During today’s Senate Judiciary Committee markup of Senator Amy Klobuchar’s American Innovation and Choice Online Act, Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed significant concerns, noting: “It is not really the type [of bill] we usually consider where rules are laid out and everyone is expected to comply. Instead, it is specifically designed to target a small number of specific companies.”

— Sen. Feinstein continued: “Instead of updating antitrust law for our modern online economy as it aims to do, this bill will create two separate legal standards. One that poses very significant barriers to the business operations of a few large tech companies, and one for everyone else.”

— Sen. Feinstein added: “I’m concerned that this is really going to be very dangerous legislation. It may end up giving a competitive advantage to others (sic) large global businesses that narrowly escaped being regulated by the bill.” 

— Further: “Let me give you an example, let’s say someone goes online to buy stationery. They can go to Walmart or Target website and search for stationery and those website can show them Target-branded or Walmart-branded stationery first and make them scroll through various pages before they show them stationery from other sellers but under this legislation if they instead went into Amazon’s website to buy stationery, Amazon could not do the same thing. Amazon could not show them Amazon-branded stationery before it shows them stationery from other sellers – this dramatically different result for engaging in the exact same behavior doesn’t make sense.”

Sen. Klobuchar’s bill could break Amazon Prime by banning Amazon from common business practices but exempting the biggest retailers, leaving consumers and small businesses with fewer choices, less convenience, and higher prices. 

And it could ban Google from showing helpful search results for consumers but allow competitors to present the same information, destroying convenient, integrated products and services that consumers love. 

See how Senator Klobuchar’s bill breaks consumer favorites here.

Watch the full video of Senator Feinstein’s remarks here.