Washington D.C. — House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) delivered the following opening remarks at today’s hearing titled “Federal Trade Commission Practices: A Discussion on Past Versus Present.” 

CURRENT FTC IS BREAKING HISTORIC NORMS

“A couple months ago, our subcommittee welcomed the five Commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to examine the current state of the agency. 

“The specific focus of that hearing being to examine how Chair 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 have torn down the historic norms, practices, and reputation of the FTC as a consumer protection agency.

“The precedent now being set matters—and we should discuss what this means for the future of the FTC’s trust with both consumers and business.” 

DETERIORATING FTC CULTURE

“Over the last few years, we’ve seen staff morale plummet. Despite being an independent agency, career staff no longer have the 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 others from scams were shifted to press releases and expansive rulemakings and 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 Democratic administrations, career experts were able to work with their economist 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 ante 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 is 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.”

RETURNING FTC TO THEIR MISSION

“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, and 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 they’re a government agency warning of impending legal trouble that only a 500-dollar gift card could solve.

“And in this economy, according to reports, 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 FTC back to its tried-and-true 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 history from repeating itself from when much earlier iterations of the FTC tried to enact expansive rulemakings.

“Let’s use this discussion today to learn what we can be doing to reform the FTC and turn it back into an agency each of us, on both sides of the aisle, would be willing to go to bat for.”