Scott Fitzgerald: “This amendment would prohibit funds being made available to the FTC from being used to issue any rule defining or…”

“This amendment would prohibit funds being made available to the FTC from being used to issue any rule defining or describing unfair methods of competition for purposes of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The FTC has issued substantive rules concerning ``unfair methods of competition,'' UMC, as it is referred to in financial services, including a near-blanket ban on noncompete agreements. Since Chair Khan has taken over, the FTC has become a partisan weapon to enact sweeping antitrust policy that expands agency power and discards decades of precedent. Chair Khan is basing this authority on tenuous legal ground that predates the major questions doctrine. As the Supreme Court made clear in West Virginia v. EPA, an executive agency needs clear authorization from Congress to issue a regulation that has great ``economic and political significance.'' Unfair competition rulemaking would be a claim of quasi-legislative power that would distract the agency from its core mission of case-by- case expert application of the FTC Act through administrative adjudication. It would also be inconsistent with the explicit grants of rulemaking authority that Congress has given the FTC on consumer protection issues. This is not what they are looking for on competitive grounds.…”