000515 Kohl asks feds to watch how big airlines treat small newcomers Melanie Fonder For The News-Chronicle WASHINGTON - Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., is trying to keep the "friendly skies" on good terms with passengers' pocketbooks. Kohl, the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust, Business Rights and Competition committee, wrote a letter to the Transportation Department last week asking them to enforce their powers to prevent airlines from using anticompetitive pricing systems. "Simply put, you should bring an enforcement action against an incumbent airline should you find that any such carrier is engaged in unfair or anti-competitive practices," Kohl wrote. When new, small carriers enter a market, larger airlines have been accused of temporarily slashing their prices until their competition is driven out. The larger airlines say they are protecting their market share and the new carriers force them to offer more seats at lower cost. With ever-increasing customer complaints of poor service on airlines, the industry has been closely scrutinized in recent years. The Transportation Department, which has authority to take action against an airline for "unfair methods of competition," has released a draft of competition guidelines for the industry. Litigation in those cases could stretch on for years, though, and Kohl would like to see greater enforcement under their existing laws. Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said the draft competition guidelines should wait until a case brought by the Justice Department against American Airlines for so-called "predatory pricing" is resolved. CHINA SUPPORT IS BELTWAY BASED Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Menomonee Falls, recently spoke with The Hill about his long-standing opposition to trade agreements with China. A vote to extend permanent normal trade relations with China is scheduled for the week of May 22, but there is still no clear count on whether the agreement will pass. The issue has sharply divided Democrats and Republicans alike, but Sensenbrenner said the vote has not resonated with constituents the same way. "I have a lot of town meetings, I do from 120 to 150 a year depending on what is scheduled here and it is rarely brought up in town meetings," Sensenbrenner said. "When it is brought up, it is by people who are against this." He said about 90 percent of the e-mail, letters and phone messages his office receives are against the agreement. "I kind of have the observation that PNTR (permanent normal trade relations), at least as I view it, in this office and in my wanderings around the 9th District, the support for it is inside the beltway and once you get outside the beltway, you don't see very much support for it," Sensenbrenner said. Aside from human rights abuses committed by China, Sensenbrenner said he also opposed the agreement because of lack of enforcement in China on intellectual property issues. "Until they start showing the world that they are doing that, I don't think they should be brought into the WTO (World Trade Organization) or PNTR," he said. This column by Fonder, a staff writer for The Hill, a Washington-based weekly newspaper that covers Congress, appears every Monday in the News-Chronicle. You can e-mail her with comments at melfonder@yahoo.com.