1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Consolidation Prevention and Competition Promotion Act of 2017 . 2. Findings and purposes (a) Findings Congress finds that— (1) competitive markets are critical to ensuring opportunity for all people in the United States; (2) when companies compete, businesses offer the highest quality and choice of goods for the lowest possible prices to consumers and other businesses; (3) competition fosters small business growth, reduces economic inequality, and spurs innovation; (4) concentration that leads to market power and anticompetitive conduct makes it more difficult for people in the United States to start their own businesses, depresses wages, and increases economic inequality; (5) undue market concentration also contributes to the consolidation of political power, undermining the health of democracy in the United States; (6) the anticompetitive effects of market power created by concentration include higher prices, lower quality, significantly less choice, reduced innovation, foreclosure of competitors, increased entry barriers, and monopsony power; (7) monopsony power— (A) allows a firm to force suppliers of goods or services to cut their prices to unreasonably low levels, resulting in reduced business opportunities for suppliers and reduced availability and quality of products and services for consumers; and (B) can result in workers being forced to accept unreasonably low wages; (8) horizontal consolidation, vertical consolidation, and conglomerate mergers all have potential to cause anticompetitive harm; (9) unprecedented consolidation is reducing competition and threatens to place the American dream further out of reach for many consumers in the United States; (10) since 2008, firms in the United States have engaged in over $10,000,000,000,000 in mergers and acquisitions