Other attempts to expand antitrust doctrine have sputtered, too. A judge dismissed buyout shop Welsh Carson from a lawsuit against the dominant Texas anesthesiology practice it backs, undermining fledgling efforts to target private equity firms. The Republican Party faction that rejects neo-Brandeisian notions has attacked such losses with gusto. The House of Representatives recently voted to reduce the DOJ’s already-meager annual antitrust funding by nearly a fifth, to $193 million.
In terms of caseload volumes alone, the DOJ and FTC have not been especially active either. Granted, the number of deals arriving at the agencies
has spiked, opens new tab, with more than 3,000 flagged in both 2021 and 2022, up around 50% from most of Trump’s term. Nonetheless, both the number of in-depth investigations of deals and challenges to them, as a percentage of those designated for scrutiny, peaked during President Barack Obama’s administration, according to an analysis conducted by
Diana Moss at the Progressive Policy Institute.
