WASHINGTON, D.C. – At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.) called out President Trump for firing Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and discussed the importance of a fully-functioning FTC, which protects consumers from rip-offs. Senator Welch served as Ranking Member of the subcommittee while Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) held the floor with a marathon speech, which lasted more than 24 hours.
“I do want to address one thing that has disturbed me and it’s what happened at the FTC. [The FTC] is an organization that is about protecting against unfair competition, and we need five people on it and two have been fired. They happened to be the Democrats. There’s always been a five-person FTC—three of the majority party and two from the minority party and it shifts back and forth. I just want to express my dissatisfaction and dismay at that because that FTC does things that are absolutely helpful to protecting consumers from this abusive pricing power,” said Senator Welch in the hearing.
Senator Welch continued: “[The FTC] stopped a consolidation of Kroger and Albertsons, which most economists thought was going to raise food prices for those folks in Utah and those folks in Vermont. They brought an Administrative Complaint against the prescription benefit managers. And it’s such a rip-off what’s happening to everyday consumers and employers, by the way, who pay a lot of money for employer-sponsored health care, and they have no visibility, no transparency, into how much people are getting charged. It hurts small employers and big employers in your state and mine. The FTC was on that case. They’re on another matter that is near and dear to Vermont farmers—the right to repair. How in the world is it that you can’t, if you own a tractor, repair it yourself?…The FTC was looking into that, and I think farmers in Florida, farmers in Utah, farmers if Illinois, if they can figure out how to repair it themselves, they shouldn’t have to get ripped off by not having a right to repair. I know there is some bipartisan support for that. We had an FTC that was on all three of those cases.”
In response to a question about right to repair legislation, Morgan Harper, a witness from the American Economic Liberties Project said: “It’s not fair – [that’s] the short of it. And even though it’s a different market area I think a lot of the principles are relevant for this discussion of Big Tech in the fact that there is litigation to address that, and the FTC is looking into it. It’s exactly like you said—one of the reasons why we have to make sure we have strong commissioners.”
Watch Senator Welch’s opening remarks in the hearing:
Watch the full hearing.
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Senator Welch’s Committee and Subcommittee Assignments for the 119th Congress include:
- Senate Committee on Finance
- Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Rural Development, Energy, and Credit
- Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on the Constitution
- Senate Committee on Rules & Administration
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