The critical takeaway from enactment in December of the Surface Transportation Board Reauthori-zation Act, S.808, is that, absent headline-capturing abuse of captive shippers by railroads, it is unlikely Congress will refocus anytime soon on diluting railroad market power. PAC-rich railroads could have stopped this legislation as they blocked for more than three decades all previous attempts by captive shippers to tilt the regulatory playing field. It was the centrist approach by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.Dak.) and the committee's senior Democrat, Florida's Bill Nelson, that made it propitious for railroads to take this deal and leave for the dustbin of history more draconian expeditions by Thune's Commerce Committee predecessor, Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), and similarly now-retired Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), both of whom sourly embraced a sock-it-to-the-railroads brashness.
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