The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 1.4% in Q1 of 2022, a sharp decline from the 6.9% growth in Q4 of 2021 and the first decline since the pandemic lockdowns in the first half of 2020. 

In response to this news, the WSJ Editorial Board warned that “one obvious message for the White House and Congress is to avoid any anti-growth policy shocks.”

Sen. Klobuchar’s anti-tech legislation, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S. 2992), is precisely the kind of anti-growth policy Congress needs to avoid. A recent economic study from the National Economic Research Associates (NERA) found that the current anti-tech bills being debated in Congress would cost the U.S. economy up to $319 billion, affecting consumers and business users “in the form of higher retail costs and the loss of free and valued services.” Now is not the time to push such anti-growth and anti-consumer legislation.