Senator Klobuchar’s Big Tech Antitrust Bill Opposes Big Tech’s Big Money

Amy Klobuchar’s antitrust push is not dead, Democratic Senator Kare Swisher said at the Code Conference on Tuesday.

“Never discount us when the cause is right and we need to fight it,” she said.

Klobuchar has been at the forefront of the antitrust movement in Congress, sponsoring several bipartisan and bicameral bills against big tech that could better regulate them and limit their immense power. Despite a favorable start and seemingly strong bipartisan interest in passing at least some of these bills, they appear to have stalled. Some have made no progress at all; others are waiting for a vote that looks like it will never take place.

“You need some sort of rules where you don’t have gatekeepers who also control who wins in the market,” she said.

The American Internet Innovation and Choice Act (AICO) is one such bill, and it is the one Klobuchar has arguably championed most aggressively. This will prohibit dominant digital companies from prioritizing their own products over those created by others on platforms they own. As such, Amazon will not be allowed to list their own products higher in search results on their marketplace unless those products naturally earn that spot, and Google will not be allowed to post their own maps or reviews above those offered by other companies in Google. search results if its maps and reviews don’t deserve this spot.

AICO is the only bill in the antitrust package to pass through House and Senate committee surcharges. As Klobuchar noted, this is also the first competition bill since the advent of the Internet, which was submitted to the Senate. All he has left to go to the White House to sign the bill is two votes. The Senate has been waiting for a vote since January; he was expected in the House for more than a year. Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer didn’t even schedule a vote. It’s not clear why: Klobuchar and some AICO backers, including Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), say the bill has enough bipartisan votes to pass the Senate. Sumer said he’s not so sure about it and won’t vote on it until he’s sure.

Klobuchar did not name the exact date of the vote and did not give guarantees that it would take place before the interim dates. She said that the reason for the delay was not a party one. content moderation ditheringas reported. That’s the time it takes to even pass bipartisan bills, and that’s money. Specifically, the amount of money the companies targeted by her bill have spent fighting it. lobbying as well as ads.

“It is very difficult to deal with these issues when you have the largest companies the world has ever known that control an exorbitant part of the economy that opposes it,” she said. “This is an incredible amount of money that I oppose. I have two lawyers. They have 2,800 lawyers and lobbyists. So I’m not naive about David versus Goliath.”

But Klobuchar also suggested that the deadline many are citing for passing the bills — a midterm election when Republicans are expected to take control of one or both houses of Congress — cannot be hard and fast. Many Republicans want Big Tech to have some kind of fence, and she thinks they will continue to exist if they get control. She also sees no certainty that they will gain control in the midterms. Her proposal to the big tech companies was to make same concessions in the United States they made in other countries before they have to.

“After all, I believe in our country,” she said.