An eastern Oklahoma legislator is urging Oklahoma’s U.S. Sens. Inhofe and Lankford to fight a bill that he contends will add to the nation’s bureaucratic control of businesses and is “un-American.”
Rep. Logan Phillips, R-Mounds, has called on Sens. James Lankford and Jim Inhofe to reject Senate Bill 2992, also known as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.
The sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, contends her bill will give the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the authority to beef up antitrust enforcement, protect consumers from companies thwarting competition, limit the size of mergers and acquisitions and make it illegal for firms to use their platforms to advantage their own products or those of their partners.
Opponents of the bill say that for vertically integrated companies like Amazon and Google, that will amount to government taking substantial control over key aspects of their day-to-day operations as well as growth strategies, domestic and global.
“This bill penalizes American companies for being too successful, plain and simple,” Phillips said. “It won’t just stop with ‘big companies’ and it will discourage small businesses from growing past a certain size. The American dream should be open to all, without artificial limitations put in place by a government that wants to control success and make people pay the price for doing well. This is a total attack on free-market principles, and I am urging the U.S. Senators from the state of Oklahoma to stand strongly in opposition to the gross government overreach contained in this bill.”
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, agreed to give the bill a hearing sometime this month. It is primarily supported by Senate democrats who currently hold a majority.
“This legislation will transfer decision making power from individual businesses to unelected government bureaucrats,” Phillips said.
“It is one of the most un-American pieces of legislation I’ve ever seen, and if passed will have catastrophic consequences for our economy. In America, you have the freedom to be as successful as you can be if you work hard enough, and the government should be getting out of the way of private businesses, not seeking more control over them. This bad bill cannot be allowed to pass, and I hope the federal delegation will speak up for the businesses of Oklahoma and America by opposing it.”
Source: House press release