The full House Committee on Energy and Commerce will meet this morning to mark up 26 different bills, and first on the list is the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, a recently re-introduced bipartisan bill that, among other things, would give consumers the opportunity to opt out of receiving calls without the calling party ever knowing it had happened.
The markup of the bills is being live-streamed here. H.R. 3375, the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, was re-introduced in mid-June by Rep. Frank Pallone [D-N.J.], and Rep. Gregg Walden [R-Ore.], the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology unanimously approved H.R. 3375 by a voice vote late last month. The bill currently has 152 co-sponsors, more than 30 of them Republicans.
The House is also currently considering the TRACED Act, another anti-robocall measure, which easily passed in the Senate in late May.
Among the provisions of the bill are:
- Requiring the Federal Communications Commission to develop a rule that defines an automatic telephone dialing systems and calls made using an artificial or prerecorded voice
- Establishing a four-year statute of limitations for the FCC or other law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute alleged offenders of the law
- Requiring carriers, within six months of the law’s enactment, to develop and deploy effective call authentication technology
- Requiring carriers to offer call-blocking services that gives consumers the opportunity to opt-out of the program, should they so choose
- Mandating the FCC to submit a report to Congress on the implementation of its reassigned numbers database to make sure the Commission is effectively protecting consumers from unwanted calls.
