By: Nidhi Hegde, Executive Director at American Economic Liberties Project

Texas populist Congressman Wright Patman once said of big business: “They only believe in law and order if they write the law and give the order.” Thanks to the Trump administration, they’ve gotten their wish. If Democrats take the House in the upcoming elections, their job is simple: expose the corruption and break up the big corporate consolidated power behind it. If they fail to do this, our entire democracy remains at risk. 

The Trump era DoJ is defenestrated, signing off on wildly illegal corporate consolidations at the behest of connected lobbyists and administration insiders. The DOJ cleared the $14 billion HPE-Juniper tech merger after a powerful lobbyist held backroom meetings with senior Justice Department officials, bypassing career antitrust staff entirely.  They settled the case against Live Nation Ticketmaster under similar circumstances, only to see the more than 30 states continuing to pursue the case emerge victorious in court. FCC Chair Brendan Carr waived through Nexstar’s $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna, bypassing a full commission vote and gifting one company control over local news in 80 percent of American homes — twice what the law allows — before a federal judge later froze the deal. 

What connects these cases and mergers is, in a word, corruption. Elite law firms and lobbyists with White House access quietly go over the heads of career enforcers, cutting dealsIn private back rooms they could never win in court.

If Democrats take the House, they must expose this behavior and, even more crucially, hold corrupt actors accountable. Congress’ subpoena power exists precisely for this moment. Who met with whom? What was promised? Which enforcers were pushed out for doing their jobs? These are the questions that must be asked – and answered. 

But accountability cannot end with just hearings. Democrats must  pass legislation that makes these corrupt actors answerable under the law. 

Senator Amy Klobuchar’s Antitrust Accountability and Transparency Act is a concrete starting point. It gives courts further authority to force the government to come clean about backroom negotiations and let state attorneys general into the room when federal enforcers cut deals that shortchange the public as well the power to reject corrupt settlements,Democrats should pass it along with companion legislation in the House. 

In addition, several Democrats have already called for unwinding the most corrupt mergers outright. That instinct is right and should be pursued with legislation to match. They should also take up Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s suggestion made at the Economic Liberties’ anti-corruption convening in March, that Congress should also appropriate dedicated funding to support state attorneys general who are doing the enforcement work that the Trump DOJ has abandoned.

But even more important: Democrats must break the power of monopolies across the American economy. They need to pursue a broad anti-monopoly agenda, breaking up giant monopolies across the economy. Over and over again, the story is the same: a small number of dominant firms have captured their markets, raised prices, cut wages, and used their lobbying power to keep it that way. 

House Democrats can start by prioritizing  the companion legislation to Senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley’s Break Up Big Medicine Act and Senate Democrats bill targeting the Big Four meatpackers. Both address industries where consolidation has made ordinary life measurably worse. Both surveillance pricing by corporations and private equity’s control over single-family rental homes  need to be tackled too.  

Finally, and most important: Congress needs to break up the power of Big Tech. The business interests of this sector have prospered by inflicting near fatal financial damage on everything from  the ecosystems of small online retailers to the press, raining blow after blow on everything from a fair and economically equal society to American democracy itself. 

The courts have already established that Google is an illegal monopolist, twice. But Judge Amit Mehta badly mishandled the remedies, letting the company off the hook structurally when the evidence demanded a breakup.The relief the DOJ fought for should be a base line for the House when they take on the tech sector. 

We have lived in a world dominated by giant monopolies for so long, many of us take them for granted. But we don’t need to live like this and we should not. Congress has the power to not just put a stop to it, but to create a fairer and more just economic system, one where honest businesses and ordinary people alike can once again prosper.