Democracy Rules

Antitrust laws are regulations that encourage competition by limiting the market share of corporations. This often involves ensuring that mergers and acquisitions don't overly concentrate market power or form monopolies, as well as breaking up firms that have become monopolies. Many Americans believe that during the past 30-40 years, our economy has been rigged against American consumers. Critics claim corporate lobbying has unduly influenced our representatives, making them less responsive to their constituents and allowing firms to “concentrate” their market power at the expense of consumers and small businesses. They say illegal corporate collusion has drastically reduced real competition between “competitors” and resulted in many de-facto monopolies.

Among others, our healthcare, petroleum, agriculture, airline, telecom and tech industries have all been accused of gaming the system in favor of increased profits. They claim collusion exists among the providers of most of the products and services upon which American consumers depend. The Justice Department’s antitrust division and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are the government’s two antitrust enforcers but they have not been aggressive or effective enough to protect the American marketplace from corporate greed. Consumer advocates say this has gone on long enough.

Proposed Legislation: Reintroduction of S.225 - The Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act (117th Congress 2021-2022)
Prospective Sponsor: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN)

I oppose reforming current antitrust reform policy and wish to donate resources to the campaign committee of Leader Charles Schumer.
I support reforming current antitrust laws and the agencies tasked with enforcing them by: 1.) Shifting the burden to parties seeking a merger to prove that they would not create a risk of lessening competition. 2.) Restricting acquisitions by a dominant firm with 50% market share, and acquisitions of firms by competitors and mega-merger transactions valued at $5 billion or more. 3.) Adding an additional $300 million to Justice Department’s antitrust division and the Federal Trade Commission’s annual budget and authorize them to seek civil fines for competition violations. 4.) Creating an independent Competition Advocate at the FTC. 5.) Eliminating the requirement that claimants almost always define a relevant market in order to establish liability in antitrust court cases. 6.) Requiring studies by the FTC and Government Accountability Office on competition. And wish to donate resources to the campaign committee of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and/or to an advocate group currently working with this issue.