On The Money — Businesses scramble from Texas abortion law

Happy Tuesday and welcome to On The Money, your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line. Subscribe here: digital-staging.thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

Today’s Big Deal: How new restrictions on abortion in Texas have businesses running from the political fallout. We’ll also look at a jam-packed September of high-stakes battles, Sanders vs. Manchin, and emergency funding requests.

But first, we’re going to go see “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”

For The Hill, I’m Sylvan Lane. Write me at slane@digital-staging.thehill.com or @SylvanLane. You can reach my colleagues on the Finance team Naomi Jagoda at njagoda@digital-staging.thehill.com or @NJagoda and Aris Folley at afolley@digital-staging.thehill.com or @ArisFolley.

Let’s get to it.

Texas abortion law roils businesses

The new abortion law in Texas is roiling the business community, prompting some firms to directly interfere with the controversial enforcement mechanism and putting pressure on others to publicly denounce the measure.

• Texas-based dating platforms Match and Bumble set up relief funds to help people affected by the law. 
• Ride-hailing platforms Uber and Lyft decried the statute and said they would cover all legal costs for any of their drivers who get sued for driving a customer to an abortion clinic.
• Web hosting company GoDaddy dropped an abortion tracking website that was launched to help enforce the six-week abortion ban, saying it violated the firm’s terms of service. The anti-abortion activists moved the site to another web hosting company, Epik, which promptly shut it down as well.

But as of Tuesday afternoon, only a handful of companies have spoken out against the law. Corporate America has mostly remained silent, despite its vocal opposition to Texas’s restrictive voting bill that was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) Tuesday. The Hill’s Karl Evers-Hillstrom tells us why here.

The ‘no-go zone’: “It’s not surprising because this is harder than a number of other issues,” said Sandra Sucher, a professor of management at Harvard Business School. “Abortion is particularly contentious because we know that it relates to people’s religious views, which is kind of a no-go zone for companies.”

LEADING THE DAY

Democrats stare down nightmare September

Democrats are staring down a nightmare September, a month jam-packed with deadlines and bruising fights over their top priorities.

A minefield of legislative challenges in a condensed timeline will test Democratic unity and provide plenty of opportunities for Republicans to lay political traps just a year out from the 2022 midterm elections, including:

• Averting a government shutdown in a matter of days 
• Democrats’ self-imposed deadline for advancing an infrastructure and spending package at the center of President Biden’s economic and legislative agenda
• A looming decision about the debt ceiling, 
• A voting rights clash set to come to the Senate floor in mid-September, 
• Lingering Afghanistan fallout 
• And, in the wake of a controversial Supreme Court decision, a heated fight over abortion.

So, it’ll be busy. The Hill’s Jordain Carney tells us what to expect here.

BERNIE BRISTLES

Sanders pushes back at Manchin on $3.5T spending plan: Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Democrats can’t afford to slow down progress on a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said the party should hit the pause button.

“You can’t slow it down,” Sanders told The New York Times in an interview over the weekend during his recent trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, one of the latest stops on his cross-state campaign to the forthcoming legislation.

“Within a little while, everything is going to become political. The only way you get things done historically in Congress is in the first year of a session, where you can escape a little bit from the partisan politics,” he said. Aris has more here.

DELTA BLUES

Goldman Sachs cuts US growth forecast, noting ‘harder path’ for consumers: Goldman Sachs on Monday revised its U.S. growth forecast amid the nationwide spike in delta variant coronavirus cases, saying consumers will face a “harder path” than previously anticipated going forward.

Company economist Ronnie Walker said in a report to clients that the overall projected expansion for 2021 is now 5.7 percent, down 0.3 percentage points from the 6 percent projection made at the end of August.

“The hurdle for strong consumption growth going forward appears much higher: the Delta variant is already weighing on Q3 growth, and fading fiscal stimulus and a slower service-sector recovery will both be headwinds in the medium term,” Walker said.

Good to Know  

 Democrats are scrambling to craft their multi-trillion-dollar social spending package while seeking to avoid any points of contention that could threaten party unity. Here are five tax issues to watch as Democrats draft the legislation.

And here’s what else have our eye on:

• Senate Republicans are hoping they successfully laid spending traps that will scuttle, or significantly water down, President Biden’s $3.5 trillion package.
• El Salvador unplugged its digital wallet on Tuesday to cope with demand after the nation became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender.

Toyota told investors Tuesday that it plans to spend roughly $13.5 billion on developing batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles by 2030 as automakers look to compete in their commitments to reducing carbon emissions in the coming decades.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading and check out The Hill’s Finance page for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.