Klobuchar continues push for antitrust bill

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said the push to pass her antitrust legislation targeting the largest tech companies isn’t dead, despite the bill still waiting for a scheduled floor vote.

Klobuchar made her latest plug for her American Innovation and Online Choice Act in an interview with Vox’s Kara Swisher at the Code Conference on Tuesday.

• The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), aims to limit tech companies from preferencing their own products and services over rivals’. It advanced out of the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support earlier this year, but has yet to be called for a floor vote.
• Klobuchar, who chairs the antitrust subcommittee, did not give an exact date or guarantee the vote will happen before the midterms.

“It is really hard to take on these subjects when you have the biggest companies the world has ever known, that control an inordinate part of the economy, opposed to it,” she said in the interview. “It is an incredible amount of money I’m up against. I have two lawyers. They have 2,800 lawyers and lobbyists. So I’m not naive about the David versus Goliath.”