(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), America’s largest taxpayer watchdog group, today praised a study released by the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) examining the enormous cost to consumers of the possible dismantling of software manufacturer Microsoft.  Remedies being proposed by state attorneys general and the Department of Justice (DOJ) who are pursuing antitrust litigation against the company include splitting Microsoft into separate organizations and creating multiple versions of its Windows operating system.

"The report released today by ACT is in line with what we at Citizens Against Government Waste have been saying for years," remarked CAGW President Thomas A. Schatz.  "Whenever the government tries to regulate the high-tech industry, it's ordinary taxpayers and consumers who get burned.  Whether through higher taxes, increased costs passed on to consumers, or simply inferior government technology, the American people lose when government plays techno-cop."

Earlier this year, CAGW released an investigative report eviscerating the government's bumbling attempts to regulate the high-tech industry.  The report, entitled The Federal Assault on High Tech: Is the Government Wired or Just Unplugged?, exposed a technologically challenged government trying to regulate technology it cannot control, or even fully comprehend.

Among the problems revealed in CAGW's report are agency computers hopelessly out of date,  and many mission-critical systems woefully unprepared for the Y2K bug.  Perhaps the biggest waste of government resources in pursuing high-tech regulation is the case against Microsoft.  CAGW’s report finds that DOJ's antitrust division has spared no expense in several attempts to restrict a company that most taxpayers regard as contributing substantially toward America’s current economic prosperity.  CAGW estimates that DOJ has spent $30 to $60 million in its quixotic pursuit of Microsoft.

"We salute ACT for bringing to light the huge burden that the economy and consumers would bear if Microsoft or its products were broken up," concluded Schatz.  "These costs, combined with the bill going to taxpayers for the Justice Department's prosecution, should convince anyone that these proposed remedies are extremely harmful and that the marketplace, not government, should determine who wins in the high-tech industry."

CAGW is a 600,000-member nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.