(Radio Iowa) – The U-S Senate returns to work today (Tuesday) with two months until the midterm elections, and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he has just two legislative priorities between now and then. One is passage of a bipartisan measure called the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. Grassley says it aims to restore competition online by stopping giant digital platforms from giving unfair preferences to their own products and services. Grassley says, “This would do away with what we call economic discrimination.” Grassley, a Republican, is co-sponsoring the bill with Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar.

“We’re dealing with the practices of the big platforms like Amazon and Google prioritizing their own products,” Grassley says, “and then your small businesses using their platforms, you’re second or third or fourth or 50th to everything that Amazon or Google wants first.” Grassley says those internet Goliaths have deep pockets and they’ve been waging a expensive, extensive campaign against the legislation.

“I saw on television another one of these commercials that’s probably added up to about $36-million that some of these platforms are saying how godawful the Klobuchar-Grassley bill is,” Grassley says. “I’m not sure they named her and me, but there’s a lot of money being spent to kill this bill.” Grassley says his second priority over the coming weeks is passage of his Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act. It would force the nation’s largest beef packers to buy a percentage of their cattle through negotiated-type trades in order to level the playing field for more smaller producers.