Playing defence: The Tipline for 25 September 2019

Our hangout on Capitol Hill continues this morning with the House of Representatives’ appropriations committee’s subcommittee on financial services and general government, which has called the Federal Trade Commission’s Republican chair along with Democratic commissioner Rohit Chopra to testify. Their opening statements are online, and the main thing chair Joseph Simons had to say is that he really appreciates the additional $40 million for the FTC that is in the House funding bill for fiscal year 2020. Most of the money is needed just to increase pay for existing staff and fund expert witness fees for all the lawsuits the FTC brings, he said, but he’d like to hire more people if he can count on the money being there in future fiscal years. Extra lawyers and economists would probably come in handy for all the retrospectives and market studies everyone says the agency ought to be doing without any reduction in the amount of actual enforcement it does.