Commentary | Antitrust in the Hands of Biden’s Pen and Phone – By Robert H. Bork Jr. (Real Clear Politics) / Nov 22, 2022
The White House is urging the Senate to use the coming lame duck session to pass Amy Klobuchar’s Big Tech antitrust bill, described by the Minnesota senator and adoring commentators alike as “sweeping.”
And it is sweeping.
With its mandate for tech companies to be fully “interoperable,” the Klobuchar bill would sweep the private data of American consumers, businesses, and government into the hands of hundreds of foreign companies. It would sweep the executives of large social media companies further into the thrall of progressivism by giving regulators the ability to threaten them with death-penalty fines over vague transgressions. And it would sweep non-tech companies, from banks to grocers, into its severe regulatory purview as these businesses grow in equity value and digital subscribers.
In the razor-thin balance of the coming 118th Congress, however, the path to passage for “sweeping” legislation will be treacherous and narrow. To borrow a phrase, Congress over the next two years will be where sweeping goes to die.
