Herb Kohl: “as Chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, I believe it is my role to investigate and help end-- monopolistic…”

“as Chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, I believe it is my role to investigate and help end-- monopolistic practices that exploit American consumers. In that spirit, I rise today to introduce along with my colleagues, Senators Coleman, Feingold, Vitter and Rockefeller, the Railroad Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2007. This legislation will eliminate obsolete antitrust exemptions that protect freight railroads from competition. Consolidation in the railroad industry, allowed under the exemptions my legislation would repeal, has resulted in only four Class I railroads providing over 90 percent of the nation's freight rail transportation. The lack of competition was recently documented in a Government Accountability Office October 2006 report. That report found that, ``concerns about competition and captivity, in the rail industry, remain as traffic is concentrated in fewer railroads.'' The report also stated that the Surface Transportation Board, the entity charged with ensuring that the industry remains competitive, has failed to do so. In August 2006, the Attorneys General of 17 states and the District sent a letter to Congress citing problems due to a lack of competition and asked that the antitrust exemptions be removed. The ill-effects of this consolidation are exemplified in the case of ``captive shippers''--industries served by only one railroad. Over the past several years, these captive shippers faced spiking rail rates.”