May 23, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 87 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S3082-S3084]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 S. 151

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, earlier today, the Senate overwhelmingly 
approved the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and 
Deterrence Act, known as the TRACED Act, authored by our colleagues 
Senators Thune and Markey.
  I am pleased to have been a cosponsor of this bill to help protect 
consumers from fraudulent, aggravating, and incessant robocalls.
  The TRACED Act makes a number of important changes to our laws that 
will make it easier to fight illegal robocalls.
  Most important, the TRACED Act requires telecommunications carriers 
to implement what is known as SHAKEN/STIR technology to verify whether 
caller IDs that appear on incoming calls are authentic.
  When fully implemented, this technology will be a major advance 
against the illegal spoofing of calls that have resulted in successful 
scams.
  Combating illegal robocalls has long been a focus of the Senate's 
Special Committee on Aging, which I chair, and on which the Presiding 
Officer serves.
  Over the past 6 years, the Special Committee on Aging has held 22 
hearings to examine scams that specifically target older Americans. 
Scams that we have highlighted include the IRS imposter scam, the 
Jamaican lottery scam, computer tech support schemes, grandparent 
scams, elder financial exploitation, identity theft, and the notorious 
drug mule scam.
  The number and the kind of these scams are endless in their variety. 
The criminals are ruthless and relentless, and they will continue to 
come up with new ways to defraud Americans, particularly our seniors.
  These scams are often initiated by robocallers who use caller ID 
spoofing to perpetrate their schemes. Many of us remember back in 2003 
when the Do Not Call Registry was created. At that point, what we were 
able to do was register our phone numbers and block those unwanted, 
illegal robocalls. Fortunately, back then, telecommunications equipment 
could not easily be

[[Page S3083]]

used to disguise a caller ID to make it look like the call was coming 
from someplace other than its origin.
  Unfortunately, technology today and particularly the emergence of the 
voice over internet protocol technology has changed all that to the 
point where the Do Not Call Registry has become virtually useless for 
most Americans. Now criminals can use VoIP to hide their identities 
while generating millions of robocalls from anywhere in the world at 
practically no cost.
  We heard in the Aging Committee some heart-wrenching stories of 
consumers who have been ripped off because of the combination of the 
robocall and the disguising of the identity of the caller.
  For example, in 2015, we heard from the Auburn, ME, Police Department 
about a woman who lost $7,400 because she got one of these calls, and 
it was followed by another call that appeared to be the Auburn Police 
Department. That is what appeared on her caller ID. Yet, of course, it 
was nothing of the sort. But that was sufficient to make her think she 
really did have to pay what turned out to be $7,400 of her retirement 
savings, which she could ill afford to lose.
  In 2017, we heard from an 81-year-old veteran from Portland, ME, 
Phillip Hatch, who was a victim of the IRS imposter scam. In these 
scams, what happens is the robocaller pretends to be an IRS agent. He 
or she will tell the person who answers the phone that the consumer 
owes thousands of dollars in back taxes and penalties and that if they 
are not paid immediately, they will either be arrested or a lien will 
be put on their home. They manage to panic people of all ages--
particularly our seniors--into paying money they do not owe to the IRS.
  Everyone should be aware that if you really do owe back taxes to the 
IRS, you will get a letter from the IRS. You won't be called up and 
threatened. But that, unfortunately, is what these con artists, these 
ruthless criminals, do.
  Well, Mr. Hatch was induced to pay some $8,000 when he got a second 
call that appeared to be from the Portland Police Department telling 
him that if he did not pay up immediately, there was a warrant for his 
arrest--again, completely bogus. Mr. Hatch did not owe back taxes, much 
less penalties, but it was the spoofing of the call that made it look 
like it was from the Portland Police Department in this case--the 
Auburn Police Department in the previous case I described--that caused 
him to lose a substantial amount of money. His situation would have 
been even worse if his son had not intervened. He would have lost even 
more.
  This is a problem that is getting worse every day. Oddly enough, 
lately on my cell phones, I have been receiving robocalls that are in 
Chinese, which is really bizarre. I don't know whether they are 
targeting a Chinese-American population in some part of the Washington, 
DC, area, but that is what I have been getting lately. But all of us 
know how frequent, how annoying, and in many cases how dangerous these 
robocalls can be when they are conducted by these ruthless criminals.
  Last year, the Federal Trade Commission logged an incredible 3.8 
billion complaints about illegal robocalls. This year, industry sources 
estimate that nearly half of all mobile phone calls are fraudulent--
nearly half. So this is a problem that deserves our attention. The 
American people are tired of having scammers ring their phones off the 
hook--or their cell phones--and they want these calls stopped. We have 
to do all we can to give the regulators the important tools to help 
fight these illegal robocalls.
  I am very pleased that we have taken an important step today and that 
the Federal Communications Commission is also acting to increase the 
protections for consumers. We should be able to rely on the veracity of 
our caller ID identifications. That is why we have caller ID. But the 
spoofers have managed to defeat the purpose of caller ID, including 
being able to pretend to be the Department of Treasury, the Auburn 
Police Department, and other law enforcement agencies. No wonder people 
pick up the phone when they see the Department of Treasury, the Auburn 
Police Department, or the IRS is calling, but, in fact, that is not who 
is calling; it is a relentless criminal who is trying to steal money 
from the consumer.
  It is my hope that this important consumer protection bill, which 
builds on all of the 22 hearings our Aging Committee has held, will 
become law shortly and provide relief to American consumers.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, yesterday I stood on the floor of our 
esteemed Senate, and I said: The Senate needs to do more. The Senate 
needs to do more.
  I was very careful--and I want to reaffirm today--I was very careful 
not to say we are not doing anything. I talked about our important work 
on confirming judges. I think we are putting some very fine men and 
women on the Federal bench, who are going to make our country safer and 
better. I was also very careful to talk about the fact that after a 
logjam had been created on the appointments for the President's 
administration, we were finally able to break that logjam. We have 
started confirming some new advisers for the President.
  I am very proud of the good work this body has done, but I did make 
the point that we need to do more. I talked about the fact that, in my 
judgment, there are many issues--if we think about them--on which my 
Democratic friends and my Republican colleagues have more in common 
than we don't, but we can't determine whether that is accurate unless 
we vote, unless we bring bills to the floor, unless we get bills in 
front of the committee and mark them up. That is our word, as you know, 
for amending a bill.
  One of the bills I talked about yesterday was the need for bipartisan 
support for trying to do something about the spam, fraudulent robocalls 
the American people are getting, about which Senator Collins just spoke 
so eloquently. I said there would be bipartisan support. I believed it. 
I believe it even more today. I am very proud of the Senate because we 
just passed a bill. Do you know how many people voted against it? One. 
One ``no'' vote. See what happens when Senators are allowed to be 
Senators?
  There are other efforts that we can work on together. The cost of 
prescription drugs--I spoke about that yesterday. I don't want to go 
into it more today.
  I will give you another one, and I know this is controversial, but I 
think it is less controversial than people realize--net neutrality, the 
importance of people being able to access the Internet freely without 
being blocked or without their speeds being throttled or without their 
being censored.
  That is a very controversial issue around here, but I still believe 
we share more in common than we don't on that issue. I talk with my 
colleagues all the time. I say: We need to pass a bill. Do you know 
why? Because the businessmen and the businesswomen and the consumers 
need some predictability in this area. What happens now is, if we have 
a Democratic President who gets control of the FCC, they pass one set 
of net neutrality rules, and then if we have a Republican President who 
gets control of the FCC, they pass a different set of net neutrality 
rules. The business community and the consumers are like ping pong 
balls. There is no predictability. There is no certainty. You can't 
plan. So everybody says: We need to pass a bill. Well, I am going to 
say it too. We need to pass a bill, but the only way to pass a bill is 
to pass a bill. And I think that is an area where we can work.
  Another area--I understand how hard it is to fix our healthcare 
delivery system, but we ought to at least try. Our efforts in the last 
Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act did not work. We 
could not pass the bill. I do not know a single person, honestly, a 
fairminded person who thinks the Affordable Care Act is working. But 
there are things we can do in the meantime while we are trying to reach 
an agreement on health insurance and the healthcare delivery system 
that looks like somebody designed the two things on purpose. There are 
things we can do together in the meantime.
  I think there is bipartisan support for the idea that if you have 
health insurance and you go to the emergency room--and you picked an 
emergency room at a hospital that is under your policy--and you go and 
you pay your $500 deductible, a month later, you

[[Page S3084]]

should not get a bill for $1,000. You call them up and you say: What do 
you mean? The hospital is listed on my policy. I did what I was 
supposed to do. I went there. It was an emergency, but I did not go to 
the closest hospital. I went to the hospital in my policy, and I get a 
bill for $4,000.
  They say: Oh, that doctor, that radiologist--not to pick on 
radiologists--that radiologist wasn't covered by your plan.
  Well, how am I supposed to know?
  We can address that. I guarantee you that there is bipartisan support 
to do something about that. We might not agree on the details, but that 
is why, you know, God created the Senate floor. You come down here, you 
debate, you discuss, and you offer amendments.
  There are other examples. Let me say I am cutting this short because 
we are about to have another vote on a disaster bill. Thank you. Thank 
you, United States Senate. Thank you, President Trump, for meeting us 
in the middle.
  I am not clairvoyant, but I feel really good about its passing--not 
good for the Senate as an institution, although I am proud of us today, 
but good for our farmers and our people in so many States who have been 
hurt by natural disasters--wildfires and hurricanes. Puerto Rico was 
hit with two hurricanes right in a row. We are going to do something 
about that today. I am happy for the Senate, but I am even happier for 
the American people.
  I am going to say it again. We have more in common--our Democratic 
colleagues and our Republican colleagues--than we don't on certain 
issues, and I think we would surprise ourselves in what we could 
achieve if we just try.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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