Representative Payee Fraud Prevention Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking Congressman Meadows for partnering with me on the bill, as well as our Chairwoman Maloney and her incredibly strong and talented staff for their leadership and for the continued support of the work that we have to do on behalf of our residents at home.

I also want to thank our forever chairman, the late Chairman Cummings, who is looking down on us from above, for his mentorship and for working with us on this bill that would help some of our most vulnerable retirees.

We all know that no one deserves to be scammed out of their money, but that is especially true for our retirees. This bill, the Representative Payee Fraud Prevention Act, is a bipartisan effort to protect those retirees who are recipients of Federal benefits.

Retirees who have been declared mentally incompetent or have another qualifying disability can have their monthly benefits paid on their behalf through a representative, frequently referred to as the representative payee. In recent years, what we have seen in our country is there has been a sharp increase in the number of representative payees who have taken advantage of their position and committed fraud, hurting many of our residents.

We need to hold them accountable, and this bill does that. The bill would expand protection to over 2 million workers all across the United States.

In my home State of Michigan, there are nearly 40,000 Federal retirees who are currently unprotected from this crime, impacting their quality of life. They are supposed to be living in peace during their retirement years. They are becoming targets instead, and we need to push back together, in a bipartisan way.

I hear firsthand from our senior residents about their concerns, from feeling neglected in the assisted living facilities to unaffordable drug prices, and I want to ensure that our older Americans have one less worry about financial predators who will misuse their hard-earned money.

For far too long, this lack of Federal protection has left some of our, again, most vulnerable civil servants without legal recourse when they are taken advantage of and their retirement funds are misused. We must ensure that the most impacted communities are protected on every front.

That is what this legislation will do. It will prevent those who have committed representative payee fraud from serving as representative payees in the future and hold them accountable to their victims.

Let's really ensure that our public servants and our civil servants who have dedicated their lives to serving our country are protected against this fraud.

Again, I want to thank my beloved Chairman Cummings for coming to myself and my colleague, Congressman Meadows. When he did, we couldn't say no to him, so we worked together in trying to resolve this issue for so many folks, again, 2 million Federal employees across the country who need this protection.

Mr. Speaker, I really do urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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