Federal Communications Commission "FCC XX-XXX" STATEMENT OF CHAIRWOMAN JESSICA ROSENWORCEL Re: In the Matter of Gregory Robbins, Interstate Brokers of America LLC, and National Health Agents LLC, Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture, File No. EB-TCD-18-00030995 Robocalls are annoying in a big way. They merit a response in a big way, too. We do that here by holding to account a company that made more than half a million robocalls to people they had no right to call. The company was doing a hard sell, offering health insurance, and trying to take advantage of COVID-19 anxiety anytime anyone answered the phone. So we respond today with a 45 million dollar fine for these junk calls because they violate our rules and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. This is the largest fine ever proposed by this agency under this law. But our robocall efforts are bigger than this record fine today. We have required new call authentication technology on our networks. We have set up the first-ever robocall mitigation database, a registry of every voice provider that is a public record of their anti-robocall practices. And just yesterday we announced new partnerships. We now have 16 State Attorneys General that have signed our Memorandum of Understanding, committing to share information and resources with us so we can work together to get these junk calls off the line. I want to thank specifically the State Attorneys General of Colorado and Vermont for joining this effort and the State Attorneys General of Colorado, North Carolina, and Tennessee for their new initiative to get other State Attorneys General on board. I also think for this agency to be truly effective when it comes to stopping robocalls more authority is needed. For starters, the decision last year by the Supreme Court in Facebook v. Duguid narrowed the definition of autodialer under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which could lead to less consumer protection from these annoying calls. We need to fix that. We also need more tools to catch those behind these calls, including the ability to seize assets to stop them in their tracks and even the authority to enable the Federal Communications Commission to go to court directly and collect against these bad actors—each and every one of them. Thank you to the agency staff who worked on these efforts, including Loyaan Egal, Lisa Gelb, Rosemary Harold, Jessica Manuel, Raul Rojo, Daniel Stepanicich, Kristi Thompson, Ashley Tyson, and Lisa Zaina from the Enforcement Bureau; Valerie Hill, Richard Mallen, Wisam Naoum, and William Richardson from the Office of General Counsel; Aaron Garza, Richard Smith, Mark Stone, Kristi Thornton, and Kimberly Wild from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau; Pam Arluk, Matt Collins, and Kris Monteith from the Wireline Competition Bureau; and Susan Lee and Virginia Metallo from the Office of Economics and Analytics. 2