Frank Pallone: “Today the House will take strong, bipartisan action to protect consumers from illegal robocalls. Talk to anyone, Mr.…”

“Today the House will take strong, bipartisan action to protect consumers from illegal robocalls. Talk to anyone, Mr. Speaker, and you will hear just how annoyed people are by those calls; and no wonder-- according to Robokiller, a whopping 5.6 billion robocalls were made to Americans in November alone. According to YouMail, more than 200 million calls have been made to the 732 area code in my congressional district this year. That is pretty outrageous. Today the House is giving Americans back control of their phones. This legislation is important because unlawful robocalls are not only a nuisance, they are also undermining our entire phone system and consumers' safety as a result. Too often Americans simply will not pick up their phones out of fear that a robocall is on the other end of the line. These calls are not just annoying, in a lot of instances they are scams targeted at consumers. Unfortunately, these scams are becoming more sophisticated every day. At a hearing earlier this year, we learned that the Moffitt Cancer Center received 6,600 scam calls in just 1 month, specifically designed to appear as calls coming from within the hospital. That is dangerous for patient safety and confidentiality. Mr.…”