TPA Reacts to Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Digital Markets

For Immediate Release                                                 Contact: Abigail Graham: (202) 417-7235

March 7, 2023                                                                         

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled, Reining in Dominant Digital Platforms: Restoring Competition to Our Digital Markets. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) urges Senators to oppose reintroduction of bills that would only harm consumers devices and waste taxpayer dollars.

In response, TPA Executive Director Patrick Hedger, offered the following comment:

“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights is wasting taxpayers’ time and resources by reigniting their pursuit of flawed pieces of antitrust legislation built on faulty premises.

“Unfortunately, the focus of today’s hearing was not on critical issues such as cybersecurity, data privacy, free market competition or opposing government-encouraged censorship. Instead, Senators went on a fishing expedition for methods to take punitive actions towards private tech companies and ways the government can mandate competition.

“The proposals offered during the 117th Congress by members of the committee, such as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, the Open App Markets Act, and the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act all have irreconcilable flaws pertaining to cybersecurity, the First Amendment, and the rule of law broadly. These pieces of legislation did not advance then, and they should not be pursued yet again.

“Further, the landscape in the tech sector has radically shifted in the last two years. Since last Congress, the firms all-but explicitly targeted by these bills have shed hundreds of billions of dollars in market value, tens of thousands of jobs, and several percentage points in marketshare amidst fragile economic conditions, increasing competition, and shifting consumer preferences.

“Taxpayers should also be concerned with the state of the agency largely tasked with enforcing antitrust law. During the last year alone, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under its current leadership has suffered embarrassing court losses, plummeting staff morale, and a sitting Commissioner resigning in protest. This is not an agency that needs vast new powers. The American peoples’ time would better be served by Congress investigating these issues at a critical consumer protection agency than seeking to pile on to America’s reeling tech sector.”

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Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to educating the public through the research, analysis and dissemination of information on the government’s effects on the economy.