Rep. Becca Balint Eyes Top Position on the House Antitrust Subcommittee

Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) has thrown her hat in the ring for the chair position of the House Antitrust Subcommittee should Democrats regain control of Congress after the midterm elections, according to sources familiar with the matter. The expected announcement sets up a battle over how Democrats will challenge corporate power in the next Congress and beyond.

Balint, in her second term in Congress, currently serves as the vice ranking member, making her the number two Democrat on the important subcommittee behind Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who earlier this year announced he would not run for re-election. But one obstacle in Balint’s way could be moderate Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA), who has vociferously opposed antitrust legislation targeting Big Tech companies, as well as a bill designed to increase merger fees to better fund antitrust enforcers. He previously held the ranking member position before Nadler.

Sources familiar with the matter say they think it’s unlikely Correa would pursue the seat, because his legislative attention and committee assignments have focused on matters more relevant to his district, that is, homeland security and border issues. But corporate America is likely to scramble to find someone more to their liking to challenge Balint, who has called for aggressive enforcement and new laws to tackle growing economic concentration in America.

“Few members of the Judiciary Committee, or the House more broadly, have demonstrated Rep. Balint’s commitment to strengthening and enforcing the antitrust laws over the past four years. She’s made clear her interest in leading the Antitrust Subcommittee, and I believe she would be exceptionally well positioned to build on the legacy of Chairs Nadler and [former Rep. David] Cicilline,” Joseph Van Wye, a senior adviser at Cuneo, Gilbert, Flannery & LaDuca, LLP, an antitrust and consumer protection law firm, told the Prospect.

Rep. Balint’s office declined to comment.

BALINT’S PATH TO THE TOP SPOT isn’t guaranteed, but the party’s political landscape may favor her. Other younger Democrats are mounting challenges against senior leaders in the party, such as Rep. Sean Casten’s (D-IL) challenge to 88-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) to lead the Financial Services Committee. However, a source familiar with the matter said that unlike the Waters challenge, Balint’s is less focused on generational conflict because she represents how the party is moving toward embracing more aggressive antitrust enforcement.

Many Democrats today, moderates and progressives alike, have embraced a populist message targeting corporate power. The individual ambitions may vary, but a consensus is forming that concentrated economic power goes hand in hand with concentrated political power in the executive branch, one fueling the other.

This sentiment was on full display at a recent event in Washington hosted by the antitrust news publication The Capitol Forum.

“We live in an age of renewed concentration and consolidation of both political and economic power,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and likely to become its next chair, said at the event. The Live Nation–Ticketmaster case, where the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department settled in the middle of the trial, “reflects a political lockup of the DOJ,” Raskin said. (State enforcers continued the trial and won a verdict that Live Nation is a monopoly.)

The bulk of Raskin’s remarks recalled how many of the Antitrust Division settlements under President Trump involved lobbying and side deals meant to circumvent the legal process, saying it “cross[es] an important constitutional line.”

Raskin added that congressional oversight and new legislation could cure the issue. “We must expose the galloping delivery fraud taking place in this administration and pass significant anti-corruption legislation to ensure that across all three branches of government, public servants actually serve the American people rather than helping oligarchs and political threats get rich on backroom deals,” he said. “We must again confront the market power problem in our country and revive real antitrust machinery to correct it.”

Balint’s potential ascent to the top of the Antitrust Subcommittee would likely expose the same Big Tech companies that have been targets in the past to future investigations and scrutiny. In 2020, under Cicilline, the Antitrust Subcommittee engaged in a wide-ranging investigation of tech platforms that set the stage for a broad antitrust agenda. Corporate-friendly Democrats ultimately blocked the bills, but under strong leadership in the subcommittee, they could make a comeback, especially given the desire for guardrails on artificial intelligence.

In addition to tech, Democrats in recent years have raised antitrust concerns in health care, housing, and food and agriculture markets as potential targets. In addition, private equity firms and their tactic of silently rolling up industries have been on their radar. And finally, the Antitrust Subcommittee could have leeway to investigate various settlements by the Trump Justice Department.

Whoever leads the Antitrust Subcommittee should Democrats take power in January would essentially knit together an oversight agenda of corporate power, corruption, and the consolidation of political power. This puts immense pressure on members of the future House Judiciary Committee, who would vote in all subcommittee leaders. What the makeup of that committee will look like is uncertain right now, but Raskin is likely to be the leader and would hold immense influence.

“Balint over Correa should be a layup on a six-foot basketball hoop for Raskin and the new Judiciary Committee,” Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, told the Prospect. “Of course, an eager incoming subcommittee chair is merely the first step towards a successful term which lays the groundwork for what could be an epochal 2029—but it is a critical one.”

“In the 120th Congress, Democrats will roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work of holding the Trump Administration—and its accomplices—accountable and rebuilding justice and the rule of law in America,” Raskin said in a statement to the Prospect. He added that the committee would follow caucus rules to elect new leadership.

ASIDE FROM CORREA, the other current members on the Antitrust Subcommittee seem unlikely to pursue its chair position. Like Nadler, Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) is retiring. The other two, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Hank Johnson (D-GA), each have focused their legislative attention on other matters. While Lofgren has opposed some legislation targeting Big Tech, her current post as ranking member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee sets her up to be its next chair. Though he was active on the antitrust front throughout the 2010s, Johnson similarly has taken a leading role on court reform through his ranking member position at the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet.

Balint’s record reflects the Democratic trend toward supporting aggressive antitrust enforcement. She’s a founding member of the congressional Monopoly Busters Caucus, as well as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s Ending Corporate Greed Task Force. Her deputy chief of staff, Megan Garcia, is also an alumna from the office of Cicilline, who “got Congress to care about antitrust again,” as a 2022 Roll Call headline put it.

So far in Congress, Balint has pushed for stronger antitrust enforcement and stricter merger standards. Additionally, she has directed attention toward “corporate greed” as the source of high costs in health care and housing markets. One potential area of inquiry she may pursue is checking on the Justice Department’s acting Inspector General William Blier, where she earlier co-authored a letter regarding “potential corruption” in DOJ antitrust enforcement.

All told, Balint’s record aligns with what key Democratic staffers are saying publicly about how oversight is likely to function next year.

“All our bosses have a theory of the case that there’s a problem in America of too much market concentration,” Aaron Hiller, chief counsel to Raskin, said at The Capitol Forum’s panel on congressional antitrust enforcement. “They’re going to go industry by industry and tell that story.”