Panetta backs bills to stop robocallers — and who could be against that?

CONGRESSMAN JIMMY Panetta this week announced his support for bipartisan legislation to combat robocalls — those irritating computer-generated phone calls that are often linked to telemarketers, political campaigns and debt collectors.

The three House of Representatives' bills aim to stop the abusive practice of robocalls, offer protections for consumers and create a new federal government "robocall division."

The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, introduced by New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, aims to ensure that the FCC has more authority to track down robocallers, allow consumers to revoke consent of use of their numbers, and require incoming calls to have authentic caller identification information.

"The harder it is to hide your phone number, the harder it would be to use multiple phone numbers," Panetta told The Pine Cone this week. "That's one of the goals of the bill — to prevent scammers from spoofing multiple fake numbers."

Panetta, who said he's had a good number of constituents complain to him about robocalls, called the practice "an invasion of our privacy."

The House of Representatives passed the legislation Wednesday on a 429-3 vote.

No additional charge

The bill — which would apply to text messages and landline phones, as well as cell phones — would require all carriers to eventually implement new technology to make sure that caller ID information is appropriately authenticated, with no additional charges to consumers, Panetta said.

An estimated 26.3 billion "unwanted calls" were placed in the country last year, representing a 46 percent increase over the previous year. While some robocalls are made by legitimate companies, such calls are often used by scammers, who "stole" $9.5 billion from 22 million Americans in 2018, Pallone reported on his website.

The bill would also extend the statute of limitations from one year to four years for those who violate prohibitions on robocalls.

Panetta is also behind the Help Americans Never Get Unwanted Phone Calls Act, which repeals a loophole allowing contractors to robocall anyone with debt owed to or guaranteed by the federal government, including most student loans and many loans to veterans, farmers and small business owners.

The third bill, the Regulatory Oversight Barring Obnoxious Calls and Texts Act, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo, creates a new division within the Federal Communication Commission's enforcement bureau and supports the advancement of robocall blocking technology.

The Congressional Budget Office has not produced a cost estimate to taxpayers for creating the new division.

The bills, if approved, would "help us to again trust that the number we see on our caller ID is actually the person calling," Panetta said.