Tech Giants, Fearful of Proposals to Curb Them, Blitz Washington With Lobbying

Ms. Pelosi pushed back on Mr. Cook’s concerns about the bills, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations. When Mr. Cook asked for a delay in the Judiciary Committee’s process of considering the bills, Ms. Pelosi pushed him to identify specific policy objections to the measures, said one of the people.

Morgan Reed, the president of the App Association, a trade organization sponsored by Apple and other tech and telecom companies, said in a letter to lawmakers on Tuesday that breaking up platforms and “limiting the services they can provide for our member companies would harm your constituents.”

Another outspoken critic is the Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning trade group formed in March by a former Google executive, Adam Kovacevich.

“Tech had a very long political honeymoon,” Mr. Kovacevich said. “Many politicians and policymakers think that maybe they were too easy on tech for a long time, and now there is a countervailing desire to punish tech through either new laws or through regulatory action. And that is at odds with what consumers want.”

He drafted and organized support for a letter that was sent this week urging members of the Judiciary Committee to oppose two of the bills. It warned that the bills would hurt consumers, resulting in Amazon without Prime, the iPhone without text or phone capabilities preinstalled, and Google without Maps. The letter was signed by Mr. Kovacevich’s group and an unusual mix of 12 other organizations, including tech associations, free-market conservative outfits and consumer groups, most of which have received funding from Amazon, Apple, Facebook or Google.

Eli Lehrer, the president of the fiscally conservative think tank the R Street Institute, which signed the letter, criticized Republican supporters of the bills for turning their backs on their free market principles by “calling on the government to use its power to intervene directly against some of the most successful companies in our country’s history.”

The institute has received funding from Google, but Mr. Lehrer said the funding did not affect its stance on the legislation, as did representatives from other signatory groups.