Washington, DC — In response to the latest slate of government budget details negotiated by Congress, which includes a disastrous 20% proposed cut to the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s 2024 budget—roughly $45 million less than enforcers were expected to receive—the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“At a time when the Antitrust Division is securing huge wins across the economy—in airlines, book publishing, tech, agriculture, and more—the last thing they need is a cut in funding,” said Morgan Harper, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Over the past 40 years, the deliberate gutting of antitrust enforcement funding helped open the floodgates to rampant monopolization across the economy, with huge costs for the economic liberty of everyday Americans. Now, just as the Division is finally helping turn the tide, Congress is trying to cut DOJ’s resources, jeopardizing a robust enforcement agenda that’s delivering tangible benefits for working families. With JetBlue-Spirit officially abandoning their merger today and with big cases in tech, healthcare, and the live events industry on the horizon, Congress should be rewarding the Division with more funding, not less.”

The Department of Justice is already 40% smaller than it was in in 1979 despite a much larger economy. Since Kanter’s appointment in 2021, the Division has secured massive wins for free and fair competition. It successfully blocked the Simon & Schuster-Penguin Random House Merger in 2022, the first successful antitrust suit in recent history centered on harms to competition in the labor market. Its actions into the meat processing industry to are protecting food producers and consumers’ pocketbooks, leading to a 22% drop in the price of Turkey for Thanksgiving 2023. Most recently, it successfully blocked the JetBlue-Spirit merger—a move that has directly produced greater competition and consumer choice, with Spirit announcing the opening of new routes this month.

The Division is now looking to continue its hot streak with investigations against some of the most notorious monopolists—including Ticketmaster, UnitedHealth Group, Apple, and more.

Learn more about the DOJ’s Accomplishments Under AAG Kanter here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.