal government should step in with a massive government jobs program that hires millions of Americans to work on infrastructure projects, green energy initiatives, and pandemic-related work. Neither Trump nor Biden have proposed such a plan. The Green New Deal bill in Congress, however, is similar to what Tcherneva is proposing.
“I don’t think we’ll get out of this hole unless the public sector does some pretty bold public programs,” Tcherneva says.
More from Fortune ‘s special report on what business needs from the 2020 election :


fortune--2020-09-30--What unions need from the 2020 election

What unions need from the 2020 election

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The past decade has not been kind to organized labor. Republicans in Congress have spurned dozens of union-backed bills calling for worker-friendly measures such as a higher minimum wage or better family leave policies. And the election of President Trump in 2016 has led the executive branch to curtail the bargaining power of unions.
Now, though, labor leaders feel they are on the cusp of achieving many of their long-thwarted goals. If Joe Biden is elected President this November, and Democrats take control of the Senate—both are likely possibilities—unions intend to rewrite the country’s current labor regime.
Bill Samuel, the government affairs director of the AFL-CIO, says a prime goal of his organization is to update the National Labor Relations Act in order to make it easier for workers to join unions in the first place, and to strengthen unions’ power in collective bargaining situations. Other priorities include pushing the incoming President to sign laws boosting pay for low-wage workers, and to curtail what the AFL-CIO regards as an epidemic of companies misclassifying employees as contract workers. Also on unions’ to-do list is bolstering protections for LGBT workers, expanding access to health care, and pushing for new manufacturing jobs tied to the fight against climate change.
This story is part of a special report examining what’s at stake for a wide range of industries—and for many workers—in this year’s election.
Much of this ambitious agenda depends on Democrats retaking the Senate. If they fail to do so, the GOP will be able to smother many labor-friendly initiatives as they have done for years. But even if they achieve only one of their November goals—a Joe Biden presidency—unions will be able to notch some victories. These would include replacing the Trump appointees on the National Labor Relations Board, and having the executive branch enforce many labor regulations already on the books—a duty that Samuel claims Trump has deliberately neglected.
More broadly, the AFL-CIO hopes to change what it views as systemic policy choices that have brought wealth to corporations and shareholders, but left working people to stagnate. Meanwhile, workers are facing new threats to their livelihood from technology and automation, and a Supreme Court that has undercut the financial clout of organized labor.
“There’s a lot of pent-up energy and frustration among working households about what the economy has done to their livelihoods,” says Samuel. “Meanwhile, the pandemic is leaving people feeling powerless and vulnerable at work.”
Organized labor is feeling confident about November, in part because of shifting public attitudes toward unions. In an annual survey conducted by Gallup, 65% of Americans expressed support for unions—the highest level since 2003. Samuel also describes a surge of new union certifications in fields like education, media, and nursing. He believes this trend will provide fresh energy for labor-friendly legislation in Washington, D.C., next year.
Such legislation is likely essential if unions are to reverse a decades long decline in their ranks. Even as popular support for unions is growing, the proportion of American workers who are part of one has declined to 10.3%. That’s down from 10.5% in 2018, and a far cry from the 1980s when roughly one in five workers belonged to a union.
The stakes, as they say, couldn’t be higher for unions this November. If Democrats return to power, organized labor will be riding high. But the reelection of President Trump, combined with an ever more conservative Supreme Court, could mean another decade of setbacks.