National Senior Investor Initiative Act of 2025
Floor Speech
Mr. Speaker, in this Congress, as in previous Congresses, I introduced the Senior Security Act to protect vulnerable seniors from fraudsters who seek to take financial advantage of them. We are bringing it again this Congress and working very closely with Mrs. Wagner. I am grateful for her leadership, as well as the chairman's leadership, and as well as the ranking member who has been very supportive.
Millions of seniors across the country, including my own mother-- blessed memory--have been the victims of financial scams, and far too many have been cheated out of their retirement savings. It is appalling. It is offensive, and it is unacceptable.
Senior scams have more than doubled since 2020. These senior scams cost older Americans more than $36 billion a year, with the average victim losing $34,000 from these crimes annually, not to mention the pain you can't put a dollar amount on. What is worse is that the majority of cases of elder exploitation are not reported.
We are here today to do something about it by passing my Senior Security Act to help protect American seniors from these shameless criminals.
This bipartisan legislation will create a senior investor task force in the Securities and Exchange Commission that will be a cop on the beat ensuring we do everything possible to stop hucksters from scamming our seniors. Every 2 years the task force will also submit a report to Congress outlining trends and innovations, including robocalls and voice spoofing and all the developments in artificial intelligence that are impacting seniors to help us stay ahead of changes in financial scams.
We must protect our seniors from having their hard-earned retirement savings stolen right out from under them, as the chairman just mentioned, in his own State.
Senior scams, as we have discussed, and as Mrs. Wagner just pointed out, have exploded over the last decades. With new technologies like artificial intelligence, these scams are becoming and will continue to be ever more prevalent in the years ahead.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleague to support this bill which will allow the Securities and Exchange Commission to better understand and respond to this growing crisis.
I thank Mrs. Wagner for her partnership on this bipartisan legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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