Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. President, our economy is in trouble. In markets all across our economy, a few giant corporations hold all the power. It is everywhere. Four airlines control over 80 percent of all domestic airline seats in America. Five health insurance giants own over 80 percent of the health insurance market. Four companies dominate over 80 percent of the beef market. Three drugstore chains control almost all retail pharmacies in the country. Two companies sell more than 70 percent of the beer in America.
As competition has been snuffed out in industry after industry, big corporations have made out like bandits, and everyone else has paid the price. How do we pay? American families shell out more for lower quality goods. Small businesses find it harder and harder to compete against the big guys. Innovators and entrepreneurs struggle to promote new ideas that can change the world. Income inequality has left more American families struggling to make ends meet as the top 1 percent has grown even richer and richer. As fewer companies have seized more economic power, they have translated their economic muscle into political power--power they can use to elect the politicians they like, get the kinds of laws and policies they like, and run up even more economic power.
It is a nasty, self-perpetuating cycle, and it is exactly why Congress created antitrust laws over a century ago. Back then, like today, a few powerful companies were stifling competition in markets all across the economy and gaining extraordinary political power.
Congress decided to create laws to break up trusts and protect competition.
Today the Justice Department's Antitrust Division is charged with protecting competition by blocking anti-competitive mergers and going after companies that engage in illegal conduct. For decades, though, antitrust enforcers have put their tools on the shelf instead of aggressively enforcing our antitrust laws, they have given the green light to megamerger after megamerger and allowed big corporations to misuse this power without a peep.
That problem is set to get worse in the Trump administration. Since taking office, President Trump has loaded his administration with a Who's Who of former lobbyists, Wall Street insiders, and corporate executives committed to tilting the scales even further in favor of his powerful friends and against American families.
Now, President Trump has nominated someone to head the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. His nominee, Makan Delrahim, will be in charge of determining whether there is someone to stand up for competition or let the big guys just get bigger and more powerful.
Unfortunately, Mr. Delrahim's approach to antitrust enforcement is based on a hands-off economic theory that just leaves big corporations to do pretty much whatever they want to do. Case in point, just last year, when asked what he thought about the proposed merger of AT&T-Time Warner--a merger that would combine two of the most powerful companies in media--Mr. Delrahim said he didn't think it was a ``major antitrust problem.''
Mr. Delrahim spent over a decade working to convince government officials that other megamergers weren't antitrust problems. During the airline merger wave that left us with only four major carriers, Mr. Delrahim was lobbying the government to approve a merger between US Airways and Delta. Despite the fact that there are only a few large retail pharmacies, he lobbied to get government approval for CVS's proposed takeover of Caremark. Even though only five health insurers control the vast majority of the health insurance market, he tried to convince government regulators to approve Anthem's unsuccessful attempt to merge with Cigna.
Now he wants to take a spin through the revolving door and regulate the industries he worked to make even less competitive. For the giant corporations, wealthy individuals who want to amass more power and profits for themselves, Mr. Delrahim is a dream candidate, but he is also a dream candidate for President Trump.
President Trump has not been shy about his willingness to use his power against individuals or companies he doesn't like, and he has made it clear that he expects his agency heads to carry out his orders.
Mr. Delrahim has been a loyal supporter of President Trump's since the campaign. He urged fellow Republicans to support President Trump because he correctly believed President Trump would appoint a pro- corporate Justice to the Supreme Court. He also served as legal counsel to President Trump after he was sworn in and as the President reversed rules that made it easier for families to pay their mortgages or reversed rules to prevent people with serious mental illnesses from buying guns or reversed rules to stop companies from dumping toxic waste into water. As head of the Antitrust Division, Mr. Delrahim will be in a position to make even more harmful decisions.
It is no secret that Americans don't trust Washington. They see politicians who care more about catering to corporate donors than fighting for the interests of hard-working people who are trying to figure out how to pay the bills and build a little security in their own lives. It is a real problem, but it is a problem we can solve. We can begin to solve it by fighting the economic concentration that is putting more money and more power into the hands of a few giant corporations. That means choosing enforcers who will hold companies accountable when they break the rules, and that means rejecting nominees like Makan Delrahim.
Mr. President, I rise to speak on the nomination of Heath Tarbert, who has been nominated by President Trump to be the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Markets and Development. If confirmed, Mr. Tarbert will be in charge of the Treasury Department's role on a multi-agency body called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which reviews whether foreign acquisitions of a U.S. company would pose a threat to our national security and then makes recommendations to the President on whether the President should block the transaction.
This is not about whether foreign investment benefits our economy. Of course it does. The United States is the third largest recipient of foreign direct investment, and our markets attract the world's best talent and capital. Going back to the 1990s, only four foreign acquisitions of American companies have ever been blocked by a President based on a recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. This is about whether our national security is put at risk when foreign governments, foreign state-owned enterprises, and foreign investors acquire our companies and assets.
This is also about foreign governments and the companies they own, trying to gain access to sensitive technologies that are important to our military and our national security.
The risk posed to the security of the United States is real. I want you to consider just one example here. According to a news report last year, an internal Pentagon report found that China was making significant targeted investments in cutting-edge American startups, with expertise in areas like autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and robotics. These can be transactions that don't necessarily result in foreign control over one of our companies, but they can give a foreign adversary access to technologies that could harm our strategic interests and erode our military advantage.
The risk is significant, but unfortunately CFIUS does not apply to these transactions. The problem is, CFIUS was created back in 1975.
Since then, both technology and the nature of foreign acquisitions, mergers, and takeovers have changed substantially. The nature of the threats we face has also changed substantially. Our top military leaders--such as the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs--believe that CFIUS needs to be updated to fully address them, and I agree.
Another concern is that CFIUS does not focus enough on whether the benefits of foreign acquisition outweigh the costs when it comes to the competitiveness of American workers. While I recognize that CFIUS has historically focused on the national security impacts of foreign investment, I think Congress should consider elevating the Department of Labor to the group of agencies that are currently part of the core CFIUS review process. If we believe economic security and national security are intertwined, then I think we can both look out for the American worker and review the national security threats posed by foreign acquisitions.
Finally, the ethics problems that are everywhere in this administration come forward again in the area of national security. We all know President Trump, his family members, and other Trump administration officials have business ties in the United States and throughout the world, even if we don't know the full extent of President Trump's business ties because he will not release his tax returns.
Imagine a Trump administration official who has a financial stake in an American company, a foreign state-owned company or both. Now imagine that a foreign company backed by China, Russia, or another foreign adversary tries to acquire a U.S. company and a Trump official suddenly has financial ties to that transaction and then that transaction triggers a CFIUS review for national security concerns. If that scenario were to occur, I am deeply concerned about the conflicts of interests that could emerge. I would expect CFIUS to vigorously review such an investment as it affects our national security.
I raised all of these issues with Mr. Tarbert when I met with him today and his answers improved from when I asked him about these issues earlier this year, but I remain concerned about his commitment to modernize CFIUS and to ensure that CFIUS does more to consider the impact of foreign acquisitions on American workers. I hope I am wrong, but I still have concerns about his nomination, which is why I will vote against it.
Mr. Tarbert promised me that if confirmed, he would work to ensure that no transaction is approved by CFIUS if national security concerns remain unresolved, and that is encouraging to hear. If he is ultimately confirmed, I will use my position in the Senate Banking Committee to hold him to that promise because the threats we face are growing in complexity, and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States must be ready to confront them. We don't want to wake up one day and discover that our adversaries have access to key components of our national security technology because Congress and the White House were asleep at the wheel.
If confirmed, I will work in good faith with Mr. Tarbert to ensure that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is updated so it is in the strongest position to protect our national security--both from the threats we face today and the threats we will face in the future.
Thank you.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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