Consumer Protection and Recovery Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CASTOR of Florida. Mr. Speaker, our neighbors back home are tired of the scam artists ripping them off, so I rise in strong support of H.R. 2668, the Consumer Protection and Recovery Act. I thank Representative Cardenas, Chair Schakowsky, and Chair Pallone for moving this bill swiftly to the floor.

H.R. 2668 fixes a glitch in the laws governing the Federal Trade Commission. Now the FTC is one of our most important consumer watchdog agencies, and for 40 years the FTC has been able to recover ill-gotten gains and restitution for consumers, but a recent Supreme Court decision kind of threw it back to Congress for us to clarify the FTC's authority.

This is very important. This is the authority that allows the FTC to rightfully recover moneys for consumers when fraudsters cheat them out of it. And this is especially important for seniors, folks in the Active Duty military, veterans, and others because they are often targeted by scams like telemarketer credit card scams, those scam artists that claim that we are working for a charitable organization that is going to help disabled police officers or disabled military, these false, fake cures that say, pay us this money and you are going to be cured of your Type 2 diabetes or you won't be in pain anymore. It is so wrong.

The FTC is working overtime. They have particularly been working overtime during the COVID pandemic because there have been so many scams and frauds.

We have got to pass this bill so that we can empower the FTC to get people's money back. It is that simple.

In fact, in my home State of Florida, just since July 2018, the FTC helped recover over $81 million for over 540,000 Floridians.

So if Members don't support this legislation, you are just giving a green light to the fraudsters to steal from consumers without penalty.

That is wrong. We can't let that happen.

I urge my colleagues to pass H.R. 2668.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source