Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KIM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise today in strong support of the TRACED Act, a bipartisan effort to crack down on the scourge of predatory robocalls.

Over the past year, I have heard from my neighbors in Burlington and Ocean Counties about their frustrations from constant robocalls. In fact, more than 400 neighbors from Beachwood to Bordentown and Toms River to Tabernacle contacted our office to complain.

That is exactly why I dug into the issue and teamed up with four Republicans and two Democrats to offer H.R. 3325, the Locking Up Robocallers Act of 2019, which would strengthen enforcement of current laws aimed at ending the scourge of predatory robocalls.

I am glad our bill was incorporated into this legislation, because these calls aren't just annoyances; they are used by scam artists to target people in our community.

According to the FCC, they receive over 200,000 complaints a year from residents receiving predatory robocalls. An estimated 26.3 billion robocalls were made to mobile phones, and more than 47 billion were made in total to phones in the U.S. in 2018.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill and taking a real step to end predatory robocalls.

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