Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 624, the Social Security Number Fraud Prevention Act of 2017, as amended. Introduced by our colleague, Mr. Valadao from California, this bill is a commonsense step to addressing an enormously growing problem of identity theft and protecting the personal information of every American. Each year, 18 million Americans become victims of identity theft. That is 18 million. A leading cause of this problem is the unauthorized acquisition of Social Security numbers by criminals. H.R. 624 would address this issue by restricting the instances in which agencies may include the full Social Security numbers on documents sent through the mail. The bill would prohibit agencies from including those numbers on mailed correspondence unless the head of an agency himself or herself determines that inclusion is absolutely essential. Agencies would be required to issue regulations delineating the situations in which Social Security numbers are necessary, and would be instructed to partially redact numbers wherever feasible. {time} 1445 Agencies would also be expressly prohibited from making Social Security numbers visible on the outside of any mailed packages. In recent years, many agencies have taken steps to reduce their use of Social Security numbers, and this bill would simply codify some of those practices agencies have already adopted.…”