Sen. Amy Klobuchar:
Well, first of all, there was a lot of support for some of these changes. And I think they have also intimated that they'd make some changes, at least the band member that was one of the witnesses
That aside, of course, it's not enough, because they still have this monopoly. Arenas have told us and we heard testimony today that they're actually afraid to use other competitive services, because then they won't get the acts.
And you also have the fact that we still have the fan experience of having to pay for all these fees and the fiasco when there is no one else to go to. So that's why the Justice Department is reportedly investigating this. Our information will help them greatly in that investigation.
And it's also why we need to look at legislation beyond this. I believe we need to strengthen our antitrust laws overall; 75 percent of American industries, we have seen more consolidation, from caskets to cat food. And if we are just to accept these conservative court decisions that narrow the use of the antitrust laws, we're going to just see this happening over and over again.
There are some simple things we can do to put the burden on merging companies or a company engaging in discriminatory conduct to actually prove that it doesn't hurt competition, as opposed to putting it all on the government. We have just successfully given a major shot in the arm to the antitrust enforcers when it comes to resources with a bill Senator Grassley and I and Cicilline, Neguse, and Buck worked on over in the House that we passed to up the merger fees by about $100 million a year.
And that is on companies, big companies, not little ones, that will help to fund the enforcers. They can't take on the biggest companies, whether it's Google or Facebook or Amazon. They can't take on the biggest companies a world has ever known with duct tape and Band-Aids.
They're literally a shadow of what they were under the Nixon administration.
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