Lenin Nolly/Sipa USA via AP Images
Lou Correa (D-CA) is seen delivering a speech at the Capitol building on March 9, 2023.
When Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) resigned from Congress effective June 1 to run the Rhode Island Foundation, he left a pretty gaping hole on the House Antitrust Subcommittee. When Cicilline chaired that committee during the Democratic majority of the previous four years, he produced a landmark report on the dominance of digital platforms, which included the first meaningful hearings with Big Tech CEOs in a long time. He even managed to get bipartisan support for his efforts, although the effort for new antitrust rules for the tech industry went aground in the Senate.
After the Republican takeover of the subcommittee this year, they put Freedom Caucus libertarian Rep. Tom Massie (R-KY) in charge, a signal that there would be no more pressure on big business coming from the House. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), the former Republican leader on the subcommittee, had spoken out about concentration, particularly as it relates to tech, but he was sidelined.
The rollback of the antitrust subcommittee continues with Cicilline’s departure, as it looks likely that Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA), who not only opposed the tech antitrust bills but voted against increasing funding to the key antitrust agencies last year, will take over as the Democratic ranking member. This will require a vote of Judiciary Committee Democrats, but so far nobody else has stepped up to challenge Correa’s ascension.
With Massie blocking action on corporate concentration, this won’t matter much now, but if Democrats take back the House, a weak head of the antitrust subcommittee will have critical implications, and hold back the one area where the White House has challenged the dominant orthodoxy in Washington.
It should be said that, while Correa’s home state of California has lots of tech interests in it, his actual district, which encompasses Anaheim and the heavily Latino city of Santa Ana, isn’t exactly a tech hotbed. It’s the home of Disneyland, and big business certainly plays a role, but Correa’s affinity for Big Tech is serving a donor base, not a base of constituents who he directly represents. Correa’s a former banker and real estate broker, a Chamber of Commerce Democrat (they endorsed him in 2022), and his position on corporate power follows from that. The New Democrats have already expressed support for him getting the antitrust subcommittee role.
The idea that other Democrats, including the current number two on the subcommittee, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO), have too many other things going on to take the ranking membership, is a dodge. Neguse is a ranking member of a Natural Resources subcommittee on federal lands, but Correa is also a ranking member on a Homeland Security subcommittee on border security and enforcement.
The real issue is that, since the report on Big Tech, the antitrust subcommittee has been infiltrated by four California Democrats, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who does represent Silicon Valley, and who has been the major opponent within the Democratic caucus to stronger antitrust legislation. While Lofgren lost her bid to become Democratic leader on the whole Judiciary Committee back in 2017, by scratching out a plurality on the antitrust subcommittee, she effectively controls it, regardless of who is actually running the show.
Maybe the California Gang will be more amenable to other antitrust concerns, though Correa’s record suggests no. Regardless, at a time when the White House is making progress on corporate power, this backsliding shows that there’s lots of work to do.
