JULY 26, 2024 (Prospect.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN\/SIPA USA VIA AP IMAGES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, at a hearing of the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services, May 15, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The billionaires have come for Lina Khan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On three occasions in the past two days, donors have taken to the media to either call for Khan to be fired from the Federal Trade Commission if Kamala Harris is elected president, or suggest that Harris differs from Khan on her approach to corporate power. Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn who also funds the centrist polling outfit Blueprint<\/a>, told CNN<\/a> that Khan is \u201cwaging war on American business\u201d and that Harris should replace her. A bunch of anonymous donors told the Financial Times<\/em><\/a> that Harris would in fact dump Khan, and another unnamed donor said in The New York Times<\/em><\/a> that Harris \u201chas expressed skepticism of Ms. Khan\u2019s expansive view of antitrust powers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this is based on wishes and hopes, and nobody would put their names to it except Hoffman, who pointedly was not on camera when CNN read out his views. However, it is nakedly transactional, an example of the ham-fisted way that the donor class tries to rule Washington. Hoffman has given $8.6 million<\/a> to super PACs that are now supporting Harris; one of those super PACs is already on the air with a Harris biographical ad<\/a>. He helped convince Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings<\/a> to give $7 million to the main Harris super PAC just this week, and he\u2019s going on a fundraising swing with Harris<\/a> that\u2019s part of an effort to raise $100 million<\/a> from tech interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More from David Dayen<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n With all of that influence, Hoffman feels that gives him the right to dictate a potential future president\u2019s regulatory policy. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said plainly<\/a> that it\u2019s \u201cunacceptable\u201d for a donor to use money to influence Harris\u2019s personnel decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I probably don\u2019t have to recount Khan\u2019s record for Prospect<\/em> readers<\/a>, so I\u2019ll outsource the nickel summary to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who sent over this statement to the Prospect<\/em>: \u201cChair Khan has done an excellent job as part of the Biden-Harris administration\u2019s broader competition agenda and should of course continue her work lowering costs, protecting workers, and supporting entrepreneurs\u2014it\u2019s a big reason the economy is growing strong as we saw with today\u2019s GDP data.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This gets at an important point: A successful government actually depends on people who know how to work the levers of power to serve the public interest. You can\u2019t get a whole lot done on what Joe Biden and Harris profess to be their agenda without people like Khan and her colleagues managing to govern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know this because when Harris needs to find something in the administration\u2019s record to tout, she inevitably turns to the populist left policymaking faction. When Harris spoke at Zeta Beta Phi Sorority\u2019s annual conference<\/a> in Indianapolis on Wednesday, she touted: \u201cWe are finally making it so that medical debt can no longer be used against your credit score.\u201d That was an initiative of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, led by Rohit Chopra<\/a>, who brought Khan into the FTC as a legal fellow when he was a commissioner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A successful government actually depends on people who know how to work the levers of power to serve the public interest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Just yesterday, Chopra\u2019s CFPB released a stunning report<\/a> on how K-12 public school students are relentlessly gouged by junk fees in electronic payments for class supplies and even school lunches. We\u2019re talking about corporate thieves literally taking away up to $100 million a year in kids\u2019 lunch money, by charging transaction fees (in violation of federal law) when money is added to cafeteria accounts. Every dollar of school lunch payments can incur as much as 60 cents in fees for those on reduced-price lunch, which is completely ridiculous. You\u2019ll be utterly surprised to know that this market for school lunch e-payments is dominated by three companies (MySchoolBucks, SchoolCaf\u00e9, and LINQ Connect).<\/p>\n\n\n\n If protecting children from having their lunch money stolen constitutes \u201cwaging war on American business,\u201d Reid Hoffman should say that\u2019s what he believes. And Kamala Harris should pick a side as well: with the school lunch bullies, or with kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also this week, a judge in Pennsylvania upheld the FTC\u2019s noncompete ban<\/a>, saying that the agency plainly has the authority to write rules prohibiting unfair methods of competition. Reid Hoffman should be up-front about whether he thinks workers should be locked into jobs and have their wages suppressed as a result. And then Harris can decide if this pillar of the Biden-Harris agenda should be something she throws overboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Khan\u2019s FTC has sought to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger<\/a> that would further consolidate the grocery market, one of the biggest areas cited by consumers concerned about inflation. Yesterday, a judge in Colorado blocked the merger<\/a> until a separate case brought by the Colorado attorney general is heard. The FTC\u2019s administrative review on the merger starts next week. If Reid Hoffman wants to stand on the side of grocery giants that boost prices on shoppers and make it harder for workers to engage in collective bargaining, I\u2019d like to see him make that specific case to Vice President Harris directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hoffman in fact has been a direct adversary of Khan, something not mentioned on CNN. After LinkedIn was purchased by Microsoft, Hoffman got a board seat. And Khan\u2019s FTC attempted to block Microsoft\u2019s merger with gaming company Activision; the lawsuit lost, but the matter is under appeal<\/a>. The FTC continues to protest the \u201cdegraded\u201d gaming subscription service that came out of the Microsoft-Activision deal. And as The Lever reported<\/a>, the FTC is investigating Microsoft\u2019s purchase of Inflection AI, a company co-founded by Hoffman, in an \u201cacquihire\u201d arrangement where nearly everyone at Inflection AI was hired by Microsoft to avoid antitrust review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Curiously, the fact that Hoffman may have an personal stake in Khan\u2019s position at the FTC didn\u2019t come up in the CNN segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other amusing part of this is that the billionaires always manage to go after the young woman of color when attacking the restoration of competition policy, and not the older white guy who is Khan\u2019s full partner in this approach. The Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, under the direction of Jonathan Kanter, has notched victory after victory enforcing the competition laws. Why don\u2019t Reid Hoffman or any of the more cowardly donors who won\u2019t attach their names to anything ever bring up Kanter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Harris aligns with some of her donors\u2014not the ordinary small donors who have given record amounts<\/a> in her first three days as a 2024 presidential candidate\u2014and attacks a core policy plank of her own administration on competition policy, she would also be going against the wishes of Democrats in Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this year, House Republicans demanded a significant budget reduction for the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, contrary to a new law signed by President Biden that was intended to allow all increased merger fees to flow to the division. As the Prospect<\/em> reported at the time, Senate Democrats shamefully went along with it<\/a> to get a budget passed, but a week later the White House agreed to fix this<\/a> for the next fiscal year, allowing DOJ Antitrust to keep merger fees even above the appropriation level. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that deals with the Justice Department\u2019s budget, made the same promise, in response to internal pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yesterday, Shaheen\u2019s subcommittee passed the appropriations budget<\/a> for the next fiscal year, and she followed through on her promise. The Antitrust Division will get $288 million, a 24 percent increase over fiscal year 2024, and can use all the merger filing fees it gets throughout the next fiscal year, even if it exceeds $288 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, Democrats in the administration and Congress have taken the side of Kanter, who is functionally on the same side as Khan, in a budget fight with Republicans. If Reid Hoffman wants to line up with Republicans and defund the agency that enforces the antitrust laws to ensure everyone gets a fair shake in the economy and costs remain low, he should say it out loud. But does Harris really want to go against the entire party and take the side of her rich benefactors instead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n My point is that this is about more than one competent chair of the Federal Trade Commission. There\u2019s Chopra and Kanter and Jennifer Abruzzo<\/a> at the National Labor Relations Board and Julie Su at the Department of Labor and even Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is holding Delta accountable<\/a> for failing to compensate passengers after the CrowdStrike meltdown<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the past four years, the fight against corporate power has been embedded into the architecture of Democratic policy. The people pumping out the headlines that benefit the American people are all part of that architecture. The president whom Kamala Harris spends half her stump speech praising ushered in that architecture and fully supports it. The vision of America that Harris sketches out in those speeches\u2014lower costs, better opportunity, a middle class that isn\u2019t squeezed but can get ahead\u2014is inseparable from that architecture. Is Harris really going to betray this vision because of one lousy donor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n My view is that Harris is such an unknown quantity that we\u2019re seeing the mother of all lobbying efforts, with people on all sides trying to convince, persuade, and wishcast whatever ideological or personal preferences onto her candidacy. Anyone claiming certitude about how it will end up is lying. The only person who knows what she\u2019s going to do if she becomes president is Kamala Harris. But the Reid Hoffmans of the world have overreached. By coming out so conspicuously and making these demands, they are going to make it difficult for Harris to remain silent. She could end this speculation tomorrow, and make the obvious point that the agenda she\u2019s running on cannot be fulfilled without strong regulators who protect the public from corporate predation.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n David Dayen is the Prospect\u2019s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is \u2018Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Billionaires are hopeful that Kamala Harris will break from the FTC chair. But she\u2019s part of an entire network of policymakers who are actually governing in Washington. BY DAVID DAYEN JULY 26, 2024 (Prospect.org) MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN\/SIPA USA VIA AP IMAGES Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, at a hearing… Continue reading \n
DAVID DAYEN<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n