Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Chairman, Americans are tired of monopolies that saddle them with less choices and higher prices.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice must have the resources that they need to aggressively combat anticompetitive mergers.

This commonsense, bipartisan legislation that we are considering today is absolutely needed right now in order to protect consumers. It makes giant companies pay their fair share, improves transparency, and streamlines litigation.

This should not be--and it isn't--a partisan piece of legislation. At a hearing I was chairing as the chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, we had testimony last year from a Bush- appointed member of the Federal Trade Commission, Bill Kovacic, who called for a tripling in the FTC budget. He recognized that this agency should play a leading role in enforcing our laws that protect consumers, workers, and innovation.

I urge all my colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a very compelling statement made by both Senator Klobuchar and Senator Durbin in favor of the legislation. (By Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Senator from Minnesota, Sept. 29, 2022) Klobuchar, Durbin Issue Statement Urging House to Pass Bipartisan Legislation to Strengthen Antitrust Enforcement

Washington.--U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, and Dick Durbin (D- IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the statement below urging the House of Representatives to pass-- H.R. 3843, the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act.

``The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act is the product of years of bipartisan work in both the House and Senate to improve the enforcement of our antitrust laws and protect competition and consumers. This package of bills will update merger filing fees and help ensure that the federal antitrust agencies can be properly funded, that information on foreign subsidies is made available to federal enforcers, and that state antitrust enforcement can proceed more efficiently and without needless delays. We call on all House Members to support this important bipartisan legislation.''

The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act includes the House companion to Klobuchar's merger filing fees reform bill with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Durbin to help ensure antitrust enforcers have sufficient resources to protect consumers by updating merger filing fees and lowering the burden on small and medium-sized businesses. It also includes the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act, Klobuchar's legislation with Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) to empower state antitrust enforcement by allowing state attorneys general litigating antitrust cases to remain in their selected courts. H.R. 3843 has been endorsed by a coalition of State Attorney Generals:

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I also include in the Record Mr. Kovacic's testimony. House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce,

Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce Safeguarding American Consumers: Fighting Frauds and Scams During the Pandemic Testimony of William E. Kovacic, February 4, 2021 Federal Trade Commission Budget and Compensation Levels for Employees

There is a grave mismatch between the duties Congress has assigned the FTC and the resources it has given the agency to carry out its mandate. There is a serious need to raise the FTC's budget, but not simply to build a larger staff by hiring more people. Reforms to the federal compensation system are necessary to attract and retain a larger number of elite personnel. I do not see how the FTC or many other public agencies can recruit and retain necessary personnel without a significant increase in the salaries paid to managers and staff.

Consider two possibilities for compensation reform. The first is to align FTC salaries with the highest scale paid to the various US financial service regulators. One model would be the compensation scale used to pay employees of the banking regulatory agencies; the salary scale for these bodies exceeds the General Schedule (GS) federal civil service wage scale by roughly twenty percent. In adopting the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, Congress concluded that the importance of the mission of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) warranted higher salaries for the agency's personnel. If the higher salary scale made sense for the CFPB, I see no good reason why a more generous compensation schedule is not appropriate for what is the nation's leading consumer protection agency (and its leading federal data protection authority.

A second, more ambitious alternative would be to triple the FTC's existing budget of about $330 million per year and use the increase mainly to raise salaries and partly to add more employees. This experiment might be carried out for a decade to test whether a major hike in pay would increase the agency's ability to recruit the best talent, retain the talent for a significant time, and apply that talent with greater success in a program that involves prosecuting numerous ambitious cases and devising other significant policy initiatives.

A major increase in compensation, either by adopting the CFPB model or trying our my more ambitious proposal, is a crucial test of our national commitment to improve the foundations for effective consumer protection enforcement. The nation should spend what it takes to get the best possible personnel to run the difficult cases (and carry out other measures, such as the promulgation of trade regulation rules) that will be the pillars of a new, expanded enforcement program. Such steps will become even more important if new political leadership seeks to close the revolving door, which has operated as a mechanism to encourage attorneys and economists to accept lower salaries in federal service in the expectation of receiving much higher compensation in the private sector at a later time.

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