Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, thank you. This is a big day for consumers in the United States, and I want to begin first by thanking my friend, Senator Thune, for his tremendous partnership on this legislation and the issue that we are discussing today, robocalls. That is because there are no blue robocalls. There are no red robocalls. There are only despised robocalls. That is what is bringing this Chamber together today. So I thank Senator Thune for his great leadership.

I thank Senator Wicker and Senator Cantwell for helping us to navigate this political pathway. Today is a big day. The daily deluge of robocalls that Americans experience is more than a nuisance in 2019. It is a consumer protection crisis. Today, the U.S. Senate is sending Americans a holiday gift on everyone's list: stopping the plague of robocalls. Americans across the country face an epidemic of illegal and fraudulent robocalls bombarding their phones.

While their telephones were once a reliable means of communications, they have been turned against us. They are now mechanisms for scammers and fraudsters who wish to cheat and to defraud. The numbers are staggering. In 2019, consumers have received an estimated 54 billion robocalls. That is 6 billion more than 2018, and we still have 2 more weeks to go. The year isn't even over. In November alone, an estimated 5 billion robocalls were made to Americans. That is 167 million robocalls per day. That is 7 million robocalls an hour. That is 2,000 every second in our country. In the time it takes me to make these remarks, 10,000 robocalls will have been placed across this country.

In 2019, already almost 600 million robocalls have been placed to my constituents in Massachusetts. Enough is enough. The reality is that we no longer have confidence in our phones. Our phones have become tools for fraud, for scams, for harassment mechanisms by which those with bad intent can access our homes, our purses, or even our pockets at any time. Caller ID is not trusted. Important calls go unanswered. Innocent Americans are defrauded. Our seniors in particular are targeted.

Years ago, scammers needed expensive, sophisticated equipment to robocall and robotext consumers en masse. Today, they just need a smartphone to target thousands of phones an hour at relatively little expense, and readily available software permits them to spoof their numbers, which means their true caller ID is, in fact, concealed from the person picking up the phone. These new technologies allow illegal robocalls to conduct fraud anonymously, both depriving Federal regulators and consumers the ability to identify and to punish the culprit.

Today, the U.S. Senate is putting robocall relief in sight. I have been proud again to partner with Senator Thune on the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, or TRACED Act for short. We introduced it earlier this year; today is the culmination of that work in partnership with the House of Representatives. Stopping robocalls requires a simple formula, which we have included in the TRACED Act: 1, authentication; 2, blocking; 3, enforcement.

First, this bill requires carriers to adopt call authentication technologies so they can verify that incoming calls are legitimate before they reach consumers phones. This will be mandatory for phone carriers. Second, the Federal Communications Commission will require phone companies to block unverified calls at no charge to consumers. Third, we will increase from 1 year to 4 years the time for the Federal Communications Commission to pursue penalties for robocallers that intentionally violate the rules. This is a recipe for success. That is what our TRACED Act does.

At the same time, this bill also ensures that emergency public safety calls still go through. The bill we will vote on today has enormous support across the country: 54 State and Territory attorneys general, all commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission. Major industry associations and meeting consumer groups endorse the legislation and agree that the TRACED Act is an essential weapon in combating the rise of illegal, fraudulent robocalls.

This robocall legislation is a political Halley's Comet. It is something we can all gather around and learn from. The robocalls we receive every day are neither Democrat, nor Republican. They are a universal menace. They impact the elderly, the young, the small business owner, and the student. Our grandparents and neighbors, our teachers and our coworkers today, no one is spared from this consumer protection pandemic.

Senator Thune and my efforts would not have been possible without the great work of groups like the National Consumer Law Center, AARP, Consumer Reports, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Action, the National Association of Attorneys General, USTelecom, CTIA, NTCA, and so many more groups. These groups join the chorus of countless Americans who raised their voices and called on Congress to pass this bipartisan commonsense legislation, and we thank you.

What I would like to do, as well as Senator Thune, is to thank my staff, Joey Wender, who is sitting out here on the floor with me right now; and Bennett Butler, right over my shoulder; and Daniel Greene, who worked on it; for Alex Sachtjen, Daniel Ball, Olivia Trusty, Nick Rossi, Crystal Tully, from the majority staff, all partnered to make today possible. I just want to say, again, we can't thank Alex Sachtjen enough for all the work that was done.

I thank Senator Thune, and I thank the entire Senate for their support for this legislation.

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