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Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues, Senator Lee and Senator Cotton.

We are united on this, as is Senator Grassley, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, as is Senator Durbin, the chair of the Judiciary Committee. These proposals got through our committee unanimously. We were able to pass them in different forms through this Senate on parts of different bills. And now this combined grouping of bills that the three of us have led have now passed the House of Representatives.

If you look at what is going on in our country right now, we have a competition problem in over 75 percent of our industries, ranging from ag to pharma to tech. A small number of large companies, more and more, are controlling more of the business than they did decades ago. Look at what just happened with Ticketmaster. The lack of competition is estimated to cost the median American household $5,000 per year.

We all believe--we agree on some things, and we disagree on some things--but we all agree that we need to update our laws in some way. One of the ways you do this is to make sure that our enforcers can take on the cases against the biggest companies the world has ever known. The Agencies are now shells of their former selves. In 1980, when the Antitrust Division was working to break up AT&T, it had 453 lawyers. As of April of 2021, that number had fallen to 299. The FTC had 1,719 employees in 1980. Now it is down to 1,100. We cannot take on the biggest companies the world has ever known or put fair rules of the road in place if we expect the enforcers to use bandaids and duct tape. Not only that, they bring in money when they bring these cases.

So I am proud of the work Senator Lee and I have done together. I would note the leaders of both parties support these concepts, including the former Assistant Attorney General in charge of Antitrust, Makan Delrahim, as well as the current administration, including the former Republican FTC Chair, Joe Simons, in addition to the current leadership in this administration.

Capitalism is built on the foundation of competition and open markets. To quote Adam Smith, the so-called godfather of our capitalist system, the invisible hand of competitive entrepreneurship is key, but he also said that we must watch out for the overgrown standing army of monopolies.

There is an old cartoon with a bunch of monopolies, sitting up there where our guests are, looking down. It used to be railroads. It used to be all kinds of other trusts. Now there are new guys in town, and it is equally as dangerous to capitalism.

I appreciate the work of Senator Lee and Senator Cotton.

I yield to Senator Cotton.

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