Today, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Chuck Grassley, with 12 bipartisan co-sponsors, passed out of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary by a vote of 16-6.
In response, Small Business Rising released the following statement:
“We applaud the Committee for voting to send this crucial legislation to the full Senate, and we commend Senators Klobuchar and Grassley, and their bipartisan coalition of co-sponsors, for introducing this bill and fighting for it.
“We believe this legislation, aimed at eliminating the dangerous self-preferencing and discrimination of the Big Tech monopolies, is a critical first step in reining in their outsized power.
“Concentrated market power is the single biggest threat facing independent, small businesses. America’s small businesses are the backbone of our local economies and our local communities — and, yet, every day we lose more independent businesses because of the abusive and anti-competitive tactics of monopolistic corporations like Amazon.
“We look forward to working with the bill’s co-sponsors, and the rest of the Senate, to further strengthen this landmark legislation and ensure its passage. And we look forward to working with lawmakers in the Senate to introduce and enact additional measures, including structural separation legislation, to remove the underlying conflicts of interest that give rise to the tech giants’ anti-competitive behavior in the first place.”
Who We Are: Small Business Rising is a coalition of nearly 30 small business organizations representing over 150,000 independent businesses. The coalition formed in 2021 to advance anti-monopoly policies and safeguard the ability of small businesses to compete and serve the needs of their communities.