Byron Dorgan: “last week I introduced some legislation in the Senate for which it is my hope my colleagues will join in. It deals with…”

“last week I introduced some legislation in the Senate for which it is my hope my colleagues will join in. It deals with the issue of the Do Not Call List that is housed down at the Federal Trade Commission. I do not think there is much more irritating in life than to receive calls from telemarketers. Almost everybody has received bundles of calls from telemarketers--always during mealtime. They always wait until the family has been able to sit down to start a meal, and then the family gets a telephone call: Would you like to take our cable service? Would you like to take our cell phone service? Do you need new siding? We will have some people in your neighborhood tomorrow selling sheetrock or siding. So on and on and on, telemarketers are unbelievably annoying. So Congress passed a piece of legislation. It says: We are going to set up a list at the Federal Trade Commission called a Do Not Call List. You call in, put your name on that list, and it says to telemarketers: You may not call the names on that list. So the list has been very successful, except the Federal Trade Commission did one very inexplicable and dumb thing. I guess that is a gentle description. They said of the people who call in and put their names on a Do Not Call List, the list will expire at a certain time, so you would have to call back in. So we have had 149 million people call in.…”