On Sept. 15, ABC joined a diverse coalition of over 40 trade groups and associations in a letter to Congress opposing the Warehouse Worker Protection Act. “The WWPA would impose long discarded and unworkable regulations on warehouse distribution centers, curtail employers’ due process rights when challenging citations from OSHA, and hamstring a critical part of our national supply chain,” the letter reads. “Despite its narrow sounding title, the legislation would impact workplaces in nearly every industry sector nationwide. Protecting workers is a priority for all employers, but this bill would only impede efficient operations without improving workplace safety.”

July 24, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions advanced three labor nominees by a party-line vote of 12-11. The nominations will now move to the Senate floor for a final vote at a later date.  

• David Castillo to serve as Chief Financial Officer, Department of Labor  
• Brittany Panuccio to serve as a Member, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 
• Jonathan Snare to serve as a Member, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission 

Ahead of the vote, the ABC-led Coalition for a Democratic Workplace along with 11 employer organizations, including ABC, sent a letter to the committee expressing strong support for Brittany Panuccio to serve on the EEOC.

On July 23, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a hearing titled, “The Road Ahead: Proposals to Improve America’s Transportation Infrastructure.” Ahead of the hearing, ABC sent a letter to the committee calling on them to prioritize fair and open competition and an all-of-the-above approach to workforce development as it crafts the Surface Transportation Act reauthorization.

On July 1, a diverse group of lawmakers from around the country sent letters to President Trump urging him to rescind the Biden-era rule requiring PLAs on federal construction projects of $35 million or more. 95 members of the U.S. House and 21 members of the U.S. Senate signed the letters, expressing serious concerns over the administration’s decision to double down on a policy that is inherently exclusionary, anti-competitive and costly for American taxpayers.

ABC Supports One, Big, Beautiful Bill as Senate Kicks off Vote-a-Rama:

On June 30, the U.S. Senate began deliberations on their version of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act after passing a key procedural vote this past weekend. On June 27, ABC sent a Key Vote letter to the U.S. House and Senate, urging members of Congress to support the bill which includes key tax relief for contractors. ABC also joined a group of organizations representing millions of Main Street businesses in a June 28 letter expressing strong support of the package. ABC supported provisions of the OBBB would:

• Make the Small Business Deduction Permanent
• Provide Permanent Estate Tax Relief
• Restore 100% Bonus Depreciation
• Revive Expensing of R&D Costs
• Eliminate tax on Overtime for American Workers
• Expand 529 Accounts for Skilled Trades Training

The Motion to Proceed to debate the bill on the Senate floor passed in a 51-49 vote, with Senators Thom Tillis, R-N.C. and Rand Paul, R-Ky., voting against the measure. The bill is now in its early stages of a series of votes nicknamed “vote-a-rama,” where the Senate will consider any number of amendments to the package, a process expected to take several hours. Keep in mind, under Senate rules, reconciliation bills can pass the Senate with a simple majority, overriding Senate filibuster rules that typically require a 60-vote supermajority. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, but Tillis and Paul are both unlikely to change their minds on Trump’s key agenda item, leaving Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., with a slim margin to pass the package. A third GOP defector would force Vice President JD Vance to break the tie, while a fourth would kill the bill all together.

If the Senate approves the package, it will head back to the House where Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will face yet another challenge in corralling his Conference. Notably, the House passed their version of the OBBB at the end of May in a slim 215-214-1 vote. The Senate’s version now includes steeper cuts to Medicaid and a phase out of the $40,000 state and local tax deduction cap, not to mention an $800 billion increase to the deficit. These present a clear and present threat to Johnson’s hopes of getting the package through the Chamber and to the president’s desk ahead of their July 4 deadline.

On June 25, ABC joined other business groups and trade associations in a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, supporting making permanent and expanding the Section 199A deduction from 20 to 23 percent. While ABC supports the Senate’s provision of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill that would make permanent the 199A deduction, it also would cut in half their ability to deduct State and Local Taxes (SALT) as a business expense. The net result will be a tax hike on millions of pass-through businesses relative to what they currently pay.

Locking in the higher deduction under Section 199A will prevent a significant tax hike in 2026 and ensure that ABC members—most of whom are passthrough businesses—can reinvest in their companies, expand their workforce and take on new projects without fear of future tax hikes.

On June 25, the Coalition for Workplace Safety sent a letter to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in support of David Keeling’s nomination to serve as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. The committee is considering additional nominees at the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including:

• Nomination of Penny Schwinn to serve as Deputy Secretary of Education, Department of Education
• Nomination of Kimberly Richey to serve as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Department of Education
• Nomination of Daniel Aronowitz to serve as Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Employee Benefits Security Administration, Department of Labor  
• Nomination of Jonathan Berry to serve as Solicitor, Department of Labor
• Nomination of Andrew Rogers to serve as Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, Department of Labor
• Nomination of Anthony D’Esposito to serve as Inspector General, Department of Labor
• Nomination of Andrea Lucas to serve as a Member, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 
• Nomination of Jeremiah Workman to serve as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Veterans’ Employment and Training, Department of Labor

On April 8, the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and the U.S. House Committee on Small Business held a joint hearing titled, “Prosperity on Main Street: Keeping Taxes Low for Small Businesses.” Ahead of the hearing, ABC sent a letter to the committees in support of key provisions from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that provided important tax relief for contractors. Specifically, ABC called on House and Senate members to support critical tax policies, such as:

• Maintaining Parity for Pass-Through Entities through the permanence of the TCJA’s Section 199A
• Revived Expensing of Research and Development Costs
• Restoration of 100% Bonus Depreciation

The scheduled expiration of many of these policies would have grave effects, not only for our contractor members, but for the construction market more broadly, specifically harming small businesses around the country. On Jan. 17, ABC sent a letter to the House Ways & Means Committee emphasizing the significance of making permanent the provisions of the TCJA for America’s working families.

On March 6, Sen. Sanders, D-Vt., and Rep. Scott, D-Va., reintroduced the ABC-opposed PRO Act in the 119th Congress.

On March 4, the ABC-led Coalition for a Democratic Workplace sent a letter to the Hill urging Congress to oppose the bill.

This radical legislation includes dozens of provisions that would violate workers’ free choice and privacy rights, force unions on employees who have voted against such representation, cost millions of American jobs, threaten vital supply chains and greatly hinder our economy. The bill boosts union membership at the expense of American workers and small businesses.

Of the many radical provisions in the PRO Act, the bill includes provisions that:

• Strip away workers’ privacy rights and key protections guaranteeing workers’ free choice through secret ballots in union representation elections
• Curb opportunities for people to work independently through independent contractor roles
• Revoke independently enacted state right-to-work protections and require workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment
• Change the legal standard for joint-employer liability, reducing opportunities for our country’s small and local businesses through subcontracts, licensing and franchising
• Violate employers’ right to attorney-client confidentiality on complex labor law issues, making it harder for businesses, particularly small businesses, to secure legal advice
• Impose government control over private contracts
• Infringe on the due process rights of employers
• Remove secondary boycott protections

The reintroduction of this legislation represents the latest attempt to implement labor law policies that have previously been rejected by the judicial system, opposed on a bipartisan basis in Congress and/or withdrawn by the agencies that prior administrations tried to use to implement the policies unilaterally. All of these entities realized those policies violated the law, exceeded the authority granted to the implementing agencies or would cause serious damage to the American workplace.

On Feb. 26, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing, “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Implementation and Case Studies.” Ahead of the hearing, ABC sent a letter expressing concern that the Biden administration’s pro-project labor agreement policies were limiting opportunities for all Americans to participate on federal and federally assisted construction projects, raising costs for taxpayers.