Bill Pascrell: “I thank the ranking member for yielding. This bill is terrible. The Federal Trade Commission is tasked with protecting…”

“I thank the ranking member for yielding. This bill is terrible. The Federal Trade Commission is tasked with protecting consumers from anticompetitive mergers. What I just heard from the gentleman is that this is all about getting rid of red tape. Baloney. This is about money, this is about keeping money in your own pocket and protecting yourself against the consumers. {time} 1000 Concessions we are talking about here. The Federal Trade Commission is tasked with protecting consumers from anticompetitive mergers. That is what the job is. Corporate mergers can make industries more efficient and bring benefits to customers, but in some cases, they have the potential to increase costs and hurt competition. Mr. Speaker, if you deny that, then you don't have the facts, and I am going to lay them out right now. Government should not be in the business of setting prices for healthcare services or anything else for that matter--for airline tickets, cable Internet services, or anything else. I hope we agree on that. That is why we need to rely on robust market competition--to keep the prices of goods and services down and ensure that consumers are getting a fair deal. I tell my friends on the other side of the aisle, with due respect, that we are pretty good fans of competition; yet here we are, after Bloomberg dubbed 2015 the ``Year of the Mergers,'' weakening a key FTC tool to ensure healthy competition in a variety of markets. Mr.…”