The White House is launching a multi-agency “strike force” on Tuesday in an effort to curb unfair and illegal pricing across the economy, according to Lael Brainard, chair of the National Economic Council.

Brainard will make the announcement at a meeting Tuesday of the White House competition council, a group stacked with Cabinet officials, and other agency heads. The move comes as President Joe Biden seeks new ways to show voters he’s cracking down on the so-called corporate greed that he has increasingly blamed for high prices.

Yet while Biden is making competition a key part of his domestic economic agenda, the effort will face headwinds from Congress. The White House strike force announcement comes just as lawmakers are poised to make steep cuts to the budget of the Justice Department’s antitrust division as part of the government funding deal announced Sunday.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment. The president supports funding for antitrust enforcement, according to an administration official, who noted that funding for DOJ antitrust enforcement has increased year-over-year under Biden.

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission “will strengthen interagency efforts to root out and stop illegal corporate behavior that hikes prices on American families,” according to a fact sheet released Monday by the White House. “The effort will focus on key sectors where corporations may be violating the law and keeping prices high, including prescription drugs and health care, food and grocery, housing, financial services, and more.”

POLITICO previously reported the DOJ and FTC will be joining forces with the Department of Health and Human Services on health care enforcement, and that Biden also plans to highlight rising housing costs in his State of the Union address on Thursday.

On a call with reporters, Monday, DOJ antitrust head Jonathan Kanter described the work as “confronting the most powerful corporations in the world.”

But in the funding deal released on Sunday, appropriators allocated just $233 million to the antitrust division, substantially less than the roughly $325 million requested by the White House. The bill also would no longer allow the antitrust division to keep a portion of the fees companies pay when they submit deals for review. Instead, that money would be distributed through the standard appropriations process.

Congress in 2022 raised the fees with the intention that the money would go to the antitrust division. Fees for the largest deals jumped from $280,000 to $2.5 million.

Among its many cases, the DOJ is litigating two significant antitrust cases against Google, a potential near-term lawsuit against Apple and numerous pending high-profile merger reviews including Capital One’s takeover of Discover. All of those efforts require significant resources.

Some Democrats are hoping to change the language before the bill becomes final.

“Diverting these fees is just wrong. We passed strongly bipartisan legislation with an 88-8 vote to ensure that the Antitrust Division at the Justice Department has sufficient resources to vigorously enforce our antitrust laws,” said Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who chairs the Senate Antitrust subcommittee. “In an increasingly complex world, the Division is going up against major monopolies with unlimited legal resources, and we must even the playing field for consumers and small businesses. I will keep fighting to ensure our enforcers have the resources they need to do their jobs.”

The White House is highlighting its competition agenda throughout the week. The competition council is meeting Tuesday, and on Monday the panel held an event aimed at curbing drug prices. The FTC and DOJ are also holding a workshop Tuesday on the role of private equity in health care, and Biden is expected to address many of these issues in his State of the Union speech Thursday.

Marcia Brown and Katy O’Donnell contributed to this report.