DeWine, Kohl Anounce Antitrust Subcommittee Agenda for 2005

DEWINE, KOHL ANNOUNCE ANTITRUST SUBCOMMITTEE AGENDA FOR 2005

U.S. Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, and Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Ranking Member, have announced an active agenda of hearings and legislation for 2005.

"I take pride in the bipartisan manner in which Senator Kohl and I have operated the Antitrust Subcommittee in the past and will continue to operate it in the future," Senator DeWine said. "We both firmly believe that antitrust enforcement must remain a vital feature of our nation's economic landscape. This Subcommittee will continue to act vigorously to assure that antitrust enforcement works to protect American consumers, both through its oversight of the antitrust enforcement agencies and through its own hearings and investigations into mergers and other activities that could potentially harm consumers and competition."

"Senator DeWine and I have worked to strike a fair balance between the need to vigorously enforce our antitrust laws and to respect the achievements of our nation's key industries to ensure that competition flourishes and consumers are protected," Senator Kohl said. "I have been proud of the strong and constructive bipartisanship on this Subcommittee, and I expect that this tradition of antitrust oversight will continue into the new Congress during 2005 and beyond."

During the past eight years, under the strong bipartisan leadership of Senators DeWine and Kohl, the Subcommittee has taken an aggressive role to promote competition and to protect the American consumer throughout many key sectors of the nation's economy. The Subcommittee has conducted more than 40 hearings to examine competition in numerous important industries, including health care and hospital group purchasing, media and telecommunications, the airline industry, the computer software industry, and gasoline and energy, and agriculture. In addition, last year Senators DeWine and Kohl were the co-sponsors of one of the most significant antitrust reform measures in more than twenty-five years, legislation which substantially increased criminal fines and jail-time for antitrust violations and enhanced the ability of federal courts to review antitrust settlements to ensure they are in the public interest.

In 2005, the Subcommittee plans to address the following issues:

* Telecommunications

We plan to hold a hearing in April to examine the rapid consolidation in the telecommunications industry. The recently announced mergers between SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI recreates, in part, the old Bell system and will remove two important competitors in both national and local service markets. We have already begun to scrutinize these proposals very carefully by taking a leading role in the Judiciary Committee's examination of the mergers. Likewise, the recently announced Sprint/Nextel merger comes on the heels of the Cingular/AT&T Wireless merger, and is another step in the increased consolidation of the up-to-now robust wireless market. If approved, this deal will reduce the number of national wireless providers to four. Given this increased level of consolidation in the telecommunications industry we plan to closely review how these mergers will affect competition in the telecommunications market. We plan to follow the March hearing at the Judiciary Committee examining these mergers with a follow-up hearing in April at the Antitrust Subcommittee. Also, we plan to actively participate in any effort to revise the Telecommunications Act and will advocate that any proposed changes to the Act promote competition in the telecom market.

* Media

In this era of continued consolidation in the media sector, the Subcommittee will continue to focus on competitive conditions in this vital industry. We will continue to examine the effects of media consolidation on the marketplace of ideas, on diversity of ownership in the media, and on the ability of independent content producers to distribute their products. We will work to preserve and protect competition, diversity, and localism in media. We will also continue to emphasize bringing increased competition to the cable television market, by such means as monitoring program access issues and ensuring that competitors to incumbent cable companies are not subject to predatory conduct. We requested a study from the Government Accountability Office—which is scheduled to be released shortly—on the extent to which satellite TV is competing with cable TV. The Subcommittee will examine this report closely when it is released.

* Health Care Industry

The Subcommittee will continue its work to ensure that hospital group purchasing organizations ("GPOs") operate as intended—making sure they do not harm competition and innovation in the markets for medical devices but instead lower costs for hospitals, medical caregivers, and patients. The Subcommittee's hearings and investigatory and oversight efforts into this issue since 2002 have resulted in the nation's leading GPOs agreeing to voluntary reforms to their business practices. The Subcommittee has been following this achievement by examining closely how the GPOs implement these reforms. In the upcoming Congress, the Subcommittee also expects to promote measures to ensure that these voluntary reforms are made permanent and enforceable, either by legislation or by implementation of a robust industry-wide enforcement mechanism. The Subcommittee's continued goal is to ensure that GPO practices result in America's hospitals, medical caregivers, and patients obtaining the best possible medical equipment and supplies at the best possible prices.

* Gasoline and Oil Markets

In this time of skyrocketing prices for crude oil and gasoline, the Subcommittee will focus on bringing increased competition to the oil industry as a means of restraining energy price increases. Senators DeWine and Kohl have already reintroduced this Congress the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act or "NOPEC". NOPEC would strip nations that participate in the OPEC oil cartel of the protections of sovereign immunity and make them subject to U.S. antitrust law. Our other efforts will include monitoring and encouraging the Federal Trade Commission's efforts to observe and track changes in gasoline prices in order to uncover any potentially anticompetitive behavior.

* International Markets

The Subcommittee plans to hold a hearing on how U.S. multinational companies have been affected by different antitrust regimes in different countries. Complying with the antitrust laws of different countries, which often have different substantive or procedural rules, is increasingly becoming a burden on U.S. businesses and thus merits review by the Subcommittee. The Subcommittee will continue to work closely with the European Commission's Directorate General for Competition, and its newly appointed Competition Commissioner, to ensure that American companies are treated fairly and in a non-discriminatory fashion when their transactions and activities are reviewed by the European Commission ("EC"). The Subcommittee will also continue to encourage the EC and other international antitrust enforcement agencies to focus their investigations on harm to consumers by using sound economic analyses, and to cooperate with U.S. authorities to the maximum extent possible in order to harmonize the competition law principles they apply.

* Strengthening Criminal Enforcement

We plan to strengthen the Department of Justice's ability to prosecute cartel and bid rigging conspiracies by advancing our legislation that would authorize the Department to seek a wiretap order from a federal judge under normal criminal law standards during the course of investigating a criminal antitrust conspiracy.

* Overseeing the Antitrust Enforcement Agencies

We plan to hold an antitrust oversight hearing to examine antitrust enforcement activities. The Subcommittee will continue to focus on the processes of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition and ways the Subcommittee can help those agencies perform more efficiently and effectively.

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