Byron Dorgan: “no one in this country at any time should ever have a problem sleeping as long as there is an opportunity to talk about…”

“no one in this country at any time should ever have a problem sleeping as long as there is an opportunity to talk about antitrust issues. It is for many some of the most boring, lifeless set of issues available to discuss anywhere in public politics. Antitrust enforcement--what on Earth is it? When I came to Washington, DC, I threatened to put the picture of the 1,000 lawyers who are hired in our Government for antitrust enforcement purposes on the cartons of milk in grocery stores because I felt that these 1,000 lawyers hired by our Government for antitrust enforcement had surely vanished. I knew that we were paying 1,000 of them. But it was clear to me there was no antitrust enforcement, so they must have vanished. So it is a decade and half later and we are now talking about antitrust issues again. And the discussion today is with confirming a nomination to head the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice. This is, while boring for many people, an important question because we have what is called a free market system in our country. A free market system only works to the extent that you have referees who are willing to intervene in circumstances where people try to rig the market and where there is not open competition and where there is monopoly pricing in circumstances where the market is not free. In many cases, that is the same as stealing.”