American Ownership and Resilience Act

The company must name an outside trustee with no ties to the seller. That trustee hires an outside valuation firm to say in writing whether the price, terms, and loan costs are fair to the workers' plan.

Each worker in the plan can direct how the shares in their own account are voted on any sale of the company. Shares not yet assigned to a worker are voted the same way, in proportion.

If the worker-owned company is later sold to an outside buyer, the payout must be split as if every share in the plan were already assigned. Each worker's cut tracks their own pay.

Employees of the company being sold may not put in money of their own to fund the deal. That bars wage give-backs and retirement rollovers. Workers selling shares they already own are the exception.

Commerce would guarantee the bonds these licensed firms sell to raise money, and the full faith and credit of the United States stands behind them. The cap is $5 billion a year, and $500 million for one firm.

A 1940 investor-protection law caps how much a registered fund can borrow against its assets. That cap would not apply to these firms when Commerce guarantees the debt.

Money a firm puts into companies that make things in the United States, in industries it calls vital to security, would not count against its borrowing cap. The break stops at $75 million or a quarter of the firm's own capital.

The businesses bought this way face no small-business size test. A large private company can be financed the same as a corner shop.

Commerce must report to Congress every year on how the program ran, including what the government lost on guarantees. It must also estimate losses for the year underway.

A licensed firm must agree not to employ or retain anyone who worked at Commerce with a say over its funding. The bar runs two years from when the help was given, and reaches back one year before it.

Before Commerce commits any guaranteed money, a firm's managers must hand over the names of any attorneys or agents hired to move its application along, and what they were paid.

Commerce must write rules for deals between a licensed firm and its own officers, directors, or owners. Those rules have to require public disclosure.

Twenty years after the first license, Commerce could license no new firms. Firms already licensed could keep drawing money already promised to them.

Anyone convicted of a felony, or of any crime involving dishonesty or breach of trust, could not take a job or advisory role at one of these licensed firms. The same bar covers people found liable for fraud in a civil case. No time limit is set, though the Secretary of Commerce can consent in writing.

A firm that agrees to mentor a new "Protege" firm has its own borrowing cap raised by $17.5 million. If that mentor runs two or more licensed firms, the increase is $35 million.