[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 119 (Tuesday, July 19, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3497-S3502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               AMERICAN INNOVATION AND CHOICE ONLINE ACT

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today, as I will many times, to 
address my colleagues on the topic of competition policy, especially in 
our digital markets where we have a situation where a few Big Tech 
titans have grown into the largest corporations our country has ever 
seen.
  Just today, there is new reporting that shows that Google and Amazon 
have used their gatekeeper power to eliminate their competition for 
years. I don't think we are surprised by this, but this is new 
information that I think is important, as we learn new things all the 
time, that my colleagues know.
  According to a 2014 memo first obtained by the House Judiciary 
Committee, a Google executive described--this is what the memo says--
``grave concerns'' about a new service from a rival ``competing with 
their core search experience.'' The documents also included an email 
from 2009 in which Amazon executives discussed ways to stop a company--
that would be Diapers.com, a company it later bought--from advertising 
on their own platform.
  This gets to the core of what we are talking about here and why we 
must take action. This email that was made public today reads:

       We are under no obligation to allow them to advertise on 
     our site. . . . I'd argue we should block them from buying 
     product ads immediately, or at minimum price those ads so 
     they truly reflect the opportunity costs.

  What does that mean? Well, Amazon could charge their rival whatever 
they wanted for advertisements and try and keep consumers in the dark 
about lower prices. That is only two from the dozens of documents newly 
released today by the House Judiciary Committee.
  I come to the floor today because the evidence is clear and continues 
to mount. These dominant tech platforms have abused their power for 
years, and now we are at a crossroads. Will America continue to be a 
place where entrepreneurs lead our economy forward or will we become a 
country where a handful of monopolists get to dictate who gets a chance 
to succeed?
  Remember when they all started--whether they were in garages or 
whatever--they started with this idea that they were platforms for 
sharing this information. I don't think anyone ever conceived they 
would also own things on the platform and then preference those things 
over other competitors. That is what is going on now. This is where 
consumers go to make their decisions about what they are going to buy.
  When you have situations where Google has 90 percent of the search 
market, that is a monopoly, clear as can be. The decisions we make and 
the actions we take today will set the trajectory for American 
innovation, for ingenuity, and prosperity for the next generation. I 
say we must meet the moment.
  As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have had the 
opportunity to serve as chair of the committee's Subcommittee on 
Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights. From my vantage 
point, I can tell you it has become painfully obvious, as many of my 
colleagues--Democrats and Republicans--have seen, that we have a 
serious competition problem throughout our economy, especially in Big 
Tech but not only in Big Tech. This issue impacts all Americans every 
single day.
  Why are there only two dominant smartphone operating systems? Why do 
social media companies face so few consequences for playing fast and 
loose with our personal data? Why does Amazon keep raising prices that 
consumers and small businesses pay? The answer is simple: They are 
monopolies. That is what monopolies do. They are the big guys on the 
block, and there is a lack of competition.
  Despite the volume of evidence that supports taking action, Congress 
has yet to pass a single bill on online platform competition since the 
dawn of the internet. That is right. At the beginning, we were told we 
don't want to squelch these new products and competition. That made 
sense back then, but it doesn't make sense now.
  This evening, I am going to talk about the problems consumers and 
small businesses are experiencing in the online marketplace and the 
cost of inaction. It is really easy around this place not to act, to 
say things are too hard to deal with, whether it is climate change, 
whether it is immigration reform, whether it is tech policy from 
competition to privacy. But at some point, you have to stop blaming 
other people and do something about it.
  I am going to review how other countries are attacking this problem 
and actually taking it on. I will discuss the many examples throughout 
history when Congress and enforcers have stepped up to confront 
monopoly power. This has long been a problem in our country.
  You go way back to the Founding Fathers. So many people actually came 
to America because they wanted to be entrepreneurs. They don't want to 
have to buy all their tea from the East India tea company. You think 
about the Senators from the past taking on monopolies. Whether it is 
the railroad trust, whether it is the sugar trust, they took on 
monopolies.

  There are old cartoons in this very Chamber, our Old Senate Chamber, 
showing these big, bloated monopoly trusts looking down on the Senators 
because they controlled them. We don't want that to happen in our 
modern day because we know many times from the past, the Senate did 
stand up and do something. That is the case I am going to make today 
for why my bipartisan bill with Senator Grassley, the American 
Innovation and Choice Online Act, is necessary to level the playing 
field in our digital economy.
  First, let me say a word about what we are up against. That is what 
everyone sees. I am trying to measure my audience today on C-SPAN 
versus what we believe is well around $100 million that the Big Tech 
companies have purchased for ads, especially in States where Senators 
are up for reelection where they have purchased ads all over the 
country. But people do listen. There are a few people here right now, 
and if I give this speech in different ways a number of times, I can 
win.
  Let's talk about what we are up against. When I talk about the 
dominant digital platforms, I am talking about some of the most 
powerful companies in the world with armies of lobbyists and lawyers--
thousands and thousands of lawyers and lobbyists. I have two. They are 
sitting right here in the Chamber.
  We do have kind of a David and Goliath situation, but the lawyers for 
Big Tech are everywhere, in every corner in this town, at every 
cocktail party, and all over this building. I tell my colleagues they 
don't even know sometimes when someone is trying to influence them 
because they may think they are just talking to a friend or someone who 
worked on their campaign a while ago. But once they talk about 
antitrust and Big Tech, they should ask the person if they are being 
paid by a tech company or if they are on the board of a tech company or 
if they have some affiliation with one of the Big Tech companies 
because, time and time again, they have been surprised to find the 
answer is yes.
  But these Big Tech companies aren't just lobbying my colleagues; they 
are also lobbying the American people with astroturf campaigning and 
other dishonest PR tactics.
  At the same time that I have been working with my colleagues in good 
faith on commonsense solutions to online competition problems, these 
companies have been telling anyone who will listen that acting to 
protect competition in our digital markets will sometimes or somehow 
cede our national security or it will outlaw Amazon Prime--claims that 
were disputed by the Department of Justice and Amazon's own lobbyists 
in the press. That is just two examples. We deal with this all the 
time. They will say anything and everything. Senator Grassley and I 
came down here together to the Senate floor to refute this a few months 
ago.

[[Page S3498]]

  Then, of course, there is the money. I think this is actually the 
best evidence of just how big and dominant and bullying these companies 
are, running ads in States where people are in tough races. I think 
they get the message. They are showing they are out there. They are 
showing they are going to be able to put whatever money it takes into 
ads to stop this bill. How obvious can it be? Message received: We are 
out here, and we can hurt you.
  And, by the way, they wouldn't be spending millions and millions of 
dollars to stop us if we didn't have momentum. Let me give you some 
numbers. In 2021, Big Tech companies spent more than $70 million 
combined lobbying Congress. That does not include these ads I am 
talking about. In the first quarter of this year, Facebook, Meta; 
Amazon; Alphabet, which is Google; and Apple spent more than $16 
million lobbying Congress. That is in one quarter. And you see my two 
lawyers on the other side.
  In just one recent week in May, one industry group, the Computer and 
Communications Industry Association, spent $22 million on TV ads 
against this bill. That is $22 million against one bill in 1 week. So 
when you see those TV ads, which they love running in Washington so 
that Members will see them, remember that number, $22 million, and 
think ``two lawyers.'' That is what we are up against.
  But it doesn't surprise me. I am not trying to win a popularity 
contest with the tech companies. That ship has sailed. I am simply 
trying to do the right thing.
  Since I am a Senator and not a tech-backed industry group, I don't 
get to spread my message with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign. I 
don't have paid actors, but Big Tech lobbyists can't stop me from 
standing here today on the floor of the Senate and tell you the truth. 
The truth is these companies will stop at nothing to protect their 
profits, even if it means stifling the innovation and ingenuity that 
has made our Nation's economy second to none. American prosperity was, 
of course, built on a foundation of open markets and fair competition. 
It is competition between companies that give consumers lower prices, 
drives manufacturers to constantly innovate and improve their products, 
and forces companies to pay fair wages to compete for workers.
  Competition provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to start and 
grow new businesses, fueling future economic growth. But if you look at 
our markets today, we see big cracks in that free market foundation. We 
see bigger businesses and fewer competitors and more dominant companies 
using their market power to suppress their rivals and line their own 
pockets.
  As an example, more than two-thirds of U.S. industries have become 
more concentrated between--and these are the last figures we had, 1997 
and 2012, because our government doesn't really collect these figures 
because someone stopped them from doing it. The White House highlighted 
this problem a year ago in its Executive order on competition, pointing 
out that in over 75 percent of our industries ranging from agriculture 
to banking to healthcare, a smaller number of large companies now 
control more of the business than they did 20 years ago.

  This is raising prices overall for Americans. The lack of competition 
is estimated to cost the median American household $5,000 per year. The 
problem, of course, is most obvious in the tech industry because that 
is a relatively new area compared to some of our more embedded 
industries. And while, over time, we did things with pharma, we have 
done things in other areas, there is, as I noted, no law passed since 
the advent of the internet involving tech competition.
  Tech has given us some great products. I am wearing one, a Fitbit. I 
use Google Maps, order from Amazon and other places, carry an iPhone. 
Over the last several decades, companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, 
Facebook, Microsoft have created many great innovations. We went from 
the Wall Street Gordon Gekko days with his cell phone affectionately 
known as the Brick, that weighed 2 pounds and was 13 inches long, to 
cell phones the size of a watch.
  But while these tech companies were once scrappy startups innovating 
to survive, they are now some of the largest companies the world has 
ever known. And when you get that big--guess what--you have 
responsibilities, you have to be accountable. You aren't just out there 
as a brandnew startup doing whatever you want. But that is the 
mentality.
  They are still introducing new products; that is great. But they are 
also gatekeepers, and they use their power as gatekeepers to stifle 
competition and innovation by their competitors and the businesses that 
have no choice but to use their services. So that is a problem.
  So if you want to sell something big time, you better get on the App 
Store. But when you get on the App Store, depending on the size of your 
company, as you get bigger--let's say you are Spotify--you have to pay 
30 percent of the revenue you make on that App Store to Apple for the 
pleasure of competing with their own product, Apple Music.
  So to my colleagues I say this: Yes, you can love the products; you 
can love the CEOs themselves; you can love the companies--but you also 
have to love competition and love and take seriously the unique role 
that we are supposed to play as Senators and as Members of Congress to 
ensure there is an even playing field.
  You go back, way back, to the godfather of capitalism, Adam Smith, 
who said to always watch out for the standing army of monopolies. We 
knew from the beginnings of this country that we would have to step in 
time and time again to make sure that we rejuvenate capitalism. That is 
what this is about.
  Throughout history, whether in telecom in the 1990s with the breakup 
of AT&T--which, by the way, made the company, according to one of their 
former presidents, stronger--or by passing the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act in 
the 1970s, to stopping sweetheart merger settlements, Congress has 
brought down prices over time by ensuring that there is competition. It 
is actually a uniquely American way to do things.
  I am grateful for our friends in the House, Chairman Cicilline and 
Ranking Member   Ken Buck, who led bipartisan hearings on Big Tech and 
its anticompetitive conduct. They gave us a whole treasure trove of 
information. They conducted an 18-month investigation in the House 
Judiciary Committee--18-months--focused on how the largest and most 
dominant digital platforms harm small businesses, quash innovation, 
raise prices, and reduce quality.
  This is, by the way, what bothers me when some of our colleagues say, 
Well, we don't know enough.
  Seriously? Eighteen months of an investigation. And anyone in this 
room--it is public--can go look at it: 1,287,997 documents and 
communications--this is on the record--testimony from 38 witnesses, a 
hearing record that spans more than 1,800 pages, 38 submissions from 60 
antitrust experts from across the political spectrum, and interviews 
with more than 240 market participants, former employees of the 
investigative platforms, and other individuals totaling thousands of 
hours.
  That doesn't even include what we have done in the U.S. Senate 
Judiciary Committee. So, please, spare me hearing that we have not 
learned enough about this.
  The report is 450 pages, but let me read some excerpts that capture 
the harms to consumers and small businesses that we have seen as a 
result of our failure to update our competition policy.
  Here we go. This is from the record:

       To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy underdog 
     startups that challenge the status quo have become the kinds 
of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad 
tycoons. Although these firms have delivered clear benefits to society, 
the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, [and] Google has come at a 
price.

  These firms typically run the marketplace in each of their areas. You 
all know that. Everyone in this room knows that because 90 percent of 
the people, when they are doing a search engine, they go to one that is 
Google. You know the dominance of Amazon. You all know the dominance of 
these companies.
  These firms are in a position that enable them to write one set of 
rules for others while they play by another or to engage in a form of 
their own private quasi-regulation that is unaccountable to anyone but 
themselves.


[[Page S3499]]


  

       [T]he totality of the evidence produced during this 
     investigation--

  This is from the House--

     demonstrates the pressing need for legislative action and 
     reform. These firms have too much power, and that power must 
     be reined in and subject to appropriate oversight and 
     enforcement. Our economy and [our] democracy are at stake.
       The subcommittee identified numerous instances in which 
     dominant platforms engaged in preferential or discriminatory 
     treatment. In some cases, the dominant platform privileged 
     its own products or services. In [another], a dominant 
     platform gave preferential treatment to one business partner 
     over [the other]. Because the dominant platform was, in most 
     instances--

  And this is what is key--

     the only viable path to market, its discriminatory treatment 
     had the effect of picking winners and losers in the 
     marketplace.

  That is us. We are supposed to pick the winners and the losers in the 
marketplace and decide what is the best product based on what is 
supposed to be the least priced or what is supposed to be the highest 
quality. But now they have inserted themselves while at the same time, 
in many instances, placing their own product above others, not because 
they are less money, not because they are better, but because they are 
theirs.

       Google, for example, engaged in self-preferencing--

  I am back to the report--

     by systematically ranking its own content above third-party 
     content, even when its content was inferior or less relevant 
     for users. Web publishers of content that Google demoted 
     suffered economic losses and had no way of competing on the 
     merits. Over the course of the investigation, numerous third 
     parties also told the House subcommittee that self-
     preferencing and discriminatory treatment by the dominant 
     platforms forced businesses to lay off employees and divert 
     resources away from developing new products and towards 
     paying a dominant platform for advertisements or other 
     ancillary services. They added that some of the harmful 
     business practices of the platforms discouraged investors 
     from supporting their business and made it challenging to 
     grow and sustain a business, even with highly popular 
     products. Without the opportunity to compete fairly, 
     businesses and entrepreneurs are dissuaded from investing; 
     and, over the long term, innovation suffers.

  By virtue of functioning as the only viable path to the market--and 
that is what they are in so many instances--dominant platforms enjoy 
superior bargaining power over the third parties that depend on their 
platform to access users and the market.

       Their bargaining leverage is a form of market power [in] 
     which the dominant platforms routinely use to protect and 
     expand their dominance.
       Since 1998, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google 
     collectively have purchased more than 500 companies. The 
     antitrust agencies did not block a single acquisition.

  They did not block a single acquisition. And as I look back, I 
remember, just--in bright lights--that e-mail that was discovered 
during the House hearing in which Mark Zuckerberg wrote, ``I would 
rather buy than compete.''
  ``I would rather buy than compete.'' To me, that pretty much is 
exhibit A. The House report has far more information than I could ever 
share in a single speech, but I will be sharing it over the next few 
months.
  But overall, the House report found that if there was true 
competition, we would have a more dynamic and innovative tech center 
with more small and medium-sized businesses. Maybe if Facebook hadn't 
bought them--remember, ``I would rather buy than compete''--an 
independent Instagram, an independent WhatsApp--because Meta now owns 
them--could have developed the bells and whistles and privacy controls 
and other things. We will never know.
  Why will we never know? Because they bought them. But if you have big 
monopolies that buy up all of that potential innovation, that buy up 
smaller companies, you lose the ability to get at some of the major 
challenges that we see in our country.
  I believe in the market. I was in the private sector for over a 
decade. I believe in capitalism, but if you don't have an even playing 
field for competition, you have got a problem.

  Over time, if left unchecked, big companies dominate markets, exclude 
their rivals, and buy out their competitors.
  As one of the witnesses at a hearing that I chaired with Ranking 
Member Lee said before our Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Alex 
Harman of Public Citizen put it:

       When companies face less competition, either because of 
     consolidation, or from forces that make competitive threats 
     less likely, they invest less in research and development. 
     They in turn are less likely to produce new innovations [that 
     benefit consumers and the economy]. And, all too often, 
     companies across the economic spectrum that depend on these 
     gatekeeping firms to reach the marketplace slash jobs and cut 
     back on developing new products.

  As one founder put it: ``It feels like we are treading water with 
cement blocks around our feet.''
  This is what has been going on in our country. It describes the 
problems we are facing from these digital gatekeepers. We have also 
heard from many other companies, nonprofits, trade associations, about 
what has been happening to them as a consequence of the monopoly power 
wielded by the largest digital platforms.
  Consumer Reports says this:

       Multiple investigations and studies have found that the 
     largest online platforms have too much market power, and that 
     this is resulting in harm to consumers, businesses, and the 
     economy.

  A group of 60 small and medium-sized businesses wrote a letter 
saying:

       Gaining access to the dominant platforms and integrating 
     with their services has increasingly become a take-it-or-
     leave-it process replete with anticompetitive demands. It 
     doesn't serve American consumers or small and medium sized 
     businesses when the tech behemoths use their platform 
     dominance to tilt the competitive scales.

  In January, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors 
wrote:

       Unchecked, Amazon's dominance threatens to cripple the 
     highly competitive B2B system in the United States.

  The American Hotels and Lodging Association, not exactly a radical 
group, wrote:

       Dominant technology companies give their own paid 
     advertising products and services preferential treatment and 
     placement within their platforms to ensure that, despite the 
     specifics of what a consumer may be searching for, they will 
     likely be steered down a booking path that benefits the 
     search provider.

  Not that benefits you, but benefits one of the biggest companies the 
world has ever known.
  From a group of 40 small and medium-sized businesses back in January:

       Due to their gatekeeper status, dominant technology 
     companies can: use manipulative design tactics to steer 
     individuals away from rival services; restrict the ability of 
     competitors to interoperate on the platform; use non-public 
     data to benefit the companies' own services or products.

  And I could go on.
  So what do we have here? Google has 90 percent market share in search 
engines. Apple controls 100 percent of app distribution for iPhones, 
and Google controls the other app distribution, so they are what we 
call a duopoly. Three out of every four social media users--and there 
are 4 billion of them--are active Facebook users.
  Amazon is expected to seize half of the entire e-commerce retail 
market this year. That is what is happening.
  What are we doing? Let me repeat: We have done nothing. We have done 
nothing. We have had hearings; we have thrown popcorn at CEOs. But we 
haven't passed one bill out of the U.S. Congress to do anything about 
this competitive situation.
  What do other countries do? Well, other countries are now leaving us 
in the dust. They look to our leadership because America has always 
been known as a country of entrepreneurs and a country that encourages 
competition, but now look what is happening. Canada introduced 
legislation in April to make the dominant digital platforms fairly 
compensate news publishers for their content, following Australia's 
lead, which took similar action about a year earlier. And Europe is 
moving forward with its Digital Markets Act, DMA, a broad and sweeping 
piece of legislation that will place many new obligations on digital 
gatekeepers. The legislation puts rules of the road in place for how 
the digital gatekeepers determine search rankings, set defaults, 
process and use personal data, negotiate with business users on their 
platforms, interoperate, and demonstrate the efficiency of their 
digital advertising programs and the effectiveness of them. It also 
required gatekeepers to notify the European Commission about intended 
mergers and other deals that include the collection of data.

  If that sounds more intense than the bill Senator Grassley and I have 
put together, it is more intense. But the

[[Page S3500]]

point is that it has gone through the European Parliament.
  In the European Union, we are seeing the effects of efforts to rein 
in Big Tech. Just last week, Amazon made a settlement offer to the 
European Commission in an attempt to resolve an antitrust case. The 
European Commission investigations into Amazon's conduct were launched 
in 2019 and 2020 and involved three key issues that implicate self-
preferencing conduct in the United States too. First, the Europeans 
investigated whether Amazon used nonpublic data from sellers. Remember, 
the sellers have no choice if they really want to sell their stuff. 
They have to go on Amazon, right? So they have to give data to get on 
that platform. What they found out was that Amazon was using the 
nonpublic data from sellers to inform its own targets for new product 
development.
  That is what monopolies do.
  The little sellers have no choice but to sell on the Amazon platform. 
Then Amazon says: Oh, now we are going to see what products are good 
and how they are doing because we uniquely have all the information, 
and then we are going to copy that product, either directly, as they 
did with a four-person luggage carrier firm where they literally ripped 
off every detail of the product--based on reporting from the Wall 
Street Journal we now know that--or they just know this product is 
doing well so they do one just like it, and then they put it at the top 
of the search engine. Amazon has sworn under oath in the U.S. Congress 
that it does not do that.
  Well, now let's look at what is happening in Europe. Amazon also 
tightly controls who wins the coveted Buy Box, often awarding that 
preferred placement to itself. Third, Amazon requires sellers who want 
to be Prime to use Amazon's logistics services even if there could be a 
better alternative.
  We are not getting rid of Prime. We are just saying you have got to 
open the door so there could be alternatives.
  Amazon's settlement offer is filled with elements from my bill. That 
is what is so interesting because around this place or if you watch the 
TV ads, you would think the world was going to end. If we did a modicum 
of things while investigations are going on--of course, we know that 
there are various investigations in the Justice Department and around 
the country at the FTC. We are just going to sit there and let this 
continue until every appeal is made?
  Here is what is so interesting. In Europe, under the offer that 
Amazon just made in Europe, Amazon will stop using seller data to 
decide what private label products to launch, make it easier for third 
parties to win the Buy Box, and allow sellers to participate in the 
Prime program without using ``fulfillment by Amazon'' services to 
manage logistics like warehousing and shipping.
  My bill with Senator Grassley and what was called the ``Ocean's 11 of 
cosponsors'' because everyone has such different political beliefs, but 
we come together in support of capitalism for this bill--this bill that 
we have here, that is what it would do. It would require Amazon to do 
the same things that I just mentioned that they put forward in their 
settlement offer in Europe. Yet Amazon has claimed, in its multimillion 
dollar ad campaign, that this will break Prime in the United States. 
The hypocrisy is simply stunning.
  Why should consumers in Europe and small businesses in Europe have 
the benefit of the offer they are giving them, and we in the United 
States--we, who host their company--try to simply put the same 
requirements into law, and we are told: Oh, this is outrageous, when 
they are offering the exact same thing in other countries.
  The British have been working on these issues, too, particularly when 
it comes to app stores. And I want to thank Senators Blumenthal and 
Blackburn for their leadership in this area. The Competition and 
Markets Authority in the United Kingdom just last month issued a final 
report on the app store ecosystem, reaching the following conclusions. 
This is in the United Kingdom, which is, of course, a government that 
is different than the one we have here.
  This is from the Brits:

       Apple and Google have each captured such a large proportion 
     and volume of consumers in the UK that their ecosystems are, 
     for practical purposes, indispensable to online businesses.

  I think that is pretty fair to say that is what is going on around 
here.
  Let me continue with the Brits.

       Apple and Google act as gatekeepers to most UK consumers 
     with mobile devices, and as a result can set the rules of the 
     game for providers of online content and services.
       The evidence demonstrates that in the areas where Apple and 
     Google generate the vast majority of their revenues from 
     their mobile ecosystems, there is room for greater and more 
     effective price competition. In the case of Apple's mobile 
     devices, both firms' app stores, and Google's search and 
     advertising services, the evidence strongly suggests the 
     prices charged are above a competitive rate. . . . Consumers 
     would get a better deal if Apple and Google faced more robust 
     competition, either from each other or from third parties.

  The report continues:

       Weak competition within and between Apple's and Google's 
     mobile ecosystems is harming consumers, and will do so to a 
     greater degree . . . absent [any] intervention. Most 
     importantly, we are concerned that consumers will miss out on 
     innovative new features or transformative new products and 
     services that are held back or discouraged by the power that 
     Apple and Google wield.

  That is one report.
  If we continue to fail to take action in this country, we will lose 
our leadership position when it comes to antitrust on the global stage. 
That actually is not that great of a thing because then we are letting 
other countries determine what is going to happen to the future of 
competition. That is a huge risk for our country. It is time to take 
action just as Congress has done before when facing significant 
evidence of market failures and massive consolidation.
  So when Big Tech companies talk about this bill or really any serious 
antitrust effort, they try to make it sound like we are pushing for 
some kind of unprecedented action. And, as I just discussed, that is 
not true because we know they are getting all kinds of pushback in 
other countries and actually are making settlement offers that are 
exactly akin to some of the things we have in the bill.
  But it also isn't true in the history of our own country.
  I think everyone--while people don't think they have something in 
their background to do with monopolies or their dads or their moms or 
their grandparents had nothing to do, everyone has got something about 
competitive policy that affected their lives in the past or affected 
their relatives. For me, I think of the James J. Hill House in St. 
Paul. No, we never lived there. I will get to that in a minute.
  Calling it a house is actually an understatement. The 36,000-square-
foot mansion has 22 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and a 100-foot-long 
reception hall. It was constructed in 1890, which is the same year that 
Congress actually finally did something about competition by passing 
the Sherman Act.
  The man who built this house, James J. Hill, was a railroad magnate 
whose railroad ran from St. Paul to Seattle. He consolidated multiple 
railroads across the country using a legal concept called a trust--that 
is why we have antitrust--in which the stockholders of multiple 
competitors transferred their shares to a single set of trustees. There 
were all kinds of trusts, as I mentioned--rail trusts, oil trusts. 
Standard Oil Trust controlled more than 90 percent of the country's 
refining capacity. The Sugar Trust controlled 98 percent of refined 
sugar. And we had trusts in everything from sewer pipes to thread.
  When I was growing up, my mom would like to take me to see the 
Christmas lights by that house and other estate houses, and I remember 
at some of the houses, unlike this one, there were actually people in 
it and kind of ducking down. She loved to show me those things on my 
way from piano lessons in her red car. And she would remind me that in 
order to build that house, Hill needed workers. Hill needed the 
monopoly railroads that gave him the money to build this humongous 
mansion, and he needed cheap labor to do the work.
  That is where my family comes in. That is where the Klobuchars fit 
in. My great-grandpa and my grandpa were both miners in the iron ore 
mines in Northern Minnesota, and they did the work that supported the 
monopolies. Over time, unions came in; wages got better; the mines got 
safer. But in the end, that is how he built his house.

[[Page S3501]]

  Our Nation, as I noted, has a very, very rich and difficult history 
of dealing with monopolies. But every single time, whether it was the 
East India tea company and throwing that tea into the harbor--yes, it 
was about taxation without representation, but it was also about a 
monopoly company. Every single time we have found a way to push back, 
whether it was farmers in the Granger movement with their pitchforks 
taking on the cost of rail, whether it was in Chicago, the Pullman 
strikes, strikes by workers against monopolies in the beef industry.
  Finally, in 1901, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt rode his 
antimonopoly horse right into the White House. He finally did something 
about it. He used the first passed antitrust law, the Sherman Act, and 
was able to actually take on the trusts. And since then you have seen 
this rejuvenation over time. Sometimes, there is a lull, and then 
things get so bad--like what happened with AT&T--that between 
Democratic and Republican administrations, people come in and do 
something about it.
  I know a little bit about this because my first job out of law school 
was representing MCI at a law firm, and that is when they were fighting 
to get into the monopoly market. Finally, when AT&T was broken up, what 
happened? Long distance rates went way down, and we finally got a cell 
phone industry because one company wasn't controlling everything 
because they did not have at that time--after a while--they were cool 
at first, and then they didn't have any kind of incentive to innovate. 
Then they finally did.
  That gets us to the present where we have been hanging out and 
waiting and doing nothing for now decades and decades since the advent 
of the internet. And it is time to act--hence, our legislation.
  January 1, 1983, is considered the official birthday of the internet. 
So it has been 40 years since then, and we still have not passed, as I 
noted, competition legislation. That is why our group of Senators have 
come together. And that includes Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, Richard 
Blumenthal, John Kennedy, Cory Booker, Cynthia Lummis, Mazie Hirono, 
Mark Warner, Josh Hawley, Steve Daines, Sheldon Whitehouse, and several 
more who are supporting the bill and said enough is enough.
  Our bill creates rules of the road for these platforms. That means, 
first of all, that they can't abuse their gatekeeper power by favoring 
their own products or services and disadvantaging rivals in ways that 
harm competition. In other words, in the examples I have used, Amazon 
will not be able to use small business's data in order to copy their 
products and then compete against them. Apple won't be able to stifle 
competition by blocking other companies' services from interoperating 
with their platforms. And Google won't be able to bias their platform's 
search results in favor of their own products and services without 
merit. That is what our bill does.
  Amazon should rank products based on price and quality, not based on 
their own profit margins. The world's largest and most powerful 
platforms shouldn't be allowed to copy a small business's private data. 
I used the example of luggage carriers. There are many, many more.
  Another challenge to cracking down on antitrust violations is how 
difficult and time consuming it can be to try these cases in court. 
Currently, the government has to spend millions on economic experts and 
years in the courts, and even after all that, the likelihood of victory 
because of very conservative Supreme Court cases in the last few 
decades is small.
  This bill streamlines things in this area. It doesn't break up the 
companies. Some people would like to do that. That is not what this 
bill does. It doesn't stop mergers. I think we should put in stronger 
merger guidelines, but that is not what this bill does.
  This bill simply gives us rules of the road for these companies to be 
fair going forward, while we figure out the other things that need to 
be figured out.
  So support for this bill:
  The Boston Globe, October 2021, said on their editorial page that 
``[i]f the largest platforms can't be trusted to enforce even their own 
anticompetitive policies, then Washington has little choice but to 
act.'' They noted that the bill I have with Senator Grassley represents 
``a chance for Congress to turn concern over Big Tech's sway into 
action.''
  The Seattle Times, March 2022, wrote that ``[a]s antitrust efforts 
ramp up in Congress, Big Tech is fighting back, unleashing an army of 
lobbyists, enlisting business groups to apply pressure and engaging in 
fearmongering to avoid critical legislation.''
  Let me tell you, a lot of our Senators have proved that 
fearmongering.

       Lawmakers must forge ahead and support legislation that 
     reins in the tech giants' worst impulses, ensures fair 
     competition and protects consumers and small businesses. But 
     no matter what the tech companies say, antitrust legislation 
     will not slay these giants or kill innovation . . . that is 
     not its goal. What it will do is limit Big Tech's ability to 
     run roughshod over competitors and consumers. Enough 
     Democrats and Republicans agree, but time is running out. 
     Congress needs to act.

  The Washington Post editorial, in April of 2022, called our bill a 
``sound'' bill and pressed for movement on the legislation, including 
by writing as follows:

       Antitrust . . . needs revisions that prevent dominant 
     companies from building barriers to a marketplace where those 
     consumers will have both choice and protection. Legislators 
     should view the bills before Congress as an opportunity to 
     achieve this aim at last.
  The bill also has support from Agency experts who have enforced 
antitrust laws and worked to protect competition in the U.S. markets.
  The Department of Justice has endorsed the bill. I know this is after 
the Department of Justice under the previous administration--under the 
Trump administration, with Bill Barr as the Attorney General and Makan 
Delrahim as the head of Antitrust--actually started the initial 
lawsuit--the major, major lawsuit--against Google and after the FTC, 
under the Trump administration, started the lawsuit against Facebook. 
They filed major lawsuits that are being continued by this 
administration.
  The Department of Justice wrote this:

       The Department views the rise of dominant platforms as 
     presenting a threat to open markets and competition, with 
     risks for consumers, businesses, innovation, resiliency, 
     global competitiveness, and our democracy. By controlling key 
     arteries of the nation's commerce and communications, such 
     platforms can exercise outsized market power in our modern 
     economy. Vesting the power to pick winners and losers across 
     markets in a small number of corporations contravenes the 
     foundations of our capitalist system, and given the 
     increasing importance of these markets, the power of such 
     platforms is likely to continue to grow unless checked. This 
     puts at risk the nation's economic progress and prosperity, 
     ultimately threatening the economic liberty that undergirds 
     our democracy.

  The Department of Justice continued:

       If enacted, we believe that this legislation has the 
     potential to have a positive effect on dynamism in digital 
     markets going forward. Our future global competitiveness 
     depends on innovators and entrepreneurs having the ability to 
     access markets free from dominant incumbents that impede 
     innovation, competition, resiliency, and widespread 
     prosperity.

  And Commerce Secretary Raimondo testified before our Senate Commerce 
Committee--I was there--saying:

       I applaud your efforts and . . . clearly agree that we need 
     to improve competition, which increases innovation.

  She said:

       Last month, the DOJ released a views letter--

  That is what I just read--

     on behalf of the administration in support of the American 
     Innovation and Choice Online Act and the [Commerce] 
     Department and I . . . support . . . and concur with the aim 
     of [that] legislation.

  It is not just officials currently in these roles who support this 
bill. Roger Alford, who served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General 
in the Antitrust Division from 2017 to 2019, wrote to us, saying:

       Bills such as S. 2992 provide hope that Congress will 
     restore competition to digital marketplaces.

  And while people may have seen the disingenuous ads on TV against the 
bill, I think it is worth reading portions of the letters that we have 
received.
  The Consumer Federation of America wrote:

       To maintain a healthy economy, it turns out we need both 
     sensible regulation and antitrust enforcement. . . .

[[Page S3502]]

       The American Innovation and Choice Online Act addresses the 
     key issues in a sector of the digital economy that has not 
     been addressed by competition policy and antitrust law. It 
     targets big data platforms, which can abuse their market 
     power as gatekeepers and vertically integrated firms, using 
     self-preferencing and data to block competition. . . .

  Antitrust legal scholars wrote--and I will put all of this in the 
Record. More than 60 small- and medium-sized businesses wrote, and 
YELP, DuckDuckGo, Y Combinator, and other businesses wrote that S. 2992 
will ``help restore competition in the digital marketplace.''
  Small Business Rising wrote that the legislation ``is a critical part 
of the solution to the harms caused by the outsized power of the tech 
giants.''
  As the president of Hobby Works, a Maryland hobby shop, said 
recently, ``All that any small business asks for is a somewhat level 
playing field and a somewhat fair environment in which to compete.''
  I will end with this: Monopoly power, consumer choice, and reduced 
innovation aren't topics that came up for the first time when we marked 
up and passed this bill. I just read to you the thousands and thousands 
of pieces of documents and testimony from the House for 18 months that 
our colleagues Representative Cicilline and Representative Buck put 
together. So don't tell me this is the first time, when that went on 
for 18 months and when we have had hearing after hearing in the U.S. 
Senate.
  It is time to stop throwing the popcorn at the CEOs and actually do 
something. We got this bill through the Judiciary Committee with a 16-
to-6 vote just 6 months ago. Now it is time to bring this bill to a 
vote on the floor.
  We have monopoly problems. You can still like the products. You can 
like the companies if you want--OK--but at some point they have gotten 
so big that you have to put some rules of the road in place to ensure 
that we can have the next Google or that we can have another competitor 
to Google or that we can have a true competitor to Amazon or that we 
can find, finally, social media platforms that protect our privacy and 
our data and our democracy. This isn't going to happen if you just let 
four big platforms control the day. As long as they do, which looks 
like it will be for the well foreseeable future, at least let's protect 
capitalism by putting some rules of the road in place.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________