(PresidentialHill.com)- Far-Left Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren and Leftist New York Congressman Mondaire Jones are leading sponsors of a bill proposed last week that would prohibit mergers worth more than $5 billion.
The meddlesome legislation would also ban mergers for deals that result in market shares over 33 percent for sellers or 25 percent for employers.
In a press release crowing about her legislation, Senator Warren said such mergers “crush consumers, workers, and small business.” Liz cited the mergers of Sprint/T-Mobile, Bayer/Monsanto, Facebook/Instagram, and American Airlines/US Airways as examples of what she wants to prohibit.
She claimed in her press release that those mergers cost American families $5,000 a year while keeping the median wage rate down by $10,000 a year. Plus, the faux Indian Senator alleged, it gave companies the ability to “jack up prices even further during this period of inflation.”
Liz claims, without evidence, that her bill would “promote competition and protect workers, consumers, small or minority-owned businesses [including farms and ranches], local, rural, or low-income communities, communities of color, privacy, and innovation.”
That’s one heck of a tall order.
Who knew the merger of Facebook and Instagram was hurting farms and ranches?
What the legislation proposes is allowing the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to reject any merger without a court order. The agencies would be required to consider any labor impacts of a merger and reject any merger they decide would be harmful to workers. It would also allow state attorneys general to sue to block any merger they might deem harmful.
But here’s the thing. The bill would also be retroactive. Warren’s legislation would require the FTC and DOJ to look at any merger that took place during the 21st Century and force the merger to break apart if the already-merged companies resulted in a market share above 50 percent.
While preventing monopolies is a good thing, this doesn’t sound like a sane way to address them.
Unsurprisingly, no Republican has co-sponsored the proposed legislation and according to Bloomberg, Warren’s scheme is unlikely to advance.
