Klobuchar’s Push To Pass Antitrust Bill Meets Resistance

Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the push to pass her antitrust legislation targeting big tech companies isn’t dead, in an interview with Vox’s Kara Swisher at the Code Conference on Tuesday.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), aims to limit tech companies from preferencing their own products and services over rivals’. It advanced out of the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support earlier this year, but has yet to be called for a floor vote. 

“It is really hard to take on these subjects when you have the biggest companies the world has ever known, that control an inordinate part of the economy, opposed to it,” she said in the interview. “It is an incredible amount of money I’m up against. I have two lawyers. They have 2,800 lawyers and lobbyists. So I’m not naive about the David versus Goliath.”

She also told Swisher the upcoming midterm elections may not be a hard deadline for the legislation to pass, even if Republicans gain control of the House and Senate, since the bill has bipartisan support in both chambers.

AICO is the only bill from the antitrust package to pass through both the House and Senate committee markups. As Klobuchar pointed out, it’s also the first competition bill since the beginning of the internet to advance to the Senate floor. All that’s left for it to head to the White House to get signed into law are two floor votes. In the Senate, it’s been waiting for a vote since January; in the House, it’s been waiting for over a year.