The hardwood flooring retailer formerly known as Lumber Liquidators signed an agreement with private equity firm F9 Investments for a sale of its business on Friday afternoon. Under terms of the deal, expected to close by the end of September, F9 will acquire 219 stores and a Virginia distribution center — as well as LL Flooring’s intellectual property and other assets.

Another 211 LL Flooring stores are still set to close, however. That includes 117 locations where closings were recently initiated and 94 others that were already in the process when the Virginia company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Aug. 11.

Just weeks after filing for Chapter 11, LL Flooring previously said that it would be “winding down operations” and closing all of its stores after failing to find a buyer in negotiations. The retailer expected the process to take about 12 weeks.

But that changed after a deal was reached with F9 on Friday. In a statement, LL Flooring president and CEO Charles Tyson said that company was “pleased to have reached this agreement” with F9 “following significant efforts by our team and advisors to preserve the business.”

Tyson added that LL Flooring remains “committed to continuing to serve” customers and vendors as the transaction moves through bankruptcy court for approval.

F9, based in Miami, is owned by Tom Sullivan, who founded Lumber Liquidators over 30 years ago. Sullivan told The Associated Press that the 219 stores set to be purchased by F9 will open under the Lumber Liquidators name again.

“We’ll be getting back to basics,” Sullivan said. “Basically, yellow and black is coming back … We know what worked before. It’s not fancy offices in Richmond with 200 people that didn’t know the flooring business. It’s great people in our stores that know flooring (and) customers that want a great deal and know Lumber Liquidators is the place to go.”

Sullivan explained that the company plans to narrow down to a more “manageable” selection of flooring options, and getting rid of material that feels duplicative or doesn’t sell well, so customers will likely see big discounts on much of the inventory left behind from LL Flooring’s bankruptcy process. He added that the company will be closely aligned with Cabinets To Go, another F-9 owned brand that he founded, to help with shipping efficiency.

Lumber Liquidators got its start in 1993, as a modest operation in Massachusetts, and later expanded operations nationwide. The brick-and-mortar retailer officially changed its name to LL Flooring at the start of 2022.

The company previously faced turmoil after a 2015 segment of “60 Minutes” reported that laminate flooring it was selling had illegal and dangerous levels of formaldehyde. Lumber Liquidators later said it would stop selling the product and agreed to pay $36 million to settle two class-action lawsuits in 2017.

LL Flooring has had difficulty turning a profit in recent years. Net sales fell 18.5% in 2023, according to a recent earnings report, amid declines in foot traffic and weak demand with mortgage rates and housing prices high. In its Chapter 11 filing, LL Flooring disclosed that total debts amounted to more than $416 million as of July 31, compared with assets of just over $501 million.

Ahead of filing for bankruptcy, LL Flooring also entered a proxy battle over the summer — centered on attempts to keep Sullivan, who had tried to acquire the business before, off the board. In June, company leadership wrote a letter urging shareholders to vote for other nominees, accusing Sullivan of “pushing a personal agenda.” But LL Flooring later confirmed that the founder and F9’s other nominees were elected at its annual shareholder meeting in July.

Austin said that passing a continuing resolution that caps spending at 2024 levels, rather than taking action on the proposed 2025 budget will hurt thousands of defense programs, and damage military recruiting just as it is beginning to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Asking the department to compete with (China), let alone manage conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, while under a lengthy CR, ties our hands behind our back while expecting us to be agile and to accelerate progress,” said Austin in the letter to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has teed up a vote this week on a bill that would keep the federal government funded for six more months. The measure aims to garner support from his more conservative GOP members by also requiring states to obtain proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when registering a person to vote.

Congress needs to approve a stop-gap spending bill before the end of the budget year on Sept. 30 to avoid a government shutdown just a few weeks before voters go to the polls and elect the next president.

Austin said the stop-gap measure would cut defense spending by more than $6 billion compared to the 2025 spending proposal. And it would take money from key new priorities while overfunding programs that no longer need it.

Under a continuing resolution, new projects or programs can’t be started. Austin said that passing the temporary bill would stall more than $4.3 billion in research and development projects and delay 135 new military housing and construction projects totaling nearly $10 billion.

It also would slow progress on a number of key nuclear, ship-building, high-tech drone and other weapons programs. Many of those projects are in an array of congressional districts, and could also have an impact on local residents and jobs.

Since the bill would not fund legally required pay raises for troops and civilians, the department would have to find other cuts to offset them. Those cuts could halt enlistment bonuses, delay training for National Guard and Reserve forces, limit flying hours and other training for active-duty troops and impede the replacement of weapons and other equipment that has been pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine.

Going forward with the continuing resolution, said Austin, will “subject service members and their families to unnecessary stress, empower our adversaries, misalign billions of dollars, damage our readiness, and impede our ability to react to emergent events.”

Noting that there have been 48 continuing resolutions during 14 of the last 15 fiscal years — for a total of nearly 1,800 days — Austin said Congress must break the pattern of inaction because the U.S. military can’t compete with China “with our hands tied behind our back every fiscal year.”

Johnson’s bill is not expected to get support in the Democratic-controlled Senate, if it even makes it that far. But Congress will have to pass some type of temporary measure by Sept. 30 in order to avoid a shutdown.

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple on Monday charged into the artificial intelligence craze with a new iPhone lineup that marks the company’s latest attempt to latch onto a technology trend and transform it into a cultural phenomenon.

The four different iPhone 16 models will all come equipped with special chips needed to power a suite if AI tools that Apple hopes will make its marquee product even more indispensable and reverse a recent sales slump.

Apple’s AI features are designed to turn its often-blundering virtual assistant Siri into a smarter and more versatile sidekick, automate a wide range of tedious tasks and pull off other crowd-pleasing tricks such as creating customized emojis within seconds.

After receiving a standing ovation for Monday’s event, Apple CEO Tim Cook promised the AI package will unleash “innovations that will make a true difference in people’s lives.”

But the breakthroughs won’t begin as soon as the new iPhones — ranging in price from $800 to $1,200 — hit the stores on September 20.

Most of Apple’s AI functions will roll out as part of a free software updates to iOS 18, the operating system that will power the iPhone 16 rolling out from October through December. U.S. English will be the featured language at launch but an update enabling other languages will come out next year, according to Apple.

It’s all part of a new approach that Apple previewed at a developers conference three months ago to create more anticipation for a next generation of iPhones amid a rare sales slump for the well-known devices.

Since Apple’s June conference, competitors such as Samsung and Google have made greater strides in AI – a technology widely expected to trigger the most dramatic changes in computing since the first iPhone came out 17 years ago.

Just as Apple elevated fledgling smartphones it into a must-have technology in 21st-century society, the Cupertino, California, company is betting it can do something similar with its tardy arrival to artificial intelligence.

In an attempt to set itself apart from the early leaders in AI, the technology being baked into the iPhone 16 is being promoted as “Apple Intelligence.” Despite the unique branding, Apple’s new approach mimics many of the features already available in the Samsung Galaxy S24 released in January and the Google Pixel 9 that came out last month.

“Apple could have waited another year for further development, but initial take up of AI- powered devices from the likes of Samsung has been encouraging, and Apple is keen to capitalize on this market,” said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore.

As it treads into new territory, Apple is trying to preserve its long-time commitment to privacy by tailoring its AI so that most of its technological tricks can processed on the device itself instead of relying on giant banks of computers located in remote data centers. When a task needs to connect to a data center, Apple promises it will be done in a tightly-controlled way that ensures that no personal data is stored remotely.

While corralling the personal information shared through Apple’s AI tools inherently reduces the chances that the data will be exploited or misused against a user’s wishes, it doesn’t guarantee iron-clad security. A device could still be stolen, for instance, or hacked through digital chicanery.

For users seeking to access even more AI tools than being offered by the iPhone, Apple is teaming up with OpenAI to give users the option of farming out more complicated tasks to the popular ChatGPT chatbot.

Although Apple is releasing a free version of its operating system to propel its on-device AI features, the chip needed to run the technology is only available on the iPhone 16 lineup and the high-end iPhone 15 models that came out a year ago.

That means most consumers who are interested in taking advantage of Apple’s approach to AI will have to buy one of the iPhone 16 models – a twist that investors are counting on will fuel a surge in demand heading into the holiday season.

The anticipated sales boom is the main reason Apple’s stock price has climbed by more than 10%, including a slight uptick Monday after the shares initially slipped following the showcase for the latest iPhones.

Besides its latest iPhones, Apple also introduced a new version of its smartwatch that will include a feature to help detect sleep apnea as well the next generation of its wireless headphones, the AirPods Pro, that will be able to function as a hearing aid with an upcoming software update.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel traveled to Austin, Texas, to tour an IRS campus and announce the latest milestone in tax collections as Republicans warn of big future budget cuts for the tax agency if they take over the White House and Congress.

Yellen said in a speech in Austin that in 2019, the top one percent of wealthy Americans owed more than one-fifth of all unpaid taxes, “leaving ordinary Americans to shoulder the burden.”

“To fix this, we’ve channeled IRS funding toward significant investments to combat tax evasion,” she said.

In 2023 and 2024 the IRS launched a series of initiatives aimed at pursuing high-wealth individuals who have failed to pay their tax debts. The IRS said the campaign is focused on taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt.

Agency officials said since the program’s launch, almost 80% of the 1,600 millionaires targeted by the IRS for failing to pay a delinquent tax debt have now made a payment, leading to over $1.1 billion recovered. And in the first six months of a new February 2024 initiative, the IRS collected $172 million from 21,000 wealthy taxpayers who have not filed tax returns since 2017.

Republicans have called for funding for the IRS to be cut.

Donald Trump’s campaign for president said he would drastically reduce spending on federal agencies — and that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris “cast the tiebreaking vote to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to go after your tip income.”

That debunked claim comes from a plan the Treasury Department proposed in 2021 to bring on that many IRS employees over the next decade if it got the money. At least 50,000 IRS employees are expected to retire over the next five years.

The National Taxpayer Advocate, the independent IRS watchdog, issued a 2023 annual report stating that the IRS employs roughly 681 armed agents.

In its efforts to modernize, the agency this year also launched a program called Direct File, which allows people with very simple W-2s to calculate and submit their returns directly to the IRS. The IRS said in April that those using the program claimed more than $90 million in refunds.

While the program included 12 participating states in the 2024 tax filing season, more states have joined in for the 2025 tax season, including Maryland, Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Connecticut, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Maine.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump suggested to business leaders Thursday that his plans to increase tariffs on foreign imports would solve seemingly unrelated challenges such as the rising cost of child care in the U.S.

The GOP presidential nominee promised to lead what he called a “national economic renaissance” by increasing tariffs, slashing regulations to boost energy production and drastically cutting government spending as well as corporate taxes for companies that produce in the U.S.

Trump was asked at his appearance before the Economic Club of New York about his plans to drive down child care costs to help more women join the workforce.

“Child care is child care, it’s something you have to have in this country. You have to have it,” he said. Then, he said his plans to tax imports from foreign nations at higher levels would “take care” of such problems.

“We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s — relatively speaking — not very expensive, compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in,” he said.

Trump has embraced tariffs as he appeals to working-class voters who oppose free-trade deals and the outsourcing of factories and jobs. But in his speech Thursday and his economic plans as a whole, Trump has made a broader — to some, implausible — promise on tariffs: that they can raise trillions of dollars to fund his agenda without those costs being passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

His campaign attacks Democratic nominee Kamala Harris ’ proposals to increase corporate tax rates by saying they would ultimately be borne by workers in the form of fewer jobs and lower incomes. Yet taxes on foreign imports would have a similar effect with businesses and consumers having to absorb those costs in the form of higher prices.

The United States had $3.8 trillion worth of imports last year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Trump in the past has talked about universal tariffs of at least 10%, if not higher, though he has not spelled out details about how these taxes would be implemented.

Kimberly Clausing, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has repeatedly warned in economic analyses about the likely damage to people’s finances from Trump’s tariffs. She noted that Trump wants tariffs to pay for everything, even though they can’t.

“I believe Trump has already spent this revenue, to pay for his tax cuts (which it doesn’t), or to perhaps end the income tax (which it cannot),” she said in an email. ” “It is unclear how there would be any revenues left over to fund child care.”

Trump was asked to talk about child care

Child care is unaffordable for many Americans and financially precarious for many day care operators and their employees. Democrats in Congress have long argued the child care industry is in crisis and requires a drastic increase in federal aid — and some Republicans have joined them. Trump pointed to his tariff ideas as well as efforts he announced to reduce what he described as “waste and fraud.”

“I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about,” he said.

Trump’s running mate JD Vance was also asked about proposals to lower day care costs earlier this week, and he suggested making it easier for families to keep the kids at home with a grandparent or another relative.

“Make it so that, maybe like grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more,” he said. “If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we are spending on day care.”

Vance also suggested training more people to work in day cares, and said some states required what he called “ridiculous certification that has nothing to do with taking care of kids.”

Trump laid out a series of economic proposals

In his speech, Trump said he would immediately issue “a national emergency declaration” to achieve a massive increase in the domestic energy supply and eliminate 10 current regulations for every new regulation the government adopts. He said Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk has agreed to head a commission to perform a financial audit of the federal government that would save trillions of dollars.

“My plan will rapidly defeat inflation, quickly bring down prices and reignite explosive economic growth,” Trump claimed.

Trump has previously floated the idea of chopping the corporate tax rate to 15%, but on Thursday clarified that would be solely for companies that produce in the U.S. The corporate rate had been 35% when he became president in 2017, and he later signed a bill lowering it.

Harris calls for raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%. Her policy proposals this week have been geared toward promoting more entrepreneurship, a bet that making it easier to start new companies will increase middle-class prosperity.

On Thursday, Trump attacked Harris’ proposals on banning price gouging and accused her of embracing Marxism and communism.

“She wants four more years to enforce the radical left agenda that poses a fundamental threat to the prosperity of every American family and America itself,” he said.

He also vowed to end what he called Harris’ “anti-energy crusade,” promising that energy prices would be cut in half, although energy prices are often driven by international fluctuations. He said an emergency declaration would help with rapid approvals for new drilling projects, pipelines, refineries, power plants and reactors, where local opposition is generally fierce.

And he also said he would ask Congress to pass legislation to ban the spending of taxpayer money on people who have entered the country illegally. He specifically said he would bar them from obtaining mortgages in California, targeting a bill passed in that state last week. Throughout his campaign, Trump has railed against the economic impact of the influx of migrants that have entered the country in recent years and their strain on some government services.

The Harris campaign issued a memo accusing Trump of wanting to hurt the middle class, arguing his ideas would expand the national debt and shrink economic growth and job creation.

“He wants our economy to serve billionaires and big corporations,” the campaign said in a statement.

Their dueling economic proposals are likely to be central to the upcoming presidential debate on Tuesday. Harris arrived Thursday in downtown Pittsburgh to devote the next several days to preparing for the debate. She intentionally picked a key part of the battleground state of Pennsylvania to hone her ideas ahead of their showdown.

Trump plans to rely heavily on tariffs

In June, the right-leaning Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s proposed tariffs would amount to a $524 billion yearly tax hike that would shrink the economy and cost the equivalent of 684,000 jobs. After Trump floated tariffs as high as 20% in August, the Harris campaign seized on an analysis suggesting that figure would raise a typical family’s expenses by almost $4,000 annually.

The money raised by tariffs would not be enough to offset the cost of his various income tax cuts, including a plan to whittle the corporate rate to 15% from 21%. The Penn Wharton Budget Model put the price tag on that at $5.8 trillion over 10 years.

Economists have warned about Trump’s plans to impose tariffs that he says would return manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Some have said such taxes on imports could worsen inflation, though he is vowing to cut down costs. Inflation peaked in 2022 at 9.1% but has since eased to 2.9% as of last month.

“Some might say it’s economic nationalism. I call it common sense. I call it America First,” he said on Thursday.

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Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Boak reported from Pittsburgh. Associated Press writers Moriah Balingit and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Programs that feed older, homebound adults are instituting waiting lists amid budget crunches, rising costs of food, growing demand for their services and funding cuts from the government.

Combined with the end of COVID-19 era aid, local groups are finding that they can no longer serve the same number of people, resulting in difficult decisions about next steps.

“This is a huge challenge for our network,” said Josh Protas, chief advocacy and policy officer at Meals on Wheels America, a national organization that supports local organizations delivering meals to homebound individuals, mainly older adults.

Meals on Wheels is among the groups pushing for funding increases through the appropriations process for programs funded under the Older Americans Act, a decades-old law first signed by President Lyndon Johnson to support adults as they age in their communities.

One in three Meals on Wheels programs has a wait list, with an average wait time of three months.

“The vast majority of them recognize that there are more seniors in need in their communities that they’re not able to serve, in large part because of a lack of adequate federal funding,” Protas said.

Higher demand

The population is getting older. Over the next decade, people 65 and older will represent 22 percent of the population, compared to 17 percent in 2022.

They are at a unique risk for going hungry because of fixed incomes, social isolation, lack of access to transportation and health conditions that make it difficult to cook or shop for groceries.

Almost 7 million seniors were “food insecure” — or didn’t have enough to eat — in 2022, and more than 9 million could be by 2050, according to Feeding America.

Meals on Wheels or similar programs are almost ubiquitous. Many have been around for more than 50 years, providing a source of nutrition and social contact to people who can’t leave their homes and helping them age in place. Programs served 206 million home-delivered meals and 55 million congregate meals in fiscal 2021.

But the demand has outpaced the ability of programs to serve people in their communities.

“We have 12,000 people every day who are turning 60, and as a society, we haven’t really reckoned with the changes that are necessary to address those needs,” Protas said.

Current legislation

Congress has recognized the need for more funding for the programs. But budget pressures have made that difficult.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — on a bipartisan basis — approved in July a reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, recommending to appropriators an increase of 20 percent each for the home-delivered and congregate meal programs.

Still, the Senate Labor-HHS funding bill, advanced by the Senate Appropriations Committee in August, would level-fund those programs in fiscal 2025. Meanwhile, the House appropriations bill would cut the nutrition programs by 1.6 percent.

The Older Americans Act funds several different programs intended to help older adults age in place, but its most well-known ones are related to food services: one for home-delivered meals, another for meals served in congregate settings, like senior centers, and the Nutrition Services Incentive Program, which allows programs to purchase fresh, local produce, dairy or proteins for meals.

While home-delivered meals and congregate settings received increases in fiscal 2024, the nutrition services incentive program received a cut, surprising advocates.

The program is intended to incentivize states to serve more meals because the amount of money it gets is based on how many meals it served the previous year.

“If you’re discouraging incentives, you’re actually lowering meal counts at the end of the day,” said Robert Blancato, president of the National Association of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs.

Overall, funding to the nutrition programs was cut by 0.8 percent in fiscal 2024 and states received about $10 million less in appropriations from the federal government in fiscal 2024 than in fiscal 2023.

That cut, plus growing demand for services, cuts to state budgets, the end of COVID-19 aid and inflation has put pressure on local service providers and the people who count on them.

The 2021 COVID-19 rescue package alone nearly doubled the amount the government typically spends on home and congregate meals, allowing organizations to reach people they couldn’t before.

Local programs

Now that the money is gone, groups have to make difficult decisions about who to remove from their programs or dropping the number of meals people receive per day, or creating wait lists.

“During the pandemic, the demand definitely shot up, and so did government funding… but then that funding went away, and the demand didn’t,” said Adam Porter, director of Sound Generations Meals on Wheels based in Seattle.

The organization has had a wait list since February 2023. It currently has 1,423 people on it, more than the number receiving meals through the program.

Food costs have also increased by 25 percent from 2018 to 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“It continues to go up and funding isn’t, so we’re reducing the number of meals we can serve,” Porter said.

In Pennsylvania, the Monroe County Area Agency on Aging, which is responsible for doling out Older Americans Act funding to local partners, has had a freeze on new clients entering the program since July 2023.

Its primary partner — Monroe County Meals on Wheels — had to seek out a grant to avoid instituting a waitlist after the state passed flat funding for senior services programs.

The organization enrolled people on the waiting list into its private pay program, which is based on a sliding fee scale, to ensure people weren’t going without needed meals. It received a grant to cover the costs of the meals for people who can’t afford it.

“We’ve been dependent on community support and grant funding to try to fill that gap because the alternative is a waiting list of our own,” Alyssa Koeck, executive director of Monroe County Meals on Wheels in Pennsylvania.

“We’re working very, very hard to make sure that we do our best to prevent that from happening because we know, especially with the cost of living, that having nutritious, affordable meals is so critical to our clients.”

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©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. Visit at rollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Even if Congress were to eliminate every dollar of nondefense discretionary spending — projected to be $9.8 trillion over the next 10 years — it still wouldn’t offset the estimated expense of the wide-ranging tax cuts Trump and Vance have floated in recent weeks.

The price tag is based on rough, initial estimates from tax and budget specialists because the Trump campaign hasn’t released detailed policy plans for its tax promises.

The Trump campaign said in a statement the former president will cut wasteful spending and increase energy production to pay for the tax cuts and lower the national debt. The campaign didn’t offer more detail.

Though Democrat Kamala Harris also has proposed a few large tax cuts — she would exempt tips from taxation and expand the child tax credit — the impact on the nation’s finances pales in comparison. She calls for offsetting the lost income, which one think tank estimates at roughly $2 trillion, with tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals.

Harris is continuing to roll out policy ideas piecemeal, which could add to that total. On Tuesday, she called for an expanded deduction for start-up businesses and her campaign has signaled that more policy plans could be released in the coming weeks. On Wednesday, she proposed increasing the capital gains tax rate to 28% from 20%, which would raise federal revenue.

The sheer magnitude of the Trump campaign’s tax promises make it highly unlikely they all would pass even in a Congress controlled by Trump allies. The Republican ticket’s tax proposals include extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, a big expansion to the child tax credit and exemptions for tips and Social Security payments.

“Congress is not going to pass a $10 trillion deficit-financed tax cut,” said Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

Republicans have long argued that tax cuts boost growth. But it’s not clear how much Trump’s proposals, which largely cut levies for individuals rather than businesses, would spur new economic activity.

The combined cost of the Trump plans is so big that if Congress were to try to pass the tax cut proposals and keep spending flat, it means they could continue to fund the military, federal benefit programs, like Social Security, pay interest on the debt — and nothing else. That means eliminating major federal agencies that handle duties such as law enforcement, border security, air traffic control, tax collection and international relations.

Trump’s supporters are accustomed to his impromptu, broad-stroke policy pronouncements, while some key Democratic constituency groups demand detailed policy proposals from their candidates and a firm plan offsetting the cost.

Harris and President Joe Biden released a detailed budget proposal this year to cut federal deficits $3 trillion over a decade, by raising taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals and other measures. Those plans mirror some of the offsets Harris has proposed but previously have run into powerful opposition from major business lobbies.

Without those compensating tax increases, the Harris proposals could increase the deficit by as much as $2 trillion over the next decade, according to the University of Pennsylvania Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Tax Agenda

For both candidates, much will hinge on how well their party does in congressional elections, said Wendy Edelberg, a former Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office economist who’s now director of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project.

The outlook “depends on a million different factors, particularly the balance of power in Congress,” Edelberg said. “Perhaps no policy will get enacted as specifically proposed by either candidate.”

Taxes will be a top agenda item in Congress next year, regardless of who wins the White House or which party controls the House and Senate. Major portions of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — including lower individual rates and deduction for small businesses — expire at the end of 2025, which will force Congress to address the tax code next year.

Trump has made extending his signature tax law the centerpiece of his agenda. The Congressional Budget Office says that would cost $4.6 trillion over 10 years. He’s also floated lowering the corporate rate to 15% from 21%, adding another $874 billion to the total, according to a budget model by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

On the campaign trail, the Republican ticket has verbally floated more tax ideas with hefty price tags: excluding Social Security payments from taxes ($1.8 trillion), exempting taxes on tipped wages ($250 billion) and increasing the $2,000 child tax credit per child to $5,000 ($3 trillion).

Added all up, that’s $10.5 trillion. If Congress were to seriously consider these ideas, official federal scorekeepers would model out the effects, including how the tax cuts interact with one another.

Revenue Raisers

Trump has offered very few options to raise more federal revenue. He has vowed to block any cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits and has called for an increase in military spending. He’s proposed universal tariffs ranging from 10% to 20%. The left-leaning Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center has estimated a 10% across-the-board levy could raise $2.8 trillion over 10 years.

That has the potential to cover some of the cost of his tax cuts, but doesn’t take into account what economists warn are large negative economic growth effects or the cost of compensating farmers for trade retaliation from other countries.

The rising national debt is already stoking concern among investors and ratings agencies.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has warned that higher government budget deficits are on an unsustainable path. In November, Moody’s Investors Service signaled it could downgrade the U.S. from the highest investment grade, Aaa.

CBO projects federal debt held by the public will exceed 100% of the GDP next year and rise to 122% in 10 years without any new tax cuts.

“The fiscally responsible thing for either candidate to do, if they are proposing tax cuts, is to tell us how they are going to pay for them,” said Keith Hall of George Mason University, who once led the nonpartisan CBO.

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©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

And industry leaders view improvements in technology as another way to expand access to banking.

Chase Bank continues to expand its retail banking presence in Hampton Roads and expects to open at least 10 more branches by 2027, regional director Alfonso Guzman said.

“We’re big believers in our branches,” Guzman said. “We really believe they are the pillars of the community and they’re important parts of every community.”

Chase currently has two branches in Norfolk and Williamsburg and one each in Newport News and Virginia Beach. By the end of this year, Chase plans to open a second branch in Virginia Beach along with branches in Hampton and Chesapeake, Guzman said. The remaining five new branches will open between 2025 and 2027.

While Chase puts its digital focus on the forefront, Guzman said its branches are still a part of its strategy to meet clients within their communities.

“It’s not either/or,” he said. “We want to make sure that human-to-human interaction is still top of mind and a priority for us as we continue to grow.”

Dollar Bank has opened nine branches since entering the market, said Dave Paradise, senior vice president of Dollar Bank’s Virginia Division. Dollar Bank has 13 branches in South Hampton Roads, including four from its acquisition of Bank @lantec in 2017.

While Dollar Bank has no immediate plans to add branches, it actively looks for opportunities in low- to moderate-income census tracts throughout its markets, Paradise said.

“Technology has really improved access to banking services, which means that it is easier for people to bank with us in a way that is convenient for them,” Paradise said.

In an effort to help Hispanic and immigrant consumers, Chartway Credit Union, which has 16 branches in Suffolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Norfolk, opened its first fully bilingual branch in the state in Virginia Beach at the end of April.

And Fulton Bank launched a diverse business banking program designed to meet the needs of minority, women, veteran and LGBTQ business owners last summer. Fulton Bank operates five financial centers in Hampton Roads, including three in Virginia Beach and one each in Chesapeake and Newport News, spokesperson Steve Trapnell said. Last year, Fulton opened a commercial banking office in Norfolk.

“We are committed to making financing and banking products more accessible to groups that, historically, have been underserved,” Fulton Bank Chairman and CEO Curt Myers said.

Sandra J. Pennecke, 757-652-5836, sandra.pennecke@pilotonline.com

But now there are interlopers: Drug middlemen, companies known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that influence which medicines can be bought, where to buy them and at what cost.

Patel and other independent pharmacists say their businesses are threatened by the growing influence of these companies, tied to huge health care conglomerates. In a system that is opaque and complex, patients are steered to affiliated pharmacies, such as CVS and mail-order pharmacies, they say. Pharmacists face high fees and low reimbursement rates, so are unable to cover their costs.

That could put Patel — and other locally-owned pharmacists — out of business.

“I want to do what matters to the community. But how long can I sustain this?” said Patel, 48, who owns Savco Pharmacy in San Jose’s West San Carlos neighborhood. “We are at their mercy.”

The PBMs respond that critics base their conclusions on incomplete evidence. According to the trade organization Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, they protect consumers from high drug prices by negotiating for discounts, called rebates, from drug companies.

The disappearance of independent pharmacies could limit consumer choice and health care access — especially in low-income or rural communities.

On Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue, Selam Pharmacy owner Michael Gebru called PBMs “a big black box.” He said “They bill me whatever they want, and can reclaim it. That’s pretty scary. It’s a Wild West.”

In the coastal village of Point Reyes Station, tiny West Marin Pharmacy recently lost its contract with PBM company Express Scripts, used by insurer Cigna and others. Now residents covered by Cigna must get their prescriptions by mail or make a 20-mile drive to find another pharmacy.

“If any of us, our children and families are ill, suffering from fevers, vomiting, diarrhea or worse, we may be forced to drive an hour or more to San Rafael, Novato or Petaluma just to get a prescription filled,” worried pharmacy customer Christine Cordaro of Inverness Park.

PBMs were created in the 1960s as a way to process prescription drug claims. They are responsible for paying pharmacies on behalf of insurance companies, employers and the government. The three largest companies are run by CVS Health, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group, which oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million Americans.

In 2012, the year San Jose pharmacist Patel bought his modest shop, PBMs processed fewer than 50% of prescriptions.

A series of mergers in 2018 created the current system, where health care conglomerates are vertically integrated — owning the insurer, the PBM and pharmacy. The giant health insurer Aetna combined with drug retailer CVS. Another large insurer, Cigna, bought Express Scripts. UnitedHealth built its own PBM.  All three companies operate mail-order pharmacies.

“It’s like they’re taking the money from one pocket, and putting it into the other,” said Zsuzsanna Biran, pharmacist owner of West Marin Pharmacy.

Despite consumer opposition, the FTC approved the mergers.  But now there are concerns about PBMs’ economic leverage. The smaller, locally owned pharmacies feel muscled out of the market.

CVS calls the plight of independent pharmacies “overblown.”

“Contrary to much of the independent pharmacy lobby’s rhetoric, there is no crisis facing independent pharmacies,” CVS said in a statement.

“What the independent pharmacy lobby has long coveted is a world without managed pricing or the competitive pressure from PBM negotiations on behalf of payer clients and consumers,” CVS said.

According to Express Scripts, “If we didn’t provide significant value for our thousands of partners, we wouldn’t exist.”

The PBMs work by negotiating rebates on the “sticker price” of medicines. Some of these savings are shared with insurers and employers.  But a slice is kept by the PBMs. This is enormously profitable.

There is evidence of anticompetitive behavior that illegally distorts the market, hurting consumers and threatening the survival of independent pharmacies, according to new reports by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability investigation.

PBMs steer patients toward pricier drugs, with “formularies” of preferred medicines that discourage use of lower-priced alternatives, according to the reports, released last month. Because these high-priced drugs command a greater rebate, there’s more profit.

They also sometimes restrict patients’ access to mail-order deliveries, which they own. This cuts out the role of the local pharmacy.

Independent pharmacies say they’re saddled with unnecessary extra fees. When he started his business in 2012, Patel paid $15,000 to $20,000 in PBM fees; this year, his fees could surpass $110,000.

High fees and low reimbursement may discourage pharmacists from filling a prescription. If he loses money on a prescription, “I have two options,” said Patel. “Take the loss, or tell the patient that I cannot fill it.”

“With lower prescription reimbursements in one corner and higher back-end fees in the other, many community pharmacists are thinking about throwing in the towel,”  according to the National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents more than 19,400 independent U.S. pharmacies.

Nearly one-third of independent pharmacy owners may close their stores this year, it predicted.

But in Sacramento and other state capitals, lawmakers are taking a tougher look.

State Sen. Scott Wiener has authored legislation, Senate Bill 966, that would impose new rules on PBMs, better regulating the companies. It would require PBMs to be licensed with the California State Board of Pharmacy and to pass down drug rebates to consumers.

Meanwhile, Patel takes joy in things that don’t cost money — recognizing customers’ names and faces, making birthday phone calls and reminding them to be immunized. Once he provided a cane, for free, to a customer with a gimpy leg.

And there are rewards that are priceless, such as the gifts of fruit, chocolate and home-baked cookies from grateful customers.

“He’s the best,” said customer Rob Souza, picking up a prescription for an ailing wife. “He’s like a small-town pharmacist, always working things out.”

Shares tumbled more than 20% Wednesday after hitting a 52-week low on the prior day. The biggest one-day sell-off for Dollar Tree shares in more than 20 years arrived less than a week rival bargain chain Dollar General reported a dismal quarter and suffered its largest single-day slump ever.

Dollar Tree has been trying to lure customers from other retailers using its rock-bottom prices, but juggernauts like Walmart and Target have also said their customers are under pressure and they’re cutting prices, too.

That has left little leeway for bargain stores because huge chains like Target are cutting prices on groceries, a huge draw for customers who are likely to shop for other items at Target and skip an additional trip to a dollar store.

“Dollar stores have lost market share to larger retailers that have broadened their offerings and gained customer loyalty through everyday low prices,” said Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research, analytics and AI at LSEG.

And the economic headwinds that first hit low-income customers at Dollar Tree appear to be climbing upward to those who are better off, according to company executives.

“Dollar Tree has a broader customer base that includes more middle and upper-income households and beginning this quarter, we started to see inflation, interest rates, and other macro pressures have a more pronounced impact on the buying behavior of these customers,” said Chief Operating Officer Mike Creden.

Dollar Tree now expects full-year adjusted earnings between $5.20 and $5.60 per share, down from a range of $6.50 to $7.

The Chesapeake, Virginia, company also projected annual sales in a range of $30.6 billion to $30.9 billion, down from $31 billion to $32 billion. Both of those numbers fall short of Wall Street projections and it showed in the retailer’s plunging stock Wednesday.

Dollar Tree’s second quarter adjusted revenue was $7.37 billion, short of the $7.5 billion that analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research expected.

Dollar Tree earned $132.4 million, or 62 cents per share, for the period ended Aug. 3. Stripping out certain items, earnings were 67 cents per share, 36 cents short of Wall Street projections.

Though inflation is slowing, Americans continue to struggle with sharply higher prices for such necessities as gas, food and housing compared with their pre-pandemic levels.

For the third quarter, Dollar Tree anticipates adjusted earnings between $1.05 and $1.15 per share, with revenue in a range of $7.4 billion to $7.6 billion. That, too, is shy of Wall Street expectations for per=share earnings of $1.31 and revenue of $7.58 billion.

Dollar Tree is also wrestling with internal problems that have hampered growth.

In June the company said that it was looking at strategic options for the Family Dollar stores that it owns, including a possible sale.

Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar nearly a decade ago for more than $8 billion after a bidding war with Dollar General. But it’s had difficulty incorporating Family Dollar into its business and recently announced that it would close nearly 1,000 stores, with most of them being Family Dollar locations.

“On the bottom line, net income is down by a third,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData. “The overall impression is that Dollar Tree has quickly moved from a company that was advancing to one that is simply treading water. Though, to be fair, most of this is because of the troubles at Family Dollar.”