Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is planning a vote soon on a major piece of antitrust legislation aimed at Big Tech.
Schumer’s office confirmed on Thursday that he intends to schedule a vote in the Senate on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. The legislation, written by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), would empower federal agencies to crack down on companies such as Amazon and Google’s monopolistic marketplace control.
“Sen. Schumer is working with Sen. Klobuchar and other supporters to gather the needed votes and plans to bring it up for a vote,” Schumer’s office told the Washington Examiner. The office did not respond to requests about a timeline.
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Klobuchar is convinced that she will see the bill voted on in the fall. “[Schumer’s] continued to be committed to the bill and committed to a vote in the fall. I don’t have an exact date,” the Minnesota senator told Politico.
The Senate majority leader said at a donor event on July 26 that the act was a “high priority” but that he did not have enough votes to pass it. Schumer said that people urged him to put the bill on the floor in order to force undecided senators to vote in favor but that he was unsure if that approach would work for him.
The bill, co-sponsored by Klobuchar and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), targets Big Tech companies and would allow federal antitrust agencies to issue civil penalties to “covered platforms” such as Amazon and Google for unfairly preferencing their products on their platforms. This has led some lobbyists, including those representing Amazon, to claim that passing this bill would hurt popular services such as Amazon Prime’s free shipping. Klobuchar and Grassley have said that Prime would be spared from the legislation’s restrictions.
The bill has also been criticized by Democrats for weakening the ability of major platforms to moderate content. Four Democratic senators sent a letter to Klobuchar to revise the legislation so that a platform’s content moderation ability is not negated.
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Conservatives have had mixed responses to Klobuchar and Grassley’s proposed legislation. A coalition of conservative organizations led by the Internet Accountability Project filed a letter arguing that the bill would help rein in Big Tech’s power over the economy. A separate group, led by Americans for Tax Reform, argued in a July 19 letter to Congress that the Klobuchar-Grassley bill expands the government’s size, exacerbates inflation, and fails to answer conservative concerns about Big Tech’s content moderation policies.
