In Congress, it's always 'Blame Someone Else Day'

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Happy holidays to everyone who celebrates "National Blame Someone Else Day,” which, unintentionally, may include a handful of senators expected to introduce the "American Innovation and Choice Online Act" in the coming days.

Notwithstanding all the taxes, regulations, and federal spending that drain our economy, the politicians championing the bill are loudly blaming tech companies for hurting small businesses.

It's a convenient scapegoat, but one that fits the occasion perfectly by distracting from Washington's own incompetence.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act is more commonly known by its acronym, AICOA. Congress loves its acronyms, but in this case, the name doesn't reflect the true consequences of the legislation. To avoid any confusion, let's henceforth refer to AICOA as the "Allow Insecure Code On Applications" act.

This is because, in terms of practical implications, the "choice" the bill offers is the freedom to invite more malware, data breaches, and other serious cyber risks onto out digital devices. It achieves this through a ban on what politicians call "self-preferencing" — the practice by which tech companies prioritize their own products or services over competitors. This would force Apple's iPhone to allow "sideloading," enabling customers to download alternative app stores regardless of their security features or privacy standards.

Doing so completely bypasses the current app store security protocols that vet every single application to keep devices safe. Last year alone, these safeguards blocked nearly 2 million risky app submissions from ever reaching users and saved the economy billions in fraud.

Politicians' obsession with tech companies ’ so-called "self-preferencing" gets even more ridiculous when considering how this policy would translate to the wider economy. Target, for instance, prominently promotes its own store brands like Good & Gather or Cat & Jack kids ’ clothes, placing them in prime real estate on shelves while still carrying outside brands. Conveniences stores such as 7-Eleven, drug stores like CVS, and basically every grocery store, does the same with their own products. Do senators like Amy Klobuchar or Josh Hawley think retail stores should be federally barred from curating their own shelves lest they harm small businesses?

If anything, this kind of vertical integration amounts to consumer preferencing; these stores know their customer base and want to provide the best possible experience by offering products of the quality and cost that people want. The same logic applies to the tech world, whether it is Apple prioritizing its own app store or a browser defaulting to Google because it is the most popular search engine.

This isn't even to mention that these in-house choices better ensure quality and consistency across stores at scale. In business, reputation is everything. For Apple to knowingly allow inferior technology on its iPhones would be a disservice to its users, shareholders, and app developers alike. These developers go to painstaking lengths to meet Apple's stringent security criteria, knowing that doing so earns them invaluable costumer trust. Far from hurting small businesses, it is this sophisticated, secure ecosystem that enables so many of them to get started in the first place.

Eroding these robust consumer protections will have serious unintended consequences — leaving one to wonder who Congress will blame for that during next year's holiday.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Jon Decker is executive director of American Commitment and a senior fellow at the Parkview Institute. As one of America's leading "supply-side community organizers," he launched the Committee to Unleash Prosperity in 2015 on behalf of Steve Forbes, Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer, and Stephen Moore and served as its executive director for eight years.