{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-remarks-antitrust-forum", "Cicilline Remarks at Antitrust Forum", "2017-12-06", "2017", "2017-12", "Democrat", "House", "RI", "David Cicilline", "C001084", "cicilline.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON \u2013 U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01), the top Democrat on the House Antitrust Subcommittee, spoke to the Open Markets Institute today for a briefing on \u201cAmerica\u2019s Monopoly Moment: Work, Innovation, and Control in an Age of Concentrated Power.\u201d Cicilline highlighted the growing threat that big mergers and corporate monopolies pose to working people. He also discussed the importance of stopping anticompetitive mergers and updating antitrust laws that were written more than a century ago.\nThe full text of Cicilline\u2019s remarks is embedded below. Video of his speech will be live-streamed at www.facebook.com/congressmandavidcicilline.\n---------------------------------------------\nU.S. Rep. David N. Cicilline\nAmerica\u2019s Monopoly Moment\nDecember 6, 2017\nRemarks as Prepared for Delivery\nGood afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to today\u2019s important discussion of America\u2019s Monopoly Moment: Work, Innovation, and Control in an Age of Concentrated Power.\u201d\nI am honored and delighted to join you to discuss one of the key issues of our time.\nWe are in a monopoly moment.\nNearly every relevant point of economic data shows that the concentration of economic power is at historic levels.\nThe Wall Street Journal reported two years ago that nearly a third of U.S. industries \u201cwould be considered highly concentrated under current federal antitrust standards,\u201d while 2015 was the biggest year ever for mergers and acquisitions.\nSince then, waves of anticompetitive mergers\u2014deals that should never have made it out of the board room\u2014have tested the boundaries and durability of the antitrust laws while straining the razor-thin resources of the antitrust agencies.\nEconomic concentration is at a three-decade high and has structurally weakened competition on an economy-wide basis.\u00a0\nIn the midst of this wave of consolidation, there is also overwhelming evidence that corporations are earning monopoly profits that aren\u2019t being reinvested in workers or the economy.\nLast month, Gary Cohn, President Trump\u2019s top economic adviser, accidentally illustrated this point at a Wall Street Journal CEO Conference.\nThere, an audience of CEOs and top executives were asked to raise their hands if they would reinvest savings from tax reform back into the economy.\nFew did.\nCohn laughed nervously and asked, \u201cWhy aren\u2019t the other hands up?\u201d\nBut it\u2019s no mystery why companies that are already enjoying record profits in concentrated industries are under no pressure to invest in their workers or the economy.\nThe Economist described this last year as the hoarding of economic growth by corporate monopolists\u2014an economic \u201csickness\u201d signaling that companies have become \u201cmore adept at siphoning wealth off than creating it afresh.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\nProfessor Carl Shapiro of the University of California at Berkeley, who served as the chief economist in the Justice Department\u2019s Antitrust Division, has reached a similar conclusion, noting that corporations \u201care systematically earning far higher profits than they were 25 or 30 years ago,\u201d pointing to \u201ca rise in incumbency rents.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\nBut on an even more fundamental level, hardworking Americans already know that the economy is not working for them.\nThey feel it in every paycheck, every job application, and every credit card payment.\nIn a seminal speech on America\u2019s monopoly problem earlier this year, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz described this as \u201ca widespread sense of powerlessness, both in our economic and political life. We seem no longer to control our own destinies.\u201d\nThat\u2019s because for too long, wave after wave of large corporate mergers have decimated jobs and wages while rigging the economy against locally owned businesses, working families, and entrepreneurs.\nBusiness dynamism\u2014a key measure of productivity and economic growth\u2014has steadily declined over the past several decades as the economy has become dominated by fewer and fewer large corporations.\nAnd over three thousand stores are expected to close this year\u2014double the number of closings during this period last year\u2014while the number of monthly job losses in the retail sector far exceed the losses in every other sector of the economy combined.\nDeclining competition among employers has resulted in lower wages and worse benefits precisely because corporations in concentrated markets have virtually zero incentive to pay fair wages.\nAnd while the effects of economic concentration have been devastating for nearly all workers, it most severely harms workers in vulnerable groups, such as women and minorities, who have less bargaining power against wage discrimination and other forms of workplace inequality.\nProfessor Marcellus Andrews of Bucknell University observes for minority small-business owners and workers, lax antitrust enforcement has been a \u201ccatastrophic intellectual and political policy mistake.\u201d\nBut economic concentration is not the only anticompetitive threat to the prosperity of working American families.\nOver the past several decades, the dramatic growth of excessive licensing requirements and the proliferation of non-compete clauses in employment contracts have become a turnstile for the employment of everyday workers\u2014a one-way restriction on economic opportunity that keeps jobs out of reach for too many working families.\nToday, nearly a third of American jobs require a state license, including many jobs that have little impact on public health or consumer safety.\n\u00a0\nFor example, to work as a security guard\u2014a job that typically pays less than $30,000 annually\u2014a Michigan resident must have three years of education and training. Other states require less than two weeks of training for the same job.\nAnd because these standards differ by state, licensing barriers have disproportionately affected the mobility and opportunity of military families, which are 10 times more likely to relocate across state lines than other working families.\u00a0\nWorse still, many states have used occupational licenses as leverage to collect educational debt, suspending or even seizing these licenses from firefighters, nurses, teachers, psychologists, barbers, lawyers, real estate brokers, and others who fall behind on student loan payments.\nAccording to a New York Times investigation of this alarming phenomenon, there are \u201cat least 8,700 cases in which licenses were taken away or put at risk of suspension in recent years, although that tally almost certainly understates the true number.\u201d\nThis is nothing short of a weaponization of safety requirements against the economic security of working American families.\nBut to be clear, calls for reform of excessive licensing cannot serve as a springboard for Lochnerism or the erosion of each state\u2019s plenary authority to establish standards governing the health and safety of its own citizens.\nThe Supreme Court has long recognized that states have broad power to enforce public health standards as a \u201cvital part of a state\u2019s police power.\u201d\nEqually as important, we must distinguish excessive licensing, such as onerous and costly requirements for everyday professions, from the reasonable practice of establishing minimum qualifications for professions that affect public health and safety in each state.\n\u00a0The benefits of sensible licensing practices, such as establishing education requirements for doctors or nurses or reducing the racial and gender wage gap, cannot be lost in this conversation.\nThere is also mounting evidence that the widespread use of non-compete clauses in everyday employment contracts is a fundamental threat to workers\u2019 economic freedom and mobility.\nThese clauses are widespread, even among workers who do not possess trade secrets, such as workers in the fast-food industry.\nLast year, the Treasury Department reported that nearly 30 million working Americans at all levels of employment are covered by non-compete clauses.\nAccording to this report, these non-competes \u201cprevent workers from finding new employment even after being fired without cause.\u201d\nLess than a quarter of workers report that their jobs involve trade secrets, while less than half of non-compete agreements involve work subject to trade secrets. To the contrary, only a small fraction of college-educated employees are subject to trade secrets.\nIn fact, in many cases, workers have already accepted a job before they even see the text of an employment contract or are simply unaware that they have agreed not to work for a competing business.\nAnd as another investigation by the New York Times notes, these clauses only add to the difficulties that hardworking Americans face in today\u2019s economy: \u201cGlobalization and automation have put American workers in competition with overseas labor and machines. The rise of contract employment has made it harder to find a steady job. The decline of unions has made it tougher to negotiate.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\nWhen combined with forced arbitration clauses, which immunize unscrupulous employers from virtually any legal accountability, non-compete clauses lock-in workers, even when they are in a harmful, discriminatory workplace.\nWhile these challenges are daunting, creating economic opportunity for working Americans must be a national priority.\nForemost, this means addressing corporate profit hoarding head-on by raising the income of Americans who are working longer hours for less pay, working on holidays and weekends just to make it to the next paycheck.\nIt is also essential that we invest in a stronger America that delivers good-paying jobs through apprenticeship programs, on-the-job training and education, and a system of competition that helps workers and small businesses.\nHouse and Senate Democrats have proposed \u201cA Better Deal,\u201d a bold economic agenda to give workers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses new opportunities to get ahead.\nA Better Deal on competition means investing in a stronger America through a fair system of competition and economic freedom for all Americans\u2014consumers, workers, and small businesses\u2014not just big corporations that are getting even bigger.\nThis vision of shared prosperity is more than just promises.\nWe are committed to rolling up our sleeves and getting to the work of cracking down on economic concentration to make our economy open, fair, and competitive.\nWe cannot allow corporate monopolies to dictate the economic freedom of workers in such fundamental and pervasive ways.\nToday\u2019s event also concerns the effects of economic concentration on innovation.\nMore than 10 years ago, Dr. Vint Cerf, one of the architects of the Internet, testified that a \u201cprimary design goal\u201d of the Internet was \u201cto make the network itself neutral with regard to the applications it supports.\u201d\nThis principle of neutrality and nondiscrimination created an environment of \u201cinnovation without permission,\u201d meaning that startups, blogs, applications, and other edge providers did not need approval from gatekeepers to develop innovative services or contribute to the marketplace of ideas online.\n\u201cThe Internet's design,\u201d Dr. Cerf stated, \u201cplaces the power and functionality of the net in the hands of the end users (consumers, businesses and application service providers).\u201d\nBut today, control of information online\u2014including the pathways for working Americans to access trustworthy news, commerce, and content\u2014has become increasingly centralized among just a few online platforms with significant and durable power in winner-take-all markets for harvesting consumers\u2019 attention.\nFarhad Manjoo, a technology columnist at the New York Times, wrote last week that the Internet as we know it is being \u201ccarved into a historically profitable system of fiefs,\u201d transforming its promise of \u201cendless innovation into one stuck in mud, where every start-up is at the tender mercy of some of the largest corporations on the planet.\u201d\nThis transformation of the Internet into a \u201ccorporate playground,\u201d he notes, is the reason that the \u201cfreewheeling internet has been dying a slow death.\u201d\nBut the Trump Administration\u2019s resolve to end net neutrality could be the final nail in the coffin of the Fair, Open, and Innovative Internet.\nNext week, under the Orwellian guise of reversing the \u201cdecline in infrastructure investment, innovation, and options for consumers,\u201d the Federal Communications Commission will vote to repeal protections against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization of consumers' access to lawful content online.\nTo be clear, the FCC is not only reversing core net neutrality protections. It\u2019s clearing the table of all of the protections that have allowed the Open Internet to flourish and grow. This deregulatory trainwreck is an unmitigated disaster for working people, small businesses, and innovation.\nIt is beyond dispute that openness is an engine of innovation and broadband investment.\nAs the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has repeatedly held over the past three years, Internet openness is integral to ensuring low barriers to entry for competition and promoting the expansion and improvement of broadband infrastructure.\nThere are important distinctions between broadband providers and platforms. But concerns regarding exclusionary conduct by platforms are not theoretical.\nProfessor Frank Pasquale testified before the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee in 2008 that the \u201c[c]oncentrated control over the flow of information, coupled with the ability to manipulate this flow, may reduce economic efficiency by stifling competition.\u201d\nThis discriminatory conduct \u201cis likely to result in high barriers to entry that depress competition\u201d because entrenched companies are more likely to have the necessary resources to \u201cpreserve their market dominance.\u201d\nNearly a decade later, we know that the ocean of data that platforms harvest from consumers every second has further entrenched this dominance and increased the risk of exclusionary conduct online.\nCoupled with machine learning and other incumbent advantages, there is little chance that startups today will even enter markets, let alone receive funding, to compete with a dominant platform.\nThat\u2019s why we must ensure that the enduring principles of nondiscrimination and openness apply to all levels of the Internet.\nWhen working families pay their bill for broadband internet access, they expect to get what they pay for: access to the entire lawful internet, not just portions of it. That\u2019s true across the board, and it is unquestionably the most important element of the fight for the Open Internet.\nAs Walt Mossberg, a pioneer of technology journalism who has covered the industry for decades, has observed, \u201cevery day, the internet becomes more of a platform for lousy ads, for increasing the power of a few rich companies, and for intrusive tracking. It\u2019s too important to leave unprotected.\u201d\nThat\u2019s why it is absolutely critical that we protect and promote competition in every market.\nWe must aggressively fight anticompetitive transactions that allow incumbent industries to perpetuate their stranglehold over commerce through acquisition after acquisition of future competitors.\nThis \u201cevergreening\u201d of dominant platforms through consolidation must stop.\nAs Professor Carl Shapiro recently noted, \u201cthere would be a big payoff in terms of competition and innovation if the DOJ and FTC could selectively prevent mergers that serve to solidify the positions of leading incumbent firms, including dominant technology firms, by eliminating future challengers.\u201d\nThis recommendation is consistent with a recent request by the Open Markets Institute urging the FTC to scrutinize the ability of dominant platforms to \u201cstifle innovation, undermine privacy, and divert readers and advertising revenue away from trustworthy sources of news and information.\u201d\nWe also cannot give up an inch of ground while enforcing the antitrust laws against monopolization and exclusionary conduct.\nIn 1994, the Justice Department opened 22 cases alleging monopolization. But twenty years later, it didn\u2019t open any.\nTo be clear, case law, not a lack of interest in promoting competition, is often the key factor determining whether the antitrust agencies will bring novel cases against monopolization.\nOur antitrust laws date back to 1890 and 1914 and were designed with railroads and oil tycoons in mind.\nThese laws worked for much of the past century until only recently\u2014Congress must assess whether to modernize these laws for the 21st century economy.\nFair and competitive markets are a vital condition for ensuring low barriers to entry and opportunities for new businesses, which invest in workers, services, and goods within the community while generating the majority of jobs in the U.S. economy.\nBut the benefits of antitrust enforcement are not merely economic.\nFor over a century, policymakers have well understood that vigorous antitrust enforcement is one of the most important tools against autocracy and the corrosive effects of concentrated political power on our democratic institutions and values.\nRobert Pitofsky, the former Chairman of the FTC and dean of my law school, wrote in 1979 that we should keep these concerns in mind while enforcing the antitrust laws because \u201can antitrust policy that failed to take political concerns into account would be unresponsive to the will of Congress and out of touch with the rough political consensus that has supported antitrust enforcement for almost a century.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\nAs I bring my remarks to a close, I want to thank Barry Lynn, Matt Stoller, Lina Khan, and the entire Open Markets team for their work and passion on these issues.\nBarry and the Open Markets team have worked tirelessly to document the power of monopolies to kill jobs and make existing jobs worse.\nSeven years ago, Barry co-authored one of the first deep looks at the effect of economic concentration on jobs and wages. He followed this with Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, an examination of modern-day trusts and a sweeping indictment of the Chicago school of economics.\nSince then, Barry and the Open Markets team have been one of the leading voices for holding economic power accountable, as today\u2019s event demonstrates.\nThis work has greatly informed current policy discussions about how to address America\u2019s monopoly problem.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-remarks-antitrust-forum"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.1477568186819553, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}