Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is once again breaking from the corporate-friendly orthodoxy that has defined the Republican Party for decades and has introduced new legislation that would block tax-free corporate mergers.

Vance introduced the Stop Subsidizing Giant Mergers Act Thursday alongside Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). If signed into law, the bill would close a loophole that allows corporate mergers to take place without paying taxes.

“When one corporation is sold to or merges with another, the acquiring firm typically pays tax on the appreciated gain of stocks and/or assets held by the target firm,” Vance’s office said in a press release announcing the legislation. “However, the tax code contains a major exception for certain types of mergers: if a corporate reorganization is structured so that the acquiring firm is exchanging stock, then the appreciation in value of the target firm’s stock and/or assets may be fully tax exempt.”

Vance and Whitehouse are crossing party lines to clean up a provision of the tax code that gives corporations special treatment when they consolidate and limit competition in the marketplace. In other words, they are trying to fix a tax code that, as currently written, incentivizes the monopolization of industry and rewards the elimination of competition in the market, thereby harming consumers and workers.

For the government to subsidize and encourage corporate mergers while eliminating competition is an exercise of crony capitalism. There is nothing free about a market when certain transactions and companies are given special treatment by the federal government, especially when those actions will hurt competition for wages and prices.

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Vance is blazing a trail for conservative policymaking that reins in the special treatment corporations have received from lawmakers (particularly Republicans) for decades. The tax code that Vance is trying to fix is a product of a political establishment that has sacrificed fairness and justice in the market in favor of boosting profits for corporations.

Rather than continue the tradition of corporate handouts, Republican lawmakers should rally behind Vance’s effort and end the government’s incentive program for large corporate mergers.