Chair Bilirakis Opening Statement at Hearing on FTC's Departure from Standards and Practices

good morning everyone and welcome to today's hearing entitled Federal Trade Commission practices a discussion on past versus present I want to thank the witnesses for your expertise and testimony this morning a couple months ago our subcommittee welcomed the five commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission to examine the current state of the agency the specific focus of that hearing being to examine how chairman Khan is using the budget that Congress has afforded the commission to carry out its Mission during that hearing I spoke about the bipartisan concern of chair Khan's priorities intended or not which has torn down the historic Norms practices and reputation of the FTC as a consumer protection agency the president now being set matters and we should discuss what this means for the future future of the ftc's trust with both consumers and business over the last few years we've seen staff morale plummet unfortunately despite being an independent agency career staff no longer have Independence they used to have particularly in educating consumers about avoiding scams staff hours and resources that could have been spent protecting seniors in my state and other states from scams uh were shifted to press releases and expansive Ru makings and uh competition issues meanwhile our constituents continue to be defrauded on a daily basis it just sends the wrong message when for decades under both Republican and Democrat administrations career experts were able to work with their economists counterparts to assess the cost and benefit of a proposal instead sadly that once commonplace approach was upended and Powers Consolidated under the chair's general counsel office this kind of approach isolates the Commissioners from their value and expertise within the agency and further UPS the Annie on partisanship rather than Faithfully executing the law the whole process gets corrupted this way as too often left out of FTC proposals is important economic analysis and thorough stakeholder collaboration and of course what impact may be had on the backbone of our economy otherwise known as legitimate businesses this shift of actively seeking civil penalties and sending warning letters to have the judicial standing to seek them in uh is appropriate uh is in my opinion it's inappropriate and predatory and must be abandoned the FTC should seek to encourage compliance of their policies not Bank on enforcement we cannot allow this FTC to continue to ruin its prior reputation as the premier Consumer Protection Agency for the country their task to protect consumers from fraud and scams is too important to dedicate resources on legal theories and gotcha schemes my words may be harsh I may be upsetting some of my colleagues but every day my constituents are plagued by scams examples such as Bad actors stealing seniors hard-earned money by pretending to be a loved one in search of help or claiming their government agency warning of impending legal trouble that only $500 gift card could solve this happens on a daily basis folks all over the country and in this economy according to reports my state of Florida ranked third in most scams reported by residents 1,393 per 100,000 residents this hearing serves to take a fresh eye to older reform proposals to start thinking about new ones and get the Ft FTC back to its tried and true approach approaches and its essential consumer protection role Americans every day are getting ripped off I know each of us want the FTC to have the tools they need to go after these Bad actors and we must be responsible when legislating to prevent his history from repeating itself from when much earlier uh iterations of the FCC tried to enact expansive r R makings let us use this discussion today to learn what we can do uh to reform the FTC and turn it back into an agency each of us on both side of the AIS would be willing to go to bat for so with that I'll yield back and I'll recognize the ranking member of the subcomittee m