Legislative Proposals to Strengthen Consumer Protection in a Changing Marketplace.

The committee will come to order. The chairman recognizes himself for five minutes for an opening statement. Good morning, everyone. Uh, welcome to today's legislative hearing. We are here today to consider a dozen bills. aimed at strengthening consumer protections and ensuring the FTC and the Consumer Product Safety Commission have the tools they need to address challenges in today's economy. For decades, the FTC has served as our nation's primary consumer protection agency. Since its creation in nineteen fourteen, the FTC has worked to combat unfair and deceptive practices and promote competition without unduly burdening legitimate business activity. From the FTC Act itself to the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the more recent Take It Down Act, the FTC has been a driving force in consumer protection issues by keeping Americans safe in nearly every corner of our economy. The Consumer Part- uh, Product Safety Commission, or the CPSC, plays an equally important role by safeguarding the American public from hazardous consumer products through education, strong safety standards, and enforcement. Uh, as online marketplaces continue to grow and imported products into the U. S. in record numbers, it is critical that the CPSC is fully equipped to fight the wave of unsafe Chinese products flooding the American market. Today, we will examine twelve bills that would strengthen these agencies' ability to protect consumers. Several bills, including the PAC Act and the Recycled Materials Attribution Act, will improve transparency by addressing misleading recyclability claims while allowing for new innovations uh to improve recycling rates and assist job creators. Others, such as the Terms Act, would impose new transparency obligations on on-line platforms. We will also consider legislation such as the NITRIS

Yes.

uh Oxide Safety Act and Stop the Fraud Act, which seeks to address unsafe products and strengthen enforcement against foreign companies that uh that violate our consumer protection laws. Together, these proposals uh represent Congress's continued effort to keep the FTC and the CPSC equipped to protect American consumers. Thank you and I look forward to listening to the witnesses, so I wanna welcome the witness witnesses. And now, I'll yield uh five minutes to the ranking member, Miss Schakowsky. for her opening statement.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, I appreciate Am I on? Can I start? Yes. Um I appreciate this opportunity um but I want to tell you that um for how many years? For over a century. For over a century right now The federal trading commission. the the the Federal Trade Commission has Protected. protected has protected consumers and has moved forward. But right now, what we're finding is Trump has weakened. Trump has actually weakened the ability of consumers to get the best. of all they need right now. And so um I want to Hmm? I wanted to yield at this point to Representative Trahan to talk about what we really need to do.

Well thank you uh ranking member Schakowsky. I also wanna thank the chairman. Um, today I'm so glad to see HR three two O nine, the bipartisan app store freedom act on today's agenda and i'm grateful to my co co-lead congresswoman kat kamak for her tireless work on this bipartisan legislation smartphones are the front door to modern life but apple and google control that door together their operating systems power more than ninety nine percent of united states smartphones apple controls all native ios app distribution in this country while google controls roughly ninety percent of android app distribution. That's not a competitive market, it's a duopoly. Apple and Google can force developers into their payment systems, charge commissions of up to thirty percent, block customers from hearing about lower prices, and give their own apps an edge. That means consumers pay more for less choice and less innovation. A new economic analysis published this week quantifies the harm. Americans spend fifty-two point three billion dollars annually through apple and google's app stores if competition pushed down app store fees consumers could save about eight point nine billion dollars each year the app store freedom act targets only the largest gatekeepers and offers a pro market fix it lets consumers choose alternative stores and default apps install apps outside the dominant stores and remove unwanted preloaded apps it stops forced payment systems and gag rules and it gives developers their access to operating system features so they can compete on merit. Opponents say exclusivity is the price of security. It's not. They argue that opening app distribution and alternative app stores will invite malware scams and threats to children. And sure, alternative distribution can create risks if poorly managed, but the status quo is already unacceptable. Documented scams and unsafe apps like notify apps routinely through Apple and Google's security reviews. The answer is strong safeguards, not permanent permanent monopoly control. So to be absolutely clear, nothing in this bill forces someone to use an alternative app store. Apple and Google can keep operating and vetting their own stores. It does not require them to provide support for third-party apps, and it preserves intellectual property and national security safeguards. We know openness and security can coexist. Google's Play protects scans, Android apps from outside its store, and Apple's secure software outside the Mac App store. Competition could also produce safe choices, including stores designed specifically for families and children. Security is an engineering challenge, not a monopoly entitlement. H R three two O nine does not set prices or pick winners. It makes powerful gatekeepers compete so consumers, corporations decide which apps and services work best for them. Chairman Guthrie, Chairman Gil- Bilraqus, today is an important first step. I urge the committee to continue to work with Congresswoman Kamak and myself to break the duopoly and allow competition in the mobile app space American consumers have waited long enough. Thank you. I yield back.

Thank you, and I believe the ranking um member yields back, is that correct? Yes, okay, very good. I'll recognize the uh the Chairman of the full committee, Mister Guthrie, for his for his five minutes opening statement.

Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Bilirakis, and good morning to everyone. Welcome to the committee today. Today, this subcommittee will consider consumer protection, legislation at a at a time when the US marketplace continues to change dramatically. New business practices, advancement in technology bring with them abundant new opportunities for consumers. American consumers have more choices than ever before. With just a few clicks, they can buy products and services from virtually anywhere in the world. But as the marketplace has evolved, so have the risks. Fraudsters have grown more sophisticated, unsafe products are making their way into American homes, and consumers are increasingly forced to navigate a marketplace that is more complex, more confusing, and harder to trust. Our existing uh consumer protection laws, including the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Consumer Product Safety Act, are often up for meeting these challenges. However, when clear when there are clear gaps in the existing framework, Congress has a responsibility to examine where the targeted legislative action is needed to protect American families from scams unfair practices, and dangerous products. The bills before us today address gaps in our consumer protection laws by strengthening anti-fraud efforts, keeping unsafe products imported by Chinese companies out of the American marketplace, and providing consumers clearer and more consistent information about recycling and product labeling. Many of the bills we are discussing today are bipartisan, and I applaud my colleagues for working across the aisle. Regardless of where Americans shop, consumers deserve confidence that the products they purchase are safe, the information they receive is accurate, and bad actors will be held accountable. I thank all the witnesses for being here today. I look forward to hearing your testimony, and I thank the Chairman, and I will yield back.

Chairman yields back, appreciate very much, now we have the uh the ranking member, you recognize the

Miss Dingell, Miss Dingell.

oh okay Miss Dingell's uh uh pinch hitting for the ranking member today, so you're recognized Miss Dingell for your your five minute opening statement, appreciate it.

Thank you, Mister Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today. I would like to read a prepared opening statement on behalf of ranking member Pilon. Consumers are fed up with impossibly high ticket prices for sporting events and concerts, events that immediately sell out with little clarity about whether more tickets or dates will be offered, and a confusing resale market that leaves consumers unsure of who they can trust. Look no further than the FIFA World Cup. I, along with many of my colleagues, have been critical of FIFA's opaque pricing, shifting rules, and potentially deceptive practices that hurt everyday fans. Let me be clear. This isn't a one-time headache. These anti-fan tactics are rampant in the industry and will continue unless Congress steps in to do something. That is why I'm glad that today we are considering a discussion draft of my boss and swift act, Mister Pilon's boss and swift act of twenty twenty six, proposed in honor of his late friend and colleague and all of our late friend, and colleague rep Bill Pascrell, who championed fans in this bill for many years. The Boston Swift Act will bring transparency and fairness to the event ticketing marketplace, including known problems like hidden fees, refund policies and practices, clarity about ticket inventory so consumers can make educated purchasing decisions, prohibiting employees' primary and secondary exchanges from selling tickets at marked-up prices, and more. i look forward to working with stakeholders on this draft to ensure that fans receive the strongest possible protections when they spend their hard in hard-earned money to buy event tickets thank you mister chairman and yield back i'm mister polonce

it's very good thank you thank you i appreciate it thank you uh now uh hear from the witnesses we have mister john hewitt uh senior vice president of consumer brands association welcome uh, Miss uh uh Celia Winslow, President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Financial Services Association. Welcome. We have Mister John uh Breu, uh Vice President of the National Consumers League. Welcome, sir. And then we have uh Mister John Castro, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Welcome to all of you today. We appreciate it. And we'll Start with uh, Mister Huey, you're recognized for five minutes or

Good morning. Chairman Bilirakis, Frankie Memchikowski, members of the committee, on behalf of the Recycling Leadership Council and the Consumer Brands Association, thank you for the opportunity to discuss two truth in labeling consumer protection bills pending your committee's consideration. These bipartisan pieces of legislation are critical to addressing a conflicting patchwork that contributes to consumer confusion, discourages investment in recycling technologies and ultimately affects the affordability of everyday consumer products. The Recycling Leadership Council is a coalition committed to reducing plastic waste and advancing practical, bipartisan solutions to improve recycling outcomes and protect consumers across the country. Consumer Brands Association represents America's food, beverage, household cleaning, and personal care manufacturers and we are the country's largest domestic manufacturing sector by employment, supporting more than twenty-two million jobs and two point five trillion in GDP. Both the RLC and consumer brands members' products are intertwined in the lives of everyday Americans. Consumer transparency, protection, and safety are at the center of everything we do. Packaging is essential to provide safe, affordable, convenient products and RLC and consumer brands members are aiming to achieve greater material circularity. Consumers want to recycle and want packaging to be made with recycled content, and companies are working to reach these goals. This alignment of consumer expectations with the manufacturing community's desire to meet them is the basis for our support of both the Recycled Materials Attribution Act and the Packaging and Claims Acknowled- Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act. We applaud committee members on both sides of the aisle for their bipartisan support to strengthen consumer protections. Currently, environmental marketing claims are governed by overlapping and conflicting federal and state laws. The cumulative impacts are consumer confusion, unnecessary increased consumer costs, regulatory uncertainty, and stifled economic investment in domestic manufacturing. The RMAA and PAC Act our complimentary legislative solutions that will help remedy these problems. RMA modernizes how recycling and recycled content are defined and attributed. The PAC Act addresses claims of recyclable, compostable, and reusable that appear on the package. Going deeper, the RMA creates a uniform national framework for recycled content marketing claims, reduces complexity for consumers, and businesses and ensures recycling terms keep pace with innovation. Further, the RMAA clarifies that innovative non-mechanical recycling technologies count as recycling as they are complementary to our existing mechanical recycling infrastructure. Collectively, these technologies greatly expand the types, formats, and volume of packaging that can effectively be recycled. RMAA's definitions are consistent consumer protection while encouraging American innovation, and domestic supply chain resilience. Similarly, the PAC Act is intended to reduce consumer confusion when it consumer confusion when it beco- when it comes to recyclable, compostable, and reusable claims on consumer packaging. The PAC Act is limited in scope to these claims and establishes a single federal framework under FTC oversight that replaces today's confusing patchwork conflicting state laws. This uniform framework will ensure consumers receive clear and truthful information regardless of where the packaging was sold while providing businesses with a harmonized labeling system across state lines. The result? Less consumer confusion, better end of life management of packaging, higher recycling rates, and a stronger circular economy. Together, these bipartisan truth in labeling bills you strengthen consumer protections against deceptive marketing claims, establish nationally consistent standards for businesses, support investment in domestic recycling infrastructure, and improve the efficiency of interstate commerce. I ask for your support in passing these common sense, bipartisan pieces of legislation which demonstrate that consumer protection can go hand in hand with reporting with promoting affordability, supporting a circular economy, and investing in domestic manufacturing. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Appreciate. Now we have Miss Wi- uh Winslow, you're recognized for five minutes.

Good morning, Mister Chairman, this is Mark Schakowsky,

Good morning.

and members of the subcommittee. Oh. There we go. Good morning, Mister Chairman, Ranking Member Schakowsky, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. Founded over a hundred years ago to help Americans access affordable loans, AFSA is the national trade association for the consumer credit industry. Our members have this in common. They succeed when their customers succeed. Lenders prosper when borrowers repay their loans and come back the next time they need credit. I'm here about an industry built on the opposite premise, one for which consumer protection laws are desperately needed. For-profit debt settlement is the only industry in the American economy that instructs its customers to stop paying their bills. In any other market, we would call this sabotage. In this industry, it's called the business plan. Debt settlement companies advertise themselves as the magic bullet, a way to reduce debt and an alternative to bankruptcy. Consumers enrolling with a settlement company are directed to stop making payments and communicating with their creditors. Instead, they're instructed to make payments to a new account, build up funds, and wait for the settlement company to negotiate a settlement with a creditor. In reality, these companies are misleading consumers into financial jeopardy. Accounts default, balances swell, with interest and late fees, credit scores collapse, Collection, calls, and lawsuits follow. For this, settlement companies charge fifteen to twenty-five percent of the consumer's debt. The industry's own report states that the average settlement takes more than fourteen months to complete and roughly one in four enrollees goes three years without settling an account. Consumer complaints reveal that some programs never settle and it's not unusual for consumers to end up owing more to the debt settlement company than they did to the creditor. But that's not all. Debt settlement companies now lure people who are not in trouble. TransUnion recently found that fifty-three percent of debt settlement enrollees were current on their bills the day they signed up. This isn't an industry rescuing desperate consumers. It's an industry that's taking advantage of them. I'll share some examples. A consumer in Prior Lake, Minnesota, had thirty-seven thousand dollars in credit card debt after a house fire. In her words, "They were telling me they were going to be making the payments, but it wasn't true. She learned the truth that none of her payments were going to the card company, only when the creditor called her." A Michigan consumer paid twenty-seven thousand dollars into a settlement program then discovered that less than six thousand went to the creditor. A Maryland college student's credit score dropped three hundred points and he got sued by his creditor. A Texas service member got a second opinion from a non-profit credit counselor and learned what a settlement company didn't tell him. The defaults it required could have cost him his security clearance. These problems aren't one-offs. They span the country. Complaints from South Carolina describe expensive fees. From Florida, broken promises. From California, settlement providers had simply stopped communicating. The data confirmed these aren't exceptions. TransUnion tested the industry's central promise, that settlement is a better path than bankruptcy. The industry flunked it. Consumers who recurrent at enrollment saw their credit scores plunge almost a hundred points bankruptcy filers only lost twenty the product sold to millions of Americans as a responsible alternative to bankruptcy actually performs worse than bankruptcy. How is this happening? Consider the regulatory imbalance. AFSA's members operate under more than twenty federal financial laws, hundreds of state statutes, and even more regulations. The debt settlement industry, by its own association's account, answers to exactly one federal regulation, not law, the FTC's telemarketing sales rule. Written in twenty ten, it is literally a telephone rule. A regulation written for the call centers of twenty ten, while critical, cannot prevent all the harm that occurs today. The federal agencies and state AGs have gone after a multitude of companies in this space, closing more than four hundred, but enforcement isn't enough. For example, the CFPB and seven state student enterprise that had set up a law firm is a workaround to the one federal regulation the industry is supposed to follow. They tried to collect a hundred million dollars, consumers have paid in illegal fees, but the money was already gone. Predators and consumer advocates, who are almost always on opposite sides, agree that there's a serious lack of consumer protection here. But Congress can fix it. First, pass the Debt Settlement Disclosures Act, which prohibits deceptive ads and mandates up-front disclosures in periodic statements. Consumers have filed more than five thousand debt settlement complaints with the CFPB. Their top issues are didn't provide services promise, and confusing or misleading disclosures. Broken promises and hidden terms, this bill addresses both, with the same transparency rules that apply to virtually every other consumer financial product. Second, pass the Strategic Task Force on Scam Prevention Act. A coordinated federal, state, and private sector strategy is the right response to fraud that costs consumers billions each year. Consumers in distress have real lifelines. Already, they have hardship programs from their lenders and non-profit credit counseling. The difference is real money. You can save thousands of dollars with non-profit credit counselors. We encourage Congress to act. The rapidly expanding debt settlement industry sells hope but delivers default. And Congress can make honesty the price of doing business in this market. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, I appreciate it very much. Uh, now I have uh, let's see, Mister uh Breil, your recognizer.

Chairman Bilirakis, Ranking Member Schakowsky, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting the National Consumers League to testify at today's hearing. Founded in eighteen ninety nine, NCL is America's pioneering consumer advocacy organization. For over a hundred and twenty-five years we have worked to protect everyday Americans from deceptive predatory and anti-competitive marketplace practices. Today, as you consider legislation shaping the FTC and CPSC, our message is simple. Consumers need strong, independent enforcement agencies with the authority and clear statutory tools to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable. However, before this addressing specific bills, I must voice our deep concern regarding ongoing threats to the structural independence of our consumer protection regulators. As you know, the legal landscape has shifted dramatically following rulings like AMG capital management and Trump v. Slaughter. These decisions have stripped vital enforcement tools from the FTC's toolbox and harmed agency operational capacity. When independent consumer protection agencies are hamstrung by political pressures the ultimate casualties are everyday consumers and fair marketplace competition. Stripping these bodies of authority gives a flashing green light, to bad actors who exploit regulatory vacuums and legitimate small businesses suffer when dominant monopolies distort the economic playing field, without fear of independent oversight. Court rulings like Trump v. Slaughter do not have to mean the end of proper enforcement, if Congress sets up to its constitutional role. We urge Congress to proactively insulate the FTC and CPSC from political pressure, condition appropriations on agency autonomy, and exercise robust oversight to safeguard law enforcement independence. Turning to market reform now, NCL strongly urges Congress to pass two critical ticketing bills, the Boss and Swift Act and the Main Event Ticketing Act. The Boss and Swift Act is the gold standard for structural reform. Long championed by the late Congressman Bill Pascrell, it mandates transparent all-in pricing. Upfront, it requires primary sellers to disclose holdbacks sales begin, it prevents primary monopolies like Ticketmaster from restricting ticket resale, it regulates spec- speculative ticket sales, and it prohibits scalping by connected insiders. Second, the Main Event Ticketing Act modernizes the twenty-twen- sixteen bots act and closes dangerous enforcement loopholes. Look no further than the FTC's landmark Live Nation lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster as proof of why this bill is needed. The FTC's complaint exposed how the Ticketmaster monopoly actively profited from illegal scalper bots, colluding with brokers and turning a blind eye as a matter of policy, while triple dipping on primary fees, secondary listing fees, and final resale markups. The Main Event Ticketing Act closes those exact operational loopholes and holds complicit platforms accountable. Consumer sup- consumers' support for common sense ticketing reforms like these is overwhelming. Recent survey data found that eighty-seven percent of voters support mandating ticket transparency and ninety-four percent want urgent federal action to stop scalper bots. We also want to express our strong support for HR fifty-nine sixty-seven, the Strategic Task Force Scan Prevention Act. Fraud has reached epidemic levels, costing Americans an estimated one hundred and ninety-five point nine billion dollars in twenty-twenty-four alone, According to the FCC, again, a hundred and ninety-five point nine billion dollars in twenty twenty-four alone. By establishing a multi-agency task force that consults directly with consumer groups this bill creates a unified national strategy to protect families from these devastating scams. Finally, we must urge you to reject two product claim bills. H. R. sixty-eight thirty-two, the PAC Act, sweepingly preempts strong state packaging laws like California's truth in labeling law without creating an effective federal standard. And HR seventy-five O two, the Recycled Materials Attribution Act legitimizes so-called mass balance accounting a corporate trick that lets companies claim a bottle has thirty percent recycled content even when the actual item on the shelf may contain only zero. In closing, Congress must empower our regulators and protect consumers from deceptive practices, whether in live event ticketing, Fraud prevention or product labeling? We urge you to pass meaningful reforms and reject legislation that undermines critical state safeguards. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Uh, thank the gentlemen. Appreciate it very much. Now, uh, ask uh Daniel Castro. I I apologize for calling you by the the wrong first name. Uh, Daniel, you're you're recognized, please.

Great, thank you. Uh, Chairman Bilirakis, Ranking Member Schakowsky, and members of the subcommittee, Uh, thank you again for the opportunity to testify here today. Online marketplaces have transformed commerce. They give Americans access to more products, lower prices, and opportunities for millions of businesses to reach customers. Congress should preserve those benefits, but those benefits depend on trust. Consumers should have confidence that the products they purchase are authentic, safe, and accurately described, and that the businesses selling them are legitimate. Protecting consumers from dangerous goods, improving transparency and reducing fraud are essential to maintaining that trust. So over the past year, my think tank has examined several major Chinese online marketplaces serving US consumers. Our research found meaningful differences between these platforms and leading US marketplaces, in terms of seller verification, counterfeit detection, marketplace transparency, and enforcement against repeat offenders. And those differences expose American consumers to greater risk from counterfeit products, unsafe goods, and frauds. Our research points to four conclusions. First, counterfeit products remain readily available across several major Chinese online marketplaces, and many of those present real consumer safety risk. Our researchers purchased products that appeared suspicious and worked with manufacturers to determine whether they were authentic. We confirmed likely counterfeit products across apparel, cosmetics, toys, over-the-counter medicines, household goods, and pet products. One example stands out. We purchased what appeared to be Nutri-Pra dog treats. That's a UK company. The packaging contained multiple spelling errors, the barcode matched an unrelated product, and the manufacturer confirmed that the product was counterfeit. The company also told us that they had previously received a report, that a dog became seriously ill after consuming similar fake treats. We also uh purchased what appeared to be counterfeit theraflu cold medicine counterfeit medicines are particularly dangerous because consumers have no way of knowing whether they contain the correct ingredients, the proper dosage, harmful contaminants, or any active ingredients at all. These examples show that counterfeit goods are not simply an IP issue. They create direct risk for American consumers. Second, these risks reflect differences in the safeguards that online marketplaces have put in place. Leading US marketplaces have invested heavily in technologies that make online shopping safer. They verify sellers, they use AI to detect fraudulent listings, they identify counterfeit products, manage recalls, and maintain large trust and safety operations. These investments require significant resources, but they reduce fraud and improve consumer confidence. Our research found that several of these major Chinese marketplaces have invested less heavily in these capabilities. Consumers shopping on these platforms often shoulder more responsibility for evaluating unfamiliar sellers, identifying counterfeit listings, and avoiding unsafe products when they receive them, frequently without realizing that the protections available to them on those platforms differ from leading US online marketplaces. Third, existing enforcement remains too reactive to change marketplace behavior. After we published our report, many of the specific counterfeit listings we identified were removed, but follow-up research found additional counterfeit, for example, over-the-counter medicine appearing on the same platforms, sometimes listed under entirely different product categories. So, removing individual listings is necessary, but does little if repeat offenders can quickly return. And independent evidence points to the same conclusion. After the Consumer Product Safety Commission warned consumers about hazardous products sold through online marketplaces, leading US marketplaces removed those products. Several major Chinese marketplaces, though, continued offering the same or substantially similar items. Likewise, testing commissioned by the Toy Association found that nearly ninety percent of toys purchased from two leading Chinese marketplaces raised significant safety concerns, with more than seventy percent failing at least one laboratory safety test. Federal regulators have reached similar conclusions. Last year the FTC penalized Temu for violating the Unformed Consumers Act after determining that had failed to adequately comply with requirements designed to protect consumers from stolen, counterfeit, and unsafe unsafe goods. So fourth, Congress should expect every marketplace serving American consumers to do more to stop counterfeit products, dangerous goods and fraudulent sellers before reaching consumers. The US has one of the most open digital markets. Major Chinese online marketplaces enjoy broad access to American consumers, but many leading US marketplaces have little or no comparable access to China's domestic market because of long-standing restrictions on foreign digital services. Open markets benefit consumers, but access to the US market should come with clear responsibilities. Companies that want to sell to American consumers should provide reasonable safeguards against counterfeit goods, dangerous products, and fraud. Congress should therefore focus on creating stronger incentives for for for prevention rather than primarily relying on enforcement after harm has already occurred better seller verification stronger action against repeat offenders greater transparency and closer cooperation would significantly address that I want to thank you again for your attention to this issue and look forward to your questions.

Thank you very much. We appreciate it very much. Uh thank all of you all. You're did a great job with your testimony we appreciate it very much learned a lot ok uh mister castro uh thank you for bringing uh attention to the true cost of chinese imports which can be unacceptably high for americans who buy goods for their family with dangerous lead uh level excuse me dangerous lead levels and toxic chemicals the people's republic of china has long blocked american online platforms from selling into the chinese market as you said despite american companies having higher standards of governance than their chinese competitors that's pretty obvious by contrast chinese platforms such as uh xian and timu have uh open access to american consumers and often fail to meet basic us consumer product safety standards uh i'm pleased to see a proposal from my uh fellow floridian here uh laura lee uh would put an end to an unfair status quo that endangers american consumers can you share how the stop the fraud act would work in practice and if you wanna elaborate a little bit uh you're welcome to

absolutely thank you for the question so the stop the fraud act yeah really does two important things one it directs the consumer product safety commission to publish a list of these foreign adversary controlled online marketplaces that it develops with input uh from the, you know, various national security agencies in the United States. And then it would direct um, you know, the um importers, sellers, um, you know, basically anyone distributing these products um to not do that if from any entity involved that's been designated on one of these lists. And that would have just significant implications because again if you look at the types of products that are coming in, This basically says, you can't do that anymore. You have to look and see where these products are coming from. And if they're coming from one of these platforms, they're known to be a significant source of these harmful, dangerous goods. You have to stop engaging in that activity. I think it's a very useful and important step, especially again, given the lack of reciprocity that the US uh companies have to the Chinese market.

No, I appreciate that very much. Thank you. Good explanation. I'd uh miss uh Winslow. uh the federal trade commission found that scams and fraud cost older uh older americans two point four billion dollars in twenty twenty four level four times higher than twenty twenty can you discuss these trends and outline how the american financial services association and its members protect seniors from fraud and scams

you're absolutely correct mr. chairman fraud is increasing at an alarming rate And it's being driven at least in part by these finfluencers on social media who are preying on vulnerable Americans. Whether it's debt settlement scammers with false promises for a fic uh quick fix or illegal hacks telling consumers they can clean their credit by filing fake credit disputes or false ID theft complaints. So AFSA's been working with the Federal Trade Commission to identify these fraudulent social media accounts and with Congress on important legislation like the debt settlement

Alright, thanks very much. I have a little more time left. Uh, Mister Hewitt, businesses that manufacture and sell products nationwide

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. Currently, the patchworks that exist across the United States are providing uncertainty for businesses and consumers alike. Um, with respects to consumers, that uncertainty prevents them from recycling. Uh, with respects to businesses, they have to navigate a multitude of different recycling rules requirements with respects to the marketing claims that that correspond with them across the country ultimately that creates inefficiencies in in their uh operating, uh, a as well as domestic investments in the infrastructure that's needed to increase recycled content and ultimately reduce the amount of packaging that ends up in landfills.

Uh, very good, good explanation. All right, uh, my time has expired, so I'll yield uh five minutes to the ranking member of the subcommittee, Ms. Schakowsky, for her questioning.

Thank you so much, Mister Brejo. What could happen? to consumers After the Supreme Court decision. after the Supreme Court decision.

Congressman, thank you for the question. Uh, our concern about the impact on consumers and honest businesses uh stemming from the Trump v. Slaughter decision is that agencies that were stood up to be independent of political considerations uh can no longer be so, absent uh more uh more engagement from Congress. these are agencies that were created uh to be bipartisan in nature, to follow the law and enforce our statutes regardless of who controlled the White House. And so our concern is that these agencies, particularly ones that are in light of the fact that many of them have already been uh seen their staffing levels cut significantly uh under this administration, that in addition to those bandwidth considerations, they now have to look over their shoulder and consider the political implications of their decisions in ways that they hadn't didn't have to before we think that that increases the risk that harms uh in the marketplace uh that harm consumers uh both from product safety and deceptive practices will be exacerbated not uh uh at a time when we need more not less protection.

how do we fix the bill how do we fix the bills So what it would be the, a a way to talk about how we can improve the bills?

Yes, thank you. Um, in particular, we are, while we are strong supporters of the Scam Prevention Act, and we appreciate that it envisions uh uh h- helping consumers recover from these scams in addition to focusing on prevention, we do think that more can and should be done. Uh, we know that consumers are frequently told when they've been victims of scams that there's no way to recover their money. Uh, we hear from consumers all the time at Fraud. org who are told, you sent the money, uh, even though we all agree that there was fraud involved, since you hit the button to send, there's nothing we can do and now you're out uh thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands doll of dollars. These can be consumers' entire life savings and there's no way for them to recover that. So we would hope that bills like the Scam Prevention Act would think about how federal policy can help those consumers can create incentives like we've seen in other countries, like in the UK, in Australia, in Singapore, that do look at how consumers can recover from these scams and be made whole at the end of the day at the end of the day that's what we want.

Do you think we're doing our best to protect consumers right now?

I think there's much more that can be done uh as as my colleague to my right mentioned the numbers on fraud keep getting worse every year we see more consumers being affected we see more money being lost. I uh speculate that if I polled all everybody in this room and asked how many of you have a personal experience with fraud, uh I would have well over eighty percent of people raising their hands. This is a crime that is affecting millions of Americans every year and goes under-reported. And we need to do more. Uh in particular we need to put more uh responsibility on the businesses, the social media platforms, the financial services companies, the telcos, who have the the power and the resources to better protect consumers from these scams, we can't continue to rely on consumers to be on the front line of uh of reducing and and avoiding scams when the scammers themselves are more organized and technologically savvy uh with ai being used increasingly than they ever have been.

i couldn't agree more that we have to protect consumers. number one that's the most important thing

yes

thank you

Channel A yields back to recognize the Vice Chairman of the subcommittee, Mister Falter, for his five minutes of questioning.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and um I would just start by saying this issue or issue on the packaging was was brought to uh my attention or office's attention through Chibani, which is heavily impacted by as a function of um of this and so we are still still trying to uh to learn all the ramifications of it but um mister brell i have a letter uh dated july thirteenth twenty twenty six from the teamsters of california in fact mr. chairman uh i would request unanimous consent to enter that in the record it's from teamsters of california

without objection so ordered

thank you mr. chairman um and in that letter it says our union was proud to support s p fifty four in twenty twenty two we represent thousands of sanitation or recycling workers and have long champion source reduction in strong recycling infrastructure protect public health local recycling jobs but now the regulations are finalized and the product producer responsibility organization's draft plan and fee schedule are public we have heard from virtually every employer category we have represent the program as structured is unworkable. So that's from the uh Teamster letter. CalCycles standard regulatory impact assessment estimated twenty-one billion in total implementation cost, with c- large producers paying roughly at four hundred and six thousand dollars annually. The source reduction alone will cost one fifteen point four billion. So, there's there's obviously more to that, but uh, Mister Beralt, I would just ask What's a greater threat to California's workers, consumers and businesses? Keeping SB fifty-four intact or getting rid of it?

Well, uh, Congressman, thank you for the question. Uh, I've not had a opportunity to review the letters that you mentioned. However, uh, we do believe that uh, states play a key role in truth and labeling laws. States like California in particular are are ones that set the standard for the rest of the country. We know that when uh California takes action on a whole range of consumer safety and consumer protection issues, the rest of the country tends to follow. And so we really do look to them as a as as a bellwether for what industry can do. And certainly with regards to product uh uh product packaging and product labeling, we believe that their law uh can can and should continue to do that. And we're concerned about uh federal bills that may preempt the ability of states like California to continue to play the role they've historically played in terms of being laboratories of democracy in this area.

And how how is a supplier, how are users expected to be able to adhere to these costs that are unique for a particular state and not anywhere else?

Well, I I can't speak for producers. Uh, what I can say is that consumers believe that, uh, truth in labeling is a very important thing, and when they go to buy products in the marketplace, they wanna make sure that what they see on the shelf is actually the the claims made are accurate.

I can I can tell you that you'll have and you do have a lot of opposition in the producer world and it's exactly why. It's incredibly expensive and it's difficult to comply for one state. Mister Hewitt, you represent the Consumer Brands Association Recycling Leadership Council, so you should be pretty familiar with recycling. In your opinion, does SB fifty-four, is that well-intended or infeasible and cost prohibitive?

Thank you, Mister Vice Chair, for the question, um, as someone who's pers- who personally worked on SB fifty-four during the legislative process, I think that the the intentions were everything was well-intended, but I but I think it's safe to say, as you noted from the teamster's letter, that the costs of implementation are exorbitant and they're even greater than what the state estimated during their initial economic assessment. Recent, a recent study that was published by Californians for Affordable Packaging estimated that the actual cost is gonna be somewhere between fifty-six and seventy-eight billion much higher than referenced in the Teamsters letter and what that equates to for the average Californian family is an increase in grocery costs of six hundred and eighty-three to nine hundred and forty-eight dollars per year uh for those respective households. The good news, or the good, the the good thing in in what we're here to support today on behalf of the recycling leadership, council uh and the consumer brands association is we have an opportunity to simplify the recycling process reduce packaging that goes to landfills um and and and provide consumer protections through standardized definitions um that allow us to define terms like recyclable recycled content having these standardized federal definitions is gonna establish a common regulatory framework across the country that in turn provides consumers with a clear understanding with what recycling means and what can be recycled, and also provide companies with the certainty to invest in scalable recycling infrastructure across the United States.

Right, right. Uh, Mister Yeo, thank you for that, and uh, appreciate your input there. Mister Chairman, I yield back.

I appreciate very much, and I'll recognize Representative Kastner for her five minutes of questioning.

Well, thank you Mister Chairman and the ranking member for calling this hearing thank you to our witnesses today. Uh, the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission have very important responsibilities in protecting American consumers. They are the cops on the beat to stop fraudulent, unfair and deceptive practices and ensure product safety. Uh, without the FTC and the C CPSC, Americans would constantly be at the mercy of scam artists and of and faulty, unsafe products. It's hard enough out there in the world today, uh, combating scams and that's why it's been so disheartening watching what i- has been happening to the FTC and CPSC. Uh, over the past nineteen months, the administration has worked to actually gut these independent agencies. Uh, professionals have been arbitrarily fired. Uh, many have taken their skills and expertise elsewhere. Uh, commissioners have been removed arbitrarily. Uh, they've they've gutted so many of the the fundamental, uh, roles of these these independent agencies. There's Congress directed that they're independent and bipartisan. And, Mister Brayl, I heard you loud and clear when you said, uh, due to the recent Trump versus Slaughter, uh, ruling where it's the court said the president can remove leaders of independent agencies. You anticipate that these agencies will now be subject to more political uh pressure and kind of undermine their independence. That is in direct contradiction to what the Congress intended. So how should the Congress react here? Is there room to of these important consumer protection agencies uh in the wake of the slaughter decision?

Thank you, Congressman, for the question. Yes, I do believe that there's an important role for Congress to play to uh address the uh the the gutting of these important consumer protection agencies and the reduction in their independence. Congress created these agencies uh in such a way because they wanted them to be independent, they wanted them to follow the law uh and to take on uh uh uh businesses that were harming consumers. When these agencies have to look over their shoulder and wonder whether they'll get fired for going after the wrong company, uh uh then that will harm consumers, not only will it harm consumers, it will harm the businesses that rely on a level playing field to to compete effectively. And so I think that Congress can and should seek to restore the independence of these agencies. In addition, there are other levers that Congress has available to you. Oversight, for example, uh, uh, control over the purse strings of these agencies through the appropriations process. Those are all tools that the Trumpy slaughter decision did nothing to erode, and I would encourage you and your colleagues here in Congress to continue to use those levers to the greatest extent possible.

Thank you very much, uh, Mr. Chairman. I think that, um, we need to, we need to act to restore the independence, uh, and the power of these independent bipartisan agencies moving forward. I would think that would, should be the top of the list. Uh, it's not, a lot of these bills are very good, but, but we're talking about the fundamental, uh, purpose of these agencies. We need to get back to that. Um, Mister Castro, I he- I I heard you also loud and clear about, um, uh faulty products coming from china uh that are counterfeit and unsafe on chinese marketplaces but i'm hearing from a lot of american businesses that are concerned about the american online marketplaces and the infiltration of unsafe and counterfeit products from china and other parts of the world uh how do we tackle that problem

it's a great question because i mean the reality is of course these counterfeiters are trying to sell on every platform they can they wanna get access to the american consumers um i don't think any platform is going to have a perfect record in this space um what i do think though is that we wanna continue to improve the accountability on these platforms because when you look at what's happening here it's not just one random seller these are often you know networks of individuals that are working to to get these products out here they're on multiple platforms Um, there's a lot that we can be doing for responsible actors, for example, data sharing to say, you know, I found this seller and now I'm g- I'm gonna not only take them off my platform, but I'm gonna take them off other platforms by letting DHS have this information, DHS can validate it, and then share it with the other American platforms. I think there's a lot the government and industry can do in production.

Whose whose role would that be? Would you look to the Consumer Product Safety Commission? Sometimes it's it could be a safety issue,

It's

but it's also uh a a counter-feiting

It has to be a, I think, a combination. I mean, some of it's, you know, CBP and DHS that are receiving this information, um, that could also stop some of this at the border. Some of it should be the Consumer Product Safety Commission. There's a lot of different angles to this, and so I think they all should be working together.

Thank you. Hi, Yolanda.

Thank you. The chair recognizes the chairman of the full committee, Mister Guthrie from Kentucky, for five minutes.

Thank you. I appreciate the further recognition. I want to start by thanking my friend from Texas, Mister Weber, for his thoughtful leadership on the PAC Act, uh, which advances thoughtful approach in improving confidence in packaging. Uh, the the bill's reliance on independent accredited third-party certification rather than allowing claims of resiliency in the company's own representation is important, and the bill also appropriately places enforcement with the FTC, their long-established consumer protection authority, while recognizing EPA's technical expertise and advisory capacity. So I'll say all that as, hey, Mister Hewitt, Would you explain how those complementary roles create a credible and durable framework for ensuring truthful packaging claims and why that approach strengthens consumer protection?

Yes, Mister Chairman, thank you very much for the question. Um, first and foremost, the PAC Act as well as the Recycled Materials Attribution Act um does does two distinct things one it provides standardized definitions along with third-party verification to ensure consumer protection. Uh, whether it's the PAC Act or RMA, those are two items that they both have in common, Mister Chairman. Um, although the green guides, which uh, the FTC's green guides, which were last updated more than twelve years ago, have long served as the primary national framework for environmental marketing claims, those guides are just that, they're guidance. Uh, and in and of themselves don't re- resolve the conflicting state patchwork that's currently going on. So, with respects to the PAC Act, when a consumer picks up a product and tries to make a decision here in Washington, D. C. about whether or not it's recyclable or not, they wanna have that certainty to know that that product is actually recyclable and it comes with a third-party verification that goes with it. They cross the river, go to their home, maybe in Virginia or Maryland, again, they wanna have the certainty that that claim that's being made and that instruction that's being provided um i- is is in fact true in and of itself. Um, PAC Act and RMA, as I mentioned, both advance the FTC's long-standing consumer protection mission by providing statutory definitions uh that complement and not replace the existing FTC authority uh over deceptive marketing claims, Mister Chairman. Thank you for

Thank you. Uh, so, Mister Castro, I'm gonna ask you this, as millions of Americans shop they online, they expect to have safe products. Chinese online retailers and marketplaces have increasingly sold products uh on the finding ninety percent of the toys on these platforms meet fail to meet s- federal standards we've seen attorney generals uh state attorney generals have brought uh suits against these actions against these uh platforms. So, Mister Castro, ITIF has done extensive research into the problem of dangerous products sold on Chinese platforms. Why are these companies repeatedly failing to meet US product safety standards and what should Congress do to better protect consumers and bolster enforcement?

What we see is that it it's a clear pattern, and it's not just a pattern, it's a strategy that these companies are using to gain global market share uh and take it away from American companies. Uh the Chinese government is intentionally allowing these companies to uh engage in creating the counterfeit, selling them and distributing them. This is part of their strategy, and this not only affects of course online marketplaces, but many of the online marketplaces uh in the United States, these are run by, you know, major American technology companies. So they're investing in AI and the, you know,

and nothing, nothing, zero. You couldn't sell a can of beans local grocery store in China without the government knowing what you're doing. So uh so uh so my next question for Miss Winslow, uh every unfortunately every member of this committee has had conditions with scams. Um the FBI reported one million one million reports of internet fraud resulting in twenty billion in losses. So Miss Winslow, how are your members helping to fight the fraud epidemic and what more can Congress do to help protect Americans and hold bad actors accountable?

Thank you very much. AI accelerates fraud incredibly, and so we've been looking at various different ways that we can stop it. We need the FTC's help. For example, their database. You can submit a false claim of identity theft to the FTC very easily, and then your uh credit gets cleaned. So working with the FTC, and and we'd love to work with Congress and the FTC to make that process a little harder. We wanna make sure that customers or consumers who really have their identity uh stolen can get help quickly and easily, but the number of fake disputes are making that harder. There's just piles, thousands of form letters that are being sent in, and that's covering up the real crime that's happening.

Thank you. Uh, my time has expired and I'll yield back the time I don't have.

Thank you. The chair and I recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mister Soto, for five minutes.

Thank you, Chairman. You know, everyone loves music. That's why I'm excited to see that the Boss and Swift act uh is being heard to artists like Bruce Springsteen and uh Taylor Swift. These tours were so popular along with Beyonce's tour that millions wanted to go, uh so popular that it moved GDP, uh that is saying something. And what ensued for a lot of these folks unfortunately was a disaster for consumers. We saw some falling victim to ticket scams and websites that didn't even have uh access to the tickets others saw bots gobble up tickets others saw uh tickets surge in price through third party resales it's a big business too when you look at uh online ticket sales it was twelve point seven billion in twenty twenty four the resale market is two point eight five billion dollars florida is known for hosting a lot of these uh major events especially some of those early concerts when it's cold everywhere else in the nation. Uh, so I was excited to see new transparency requirements in the Boston Swift Act, uh, to ban fraudulent ticketing web sites, crack down on bots that are, uh, buying all the tickets and raising prices for consumers. All this, uh, is gonna be absolutely a critical part. Uh, Mister Breal, uh, it'd be great to get an understanding of, uh, how many of, uh, of these sites exist. Uh, where you literally think you're buying a ticket but they don't even have the ticket yet. They're gonna try to buy it after you already give them your money. Uh, is this a common practice?

Uh, thank you for the question, Congressman. Um, what the pr- the practice uh, sellers claim to have a ticket often before the tickets are even made available to the general public. They s- list them for sale on web sites uh and on ticket marketplaces, and then consumers who buy them, they uh these sellers then go and try and buy the tickets later on and deliver them to you, and then pocket whatever difference they can. We think that this is this is a widespread practice. It's one that's been uh widely reported. We think it's inherently deceptive, and we've supported legislation at both the federal and the state level that would ban it outright.

And then how do bots work? How do bots identify tickets?

Well, we know that ticket resellers uh u will use sophisticated ticket buying bot software. These are software programs that can go out and scoop up thousands or millions of tickets uh in the blink of an eye, far faster than an average fan can. We think that again bots are the scourge of this industry and that they should also be outlawed. Uh we were proud to be a supporter of the original bots act back in twenty sixteen, however I think over the past ten years history has shown that unscrupulous uh scalpers continue to employ them, and so we are urging congress to step in with bills like the main event ticketing act and put a stop to them once and for all.

Mister Kastner, you had mentioned in your testimony that there are some third-party sales that are positive. What what would some of those the examples of? Obviously I bought tickets on resale before from like season ticket holders who didn't wanna go to a game, an example. What are what are some examples of those?

Yeah, it's a great question, and um, you know, generally supportive of the goals of the bill. Um, I pointed out for example that uh the Savannah Bananas banana ball that people, you know, they've specifically tried to create a fan-first experience where they're focused on how can they allow trading of tickets for someone that can't go. They they don't impose any of the kind of restrictions that you see on these other platforms. They're not capturing, you know, double dipping on the fees. Um, it's really about making sure that people can get access to these tickets and that there's not scalpers r- raising up the price. So my suggestion is that, you know, if you're looking at this type of legislation, you differentiate, uh, offers that are out there with the unscrupulous ones, which I think we all want to get rid of.

Sure. Uh, and, uh, Miss Winslow, you know, After law school, my dear friend uh who graduated with me from GW law, and then ended up going to the Florida National Guard, wanted to buy a home and he had done one of these uh debt settlement uh agreements a while ago before that and was shocked to know that he couldn't buy a home for seven years uh after that settlement. Would uh would the Debt Settlement Disclosure Act disclose some of the consequences of of debt settlement versus bankruptcy versus simply paying your bills if you're able to do so.

Thank you so much. Yes, the Debts On the Disclosure Act would absolutely help uh service members and others, like your friend, who thought that they had a uh easier solution or a a consumer-friendly solution, and then ended up being trapped, they didn't realize their credit scores were gonna drop, that they wouldn't be able to get future loans. And so something like this, it's an important disclosure mechanism, it's what every other everyone else in the industry does you know before you take it alone you get a disclosure right up front that tells you how much you're gonna pay each month what the interest rate is etcetera so just bringing some of those common sense things over to the debt settlement industry that now has ten to fourteen billion

thanks so much and i yield back

thank you

thank you very much i thank the gentleman now recognize miss kamik uh from the great state of florida for her five minutes of questioning

thank you chairman guthrie and go gators

Um, and thank you, Chairman Villaraquiz, for your leadership on this subcommittee. Um, particularly grateful today for uh placing HR thirty-two O nine uh within the bills being discussed today, the App Store Freedom Act. I am so proud to lead this bipartisan legislation alongside my friend and colleague, uh Congresswoman Lori Trahan. Now, something that shouldn't need to be said but we're gonna say here today is that, consumer protection begins with a simple principle, common sense. If a company overcharges you, mistreats you, or stops earning your trust, you should be able to take your business elsewhere. In almost every market in America you can, except on your smartphone you can't. So Apple and Google's operating systems power more than ninety-nine percent of smartphones in the United States. Apple controls app distribution through the iPhone, and Google controls roughly ninety percent of app distribution on Android. And Apple and Google, they don't just compete in the market, they control. the market. They own the road, they own the storefront, they own the checkout counter, they write the rules, and then they charge everyone a toll just to pass through the gate. The developer builds the product, and Apple and Google, well, they collect the toll. Meanwhile, American families and consumers are paying the price. An independent economic analysis estimate estimates that if real competition replaced the monopoly pricing, American consumers could save nearly nine billion dollars every year. and that's about a hundred and twelve dollars annually for a family of four using smartphones. And that may not matter in Silicon Valley, but it matters back home. A hundred and twelve dollars is ten weeks' worth of school lunches for folks in my district. And this is just one of countless examples where the duopoly of Apple and Google are costing consumers real money. So, Mister Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the study entitled " US Consumer Benefits" of unlocking competition in app distribution on smartphones.

Without objection, so order.

Thank you. The App Store Freedom Act restores consumer choice. It allows consumers to choose alternative app stores, install apps outside the dominant stores if they choose, select competing payment systems, and removes the gatekeepers' ability to block competition before it ever reaches consumers. One of today's witnesses from ITIF, they're arguing that this bill, in their testimony, would weaken privacy and security safeguards. This is the same organization that lists and Google among the organizations contributing to their organization, ten thousand dollars or more. And respectfully, I think they have it backwards. In their own testimony they acknowledge that the marketplace increasingly needs competition to protect the quality and the protections on the store. Exactly. And that's what our bill provides. It enables that. So today, Apple and Google prevent meaningful competition. They're the gatekeepers. They're the only game in town. And when their security systems fail, and they do, consumers have nowhere else to go. That isn't security, that is captivity. So just days ago, San Francisco City Attorney sent Apple and Google C synthesis letters demanding that they remove thirteen AI notify and face swap apps alleged uh allegedly used to facilitate non-consensual sexual images. The city further alleges that the platforms collected a cut of the in-app purchases while those apps remained available. Mister Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter to the record a title ar- an article titled, Apple and Google ordered to purge Nutify apps from their app stores.

Without objection, so ordered.

Thank you. Researchers also identified more than two hundred fleece-ware apps that generated over one billion downloads and hundreds of millions of dollars through deceptive subscriptions after passing through these same app stores. Mister Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the article titled "Apple's tightly controlled app store is teeming with scams."

Without objection, so ordered.

Thank you, and the security failures do not stop there. A recent investigation by the Tech Transparency Project found that Apple and Google continue to distribute VPN applications from undisclosed ties to Chinese companies, including the Chinese military. According to the report, many of these apps remain available even after Apple and Google were alerted to the risks. Mister Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record this report entitled Spot Check, Apple and Google still have a Chinese VPN problem. And a Forbes article from April twelfth of this year titled, the FBI issues a Chinese app warning for smartphone users.

Without objection, so ordered.

Thank you. You can probably tell we come with receipts. Now, these companies are telling Congress that they alone can protect Americans, yet they have nowhere else to go, our consumers. Apple isn't short on money, it's short on competitive pressure. When no one can leave, it has no incentive to improve. This bill does not eliminate the App Store or Google Play, and it doesn't force anyone to use an alternative. If Apple builds the best App Store, consumers will choose it. If Google offers the best security, consumers will stay. But they should have to earn that business, not lock Americans into it. The App Store Freedom Act puts the principle of choice and competition into practice. Mister Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a final item, a coalition letter supporting H R thirty-two O nine from the Little Tech Association.

Without objection, so ordered.

Thank you. This bill doesn't pick winners and losers, it lets consumers decide who they wanna use, and it lets consumers choose. We can do that by passing this bill. Let's make Apple and Google compete for American's trust, instead of assuming it. I respectfully urge the committee to place H R thirty-two O nine onto a mark-up agenda this Congress, and I yield back.

Thank you. The general lady yields back. Now I will recognize Mister Mullen for his five minutes of questioning.

Thank you, Mister Chair. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you to the chair and ranking member for including my bill HR seven nine four five, the Nitrous Oxide Safety Act, in today's hearing. Nitrous oxide misuse is real and a growing problem. Fourteen million Americans say they have misused the chemical. And fatalities have increased by five hundred and seventy-eight percent in the past decade. Even a single use can cause debilitating effects like blood clots and neurological damage. Despite these risks, nitrous oxide is being marketed as a party drug with names like Miami Magic, and galaxy gas in brightly colored canisters and flavors. This is clearly targeting both kids and adults for recreational use. Companies claim it's merely for making whipped cream. I learned of how widespread this product is when a youth commissioner in my home county, San Mateo County in California, which I am proud to represent, proposed a retail ban. I had also heard from constituents about this issue when I was serving in the California State Assembly. But this is a national problem. To that end, my bill would direct the Consumer Product Safety Commission to make nitrous oxide a banned hazardous product. This would have the effect of prohibiting its sale for household and recreational use. The bill is carefully drafted to ensure legitimate uses would not be impacted, such as in dentist offices, commercial kitchens, or automotive settings. Banning consumer sales through the CPSC would also ensure sellers cannot merely label a product as for food to get around it. This bill would also not affect the availability of integrated canisters of whipped cream, and baking hobbyists have many other ways to whip cream that are cheaper and just as effective. Behind me are just a few of the people across the country who have died or been seriously injured from nitrous oxide. We're also seeing a growing number of nitrous-related DUIs, and people being killed by drivers using it behind the wheel. I want to recognize two families in the audience today, represented by Julia and Michael Charleston and Jerry Grey Benetti. Each has a loved one who has struggled with or has been sadly lost to nitrous oxide. I'm grateful for you being here. Thank you, Julia and Jerry, for your tireless advocacy. channeling the tragedy that you have faced and organized hundreds of parents pushing to get nitrous off our shelves. I am honored to partner with you on this work. In advance of this hearing, I've received more than a dozen letters from parents and other loved ones, impacted by nitrous oxide misuse. I am submitting those for the record. One of my constituents in Hillsborough, California, writes about her daughter who struggles with nitrous Quote, there is no reason for anyone over the age of twenty-one to legally paralyze themselves with this substance because they suffer from the disease of addiction and their drug of choice is legally available. We love our daughter deeply and are begging for reasonable assistance in getting this stuff off our streets. A parent in Florida writes, quote, "Every day that nitrous oxide remains so easily accessible is another day that another family's son or daughter may begin a life-threatening addiction." with consequences they never imagine. A mom from Oklahoma shares nitrous oxide destroyed by life. Please keep Americans safe and never make another mother bury their only child. I want to be clear that I do not take bans of any kind lightly. We should be sure a product's benefit to society is outweighed by its harms. In my view, this bill is the right approach because of how dangerous nitrous oxide is regardless of the age of the user the number of times they use it or the size of the canister i urge this committee to advance the nitrous oxide safety act in the coming months it is bipartisan lives are on the line thank you and i yield back

alright i thank the gentleman now recognize uh mr. bentz uh for his five minutes of questioning

thank you mr. chair and thank you panel for being here Um, as an attorney back in Oregon for many, many years, I had occasion to work with uh folks in various debt settlement arrangements.

Yeah.

And one of the things that that came up repeatedly was their surprise when they learned that they were going to have to pay taxes on on that which was forgiven. And I'm just curious if this is an issue that should be addressed in the bill we've been looking at to uh ad- address these debt settlement challenges. Should should the the tax exposure be something that's that's um that's discussed and I think the proper person to ask is Miss Winslow this question, so what's your thought?

Yes, absolutely. Uh, the met- citizens in Oregon are are not alone there, there's often surprise at the end when consumers realize that they owe additional money that they didn't know was coming and that should absolutely be part of the disclosures that consumers have up front.

yeah i i clenched to the bill and it didn't it didn't jump out at me but it seemed to me that that would be something you absolutely would have to disclose at the front-end otherwise it's easily ignored and then suddenly uh if if you if you draw an audit in the in that unlikely event but even at some point it it could become a problem i i wanna shift to to strict liability and tort and uh we had a number of uh opportunities back in my law practice to bring cases in in uh in that context. And it it's a device of course that's that's um available when you are damaged by harm uh from some uh dangerous product. And it's there because there isn't necessarily going to be recourse in any other fashion. And and it's there because there are dangerous products that make their way through this uh system that we put in place to try to catch all of those that aren't. here was the problem. And and when when someone would come into my office and say, hey we we we uh I remember one case it was horrid, um but a young a young person had been dealing with one of these masks that you put on and it has an elastic band around it on the end of it, it has a sharp projectile as it turned into, and when he pulled it on it popped off and hit him in the eye and he lost his eye. And so the question was who who made this? Who who did who created this? uh thing that had this dangerous element. And so I'm asking um and I guess I'll I'll I'll turn this to Castro first. Uh is this something that uh that we should be talking about in this legislation where we try to make people at least identify where they're from, who they are, the the the people producing these things so that in the unlike in the unfortunate event that there isn't uh someone checking on these dangerous things, there might be recourse through strict liability. I mean, and again, I can think of all kinds of weaknesses and frailties in what I'm suggesting, but please comment.

Y- y- you're absolutely right. The the question of liability is is really important here, especially when you start talking about the online marketplaces, because the seller is different than the marketplace, so the seller is the one that might have the liability. But if you're talking about an overseas seller, you might have really no ability to have recourse. So I think that transparency is important, so consumers can make good decisions. But one thing that we are seeing that's really important here is that buying on certain platforms, for example, Amazon, they've made guarantees so that when you're buying, you don't have to basically care where that um seller is because they're providing the guarantee that there'll be recourse available for you that that they're adding on. And so, I think that's something that consumers often aren't aware of. Um, and that's one of the differences of American platforms. I'd like to see more platforms move in that direction, so no consumers put in a situation where they have a significant harm and absolutely no recourse.

But but the the you're the point you're making is that those people who choose to use that particular platform do have that extra lev level of protection in the event that the product is actually dangerous and so that should be called

That's right.

out in some fashion so that when people are shopping online which seems like everybody does now they actually know uh that this extra level of protection is available. That that seems to me to be something we ought to be considering here because I'm not sure that the consumer is fully aware of that uh of that opt option.

No but it I think you're absolutely right and I think one of the questions is how much of that should be competition between marketplaces versus uh mandates or guarantees pushed forth by government uh but you're you're absolutely right that is a central question right now.

Yeah. Uh well thank you so much for this most interesting uh your presentations and with that Mr. Chair yield back.

Thank you, thank you very much. Now I'll recognize Miss Clark. for her five minutes of questioning.

Good morning and thank you, Mister Chair, and I thank our ranking member, Ch- Chikowsky, for holding this legislative hearing and thank you to our panel of witnesses for joining us today. Time and again in this Congress I have sat at this dais and sent out an alarm to my colleagues of the dangerous systematic destruction of the FTC and its independence from the White House. For over one hundred years, the FTC has been the cop on the beat against fraud, scams and deception because Congress gave it the trust and authority to enforce appropriately. In only a year and a half, Trump and his conservative Supreme Court have unjustly fired the Democratic commissioners of the FTC, and ended ninety years of precedent. allowing pres- the president to fire FTC commissioners at will, directly gutting the guardrails in Congress that Congress has placed on the agency to ensure independent bipartisan work. This administration is bad for consumers and bad for business. Without a bipartisan FTC, con- consumers will lose their unbiased advocate to obtain recourse when they've been taken advantage of by scammers. While they're all not perfect, many of the bills a part of that are part of this hearing today seek to solve real issues impacting Americans. Though without the intended independence, trust and authority maintained by the FTC, how can any of these bills properly seek protection and recourse? So, Mr. Breyacht, with the recent SCOTUS ruling and Trump free slaughter, how do you recommend Congress effectively legislate when the independent agencies we once trusted to enforce laws are no longer independent?

Congressman, thank you for the question. Uh, I couldn't agree with you more that bills like the ones that uh are up for consideration today as well as many of the bills that are already on the books that protect millions of consumers, are only as effective as their enforcement. And the role that the FTC plays in protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive practices has never been more necessary than it is today. Absent a bipartisan uh FTC, one where both parties are represented, one where they, commissioners don't have to constantly worry that they're gonna be fired if they go after the wrong company those laws are not are are are only not worth the paper that they're written on. And so I think that Congress can and should pass legislation that reverses Trump v. Slaughter. You can also use your other levers that you have available to you through the appropriations process through oversight for example to uh make sure that these agencies the FTC the CPSC and other independent agencies continue to do the critically important work that they must do to protect America's consumers and competition.

Very well, thank you. And going forward, how can Congress best hold the ftc and the cpsc accountable to ensure that they are acting in the best interest of all americans well congress's oversight function has never been more important than it is now particularly in an environment where we do have agencies that are not acting or at least not led by bipartisan commissioners your role is more important than ever and i think also there is a role to be played by the states so avoiding passing legislation that prevents

the states from playing the important consumer protection role that they have that they have always played and that's more important than ever, is also one way that Congress can help protect the consumers and small businesses.

Very well. It couldn't be simpler. The FTC has been an effective and trustworthy commission that Congress has repeatedly expressed confidence in, and trusted with expanded authority. What the Trump administration is doing is shameful, and my Republican colleagues are enabling and supporting a more dangerous marketplace an on-line experience for all Americans. And I'll remind you all one more time, this is all out of the Project twenty twenty five playbook. With that, I yield back.

Thank you, and uh I'll recognize Miss Haljan for her five minutes of questioning.

Thank you, Chairman Bilirakis and Ranking Member Schakowsky, for holding this hearing today. Uh, I wanna thank the witnesses also for offering your testimony. Um, I'm pleased to see that H R five nine six seven, the strategic task force on scam prevention, uh, which I'm proud to co-lead, is including included in the hearing today. I wanna thank my colleague, Mister Menendez, for his partnership on this bipartisan bill. Fraud in this country is no longer a nuisance crime. The FTC estimates that once underreporting is accounted for, Americans have lost roughly one hundred and ninety-six billion dollars to fraud in twenty twenty-four alone. And the problem is not that nobody is working on this at the federal level, uh the problem is that everyone is working on a different piece of it. There's no single agency that is seeing the whole picture. Our bill directs the FTC in conjunction with the Department of Justice to convene an inter-agency task force to develop a national strategy to address these scams, one that puts consumer complaint databases to work. invests in public education, coordinates with industry, sharpens enforcement, and works with our international partners. It's very frustrating when we have constituents that call and say, well I've put my name in the database, and it seems to go not much further than that. Mister Castro, you write that effective prevention depends on identifying patterns across complaints, across marketplaces and payment systems, and other sorts of sources of information that that uh no single agency sees on its own. And you recommend the task force prioritize exactly that kind of data collection and information sharing. So I wanna start with you. Is there any entity in the federal government today whose job it is to assemble that composite picture?

There's not. You're exactly right, it's just pockets of activity but no cohesive work.

And that may be why constituents feel like they've just you know, shouted into the void when they're suffering from these uh uh as victims of fraud.

Exactly.

Uh, so what is actually stopping it? Is it is it authority? Is it statutory restrictions on sharing? Is it willingness? Is it capability? What's preventing us right now from having that that kind of data collection and information sharing?

There's no real ownership right now over who's gonna be responsible for that and and why they can and should be collaborating. There's also no direction that they should be working, I think, with the private sector to share that information so that information collected about one activity that's illegal and harmful is shared with another branch of government because often these are organized criminal networks.

And state's attorneys generals are they're trying to do their part to tackle some of this fraud on a state-by-state basis but at the same time that information sharing would be important too, correct?

That's right.

Uh you rec- recommend including online counterfeiting and piracy within the task force's scope, uh adding online retailers and marketplaces uh to the industries that should be consulted. Uh can you say more about why those platforms in particular should have a seat at the table?

They often have insight into obviously what consumers are seeing. They're the first ones to hear a complaint about a product they might receive before the CPSC, so they actually have that intelligence to say, wait a second, I'm getting complaints about this product. It's because it's a fraudulent product. So they have information no one else has. And then we talk about online piracy for example, online piracy consumers are going to all sorts of sites that are not legitimate, and that's where malware is being distributed, that's where other types of scam ads are being distributed. So they also uh you know the legitimate streamers are seeing where some of their s- consumers are going and they have insights as well.

And we're seeing repeatedly uh, I see it on my own feed, lots of scam ads where it's I it's advertising a product uh mostly from china that you cannot buy uh and it it's intended to steal your data, maybe your financial information uh and the retailers are the first people uh potentially to see uh some of these scams um. There are other online platforms that I think may uh we may want to to include in the task force as a way to crack down on some of these uh scam ads that we might see on, on uh non-retailer sites. Do you agree?

I agree. To give a very specific example, when we bought some of these counterfeits, what was interesting is in the package came advertising to say, when you wanna buy something else, go to this other site. So they were actually directing you to who knows where. Um, and you know, it's it's further scams, exactly.

A scam and a scam. Well, thank you for your leadership. Um, Americans are losing nearly two hundred billion dollars a year to criminals who seem better coordinated than the government I think we can do better. Uh, we can fix that with H R five nine six seven. as i hope this will move through the committee process thank you mister chairman i yield back

alright i thank the general lady now recognize miss stingo for five minutes of questioning

uh thank you mister chair and thank you again to the witnesses

yes

consumer protection is about trust families should not have to worry that the products that they buy are unsafe that their personal information will be exploited or that sophisticated scammers are waiting to steal their hard-earned savings These aren't partisan issues. These are issues that are affecting every American regardless of where they live or how they vote. And if scams become more sophisticated, Congress has a responsibility to ensure our laws keep pace. But strong law laws alone aren't enough. They gotta be enforced. And that's why I remain concerned by this administration's efforts to weaken the agencies charged with protecting consumers. At a time when Americans are facing higher costs and increasingly complex fraud schemes we need to be strengthening not weakening the institutions that are there to keep people safe but I want to focus on Congressman Menendez and Congressman Hoschins bipartisan strategic task force on scam prevention the scam prevention act which I'm very proud to support and I appreciate their leadership on this important effort. Scams have evolved dramatically in recent years. Criminals are using artificial intelligence, fake websites, spoof phone numbers, text messages, and social media to target Americans every day. In twenty twenty five, Americans reported a fifteen point nine billion dollars in fraud losses, and we know many more victims never reported what happened. Investment scams caused the greatest financial losses, followed by imposter. scams while nearly thirty percent of reported scams originated on social media. Older Americans continue to bear the greatest financial harm. I have literally had a w- met with a woman who was convinced she was gonna marry somebody from downtown Abbey, and had given her entire savings to this man. Now, I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm going to, my own mother, somebody Called her and she actually, this is the most recent one. They're gaining access to seniors' computers and then getting into their financial accounts and changing passwords. Thank God my mother's financial advisor called me, and I figured out that they had done that. But we've gotta figure out how we educate people better. And that's why we need a coordinated national strategy that brings together government, law enforcement, financial institutions, and the private sector to stop scams before they happen. Mister Barryalp, from your s- perspective, what are the biggest gaps in coordination today, and how would a task force improve collaboration to better protect consumers from scams?

Thank you for the question, Congresswoman. Uh, with regards to this act, it addresses a structural deficiency that we have in addressing fraud in this country. The scammers don't care about silos and which agency is responsible for the financials or the social media platform or the text message they sent you. They just want to take your money and as much of it as they can. So what we need is a response to prevent in in terms of prevention that also cuts across all of those silos. We know that many different actors in the industry and many different actors in law enforcement and government receive signals that fraud is happening. But if they're not exchanging information, they don't know how to hold these bad actors accountable and ultimately bring them to justice. That's why bills like this one are so important. They seek to break down those silos, create a single place where this information can be uh shared, and hopefully that will lead to stronger enforcement, better safeguards by these industries that depend on c- customers' business, and hopefully fewer constituents like your mother and others who are victims of fraud every year.

Thank you. Scammers continue to evolve faster than our response, which is another problem. They've moved from robocalls to text messages, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, making these scams more convincing and more difficult to detect. Mister Breult, how can Congress ensure our consumer protection efforts keep pace with these emerging technologies and increase seeing sophisticated fraud schemes?

Well, I wish there was a single action you can take, but there are so many, I don't have time to list them all. Certainly making sure that our consumer protection agencies are fully staffed and have the authority that they need to go after these bad actors is step one passing bills like the Scam Prevention Act is another way to do it. We also believe there's a role for Congress to play in creating incentives for the various companies that consumers depend on and that scammers misuse, the banks, the social media companies, the telecom companies, to better reinforce their networks. and protect consumers from these scams in the first place. And finally, we know that even with all of these efforts done, if we could wave a magic wand today and have them all in place, consumers would still be victims of fraud because as you mentioned the scammers are moving so much more quickly. And that's why we need to have a robust uh way for consumers to uh to be made whole after these scams occur.

Thank you. I'm out of time, Mister Chairman, but I am gonna ask some more questions on the record. Thank you.

Excellent. Very good. Alright, now I'll recognize Mister Cain for his uh five minutes of questioning.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. And thank you to our distinguished witnesses for being here today. In my home state of New Jersey, I've heard from constituents who have spoken first-hand about the dangers of a product found at gas stations and convenience stores across the country, nitrous oxide canisters. This product, also known as laughing gas, can also be used as a culinary propellant for products like whipped cream. In recent days, however, there's been an epidemic of misuse of nitrous oxide as an inhalant that gives users a high. This abuse can lead to heart attacks, nerve damage, muscle spasms, numbness, birth defects, paralysis and even death. Nitrous oxide canisters full of its dangerous and deadly substance are being sold without restriction to youth and adults, who have no knowledge of the dangers associated with the substance that they are inhaling. And that's why today I am sending letters to gas stations, convenience stores, online retailers across the country who have sold nitrous oxide to unsuspecting consumers. Mister uh Breyer, the inhalation of nitrous oxide represents a real danger to the American public. Would you agree that the sale of nitrous oxide cancers at gas stations presents a scenario where most consumers are not uh legitimate culinary businesses?

Well, it's clear that the sale of nitrous oxide for recreational use is dangerous to consumers. It's not made to b- to to it's not it should not never be used for recreational purchases and we would support efforts to get it off the market for those uses.

And I share your concern and I look forward to hearing from these gas stations on measures that they plan to take to ensure that not nitrous oxide is not sold for illegitimate purposes. Mister, uh, what steps would you believe the Congress should consider? in taking to consider to address the abuse of nitrous oxide by American consumers.

Well, Congressman, we've been very happy to work with Congressman Mullen's team on this nitrous oxide bill that's being considered today.

Mm-hmm.

Um, we do believe that this is a dangerous product that should not be on the market for recreational use. And we're happy to see that some of the legitimate uses for it are continuing to be protected and we look forward to working with him and with you to make sure that no more families have to experience the heartbreak that so many who are here in the room today have experienced because of the misuse of this product.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Mister Castro, I am pleased that my bill, the Defending Against Foreign Propaganda Act, under consideration at today's legislative hearing. China and Russia have long sought to wield influence on American opinion, seeking to influence America's policymakers through a variety of media formats. How does foreign propaganda threaten to unduly influence Americans without awareness of the entities that are influencing them? And

It's a great question, thank you for it. Uh, well I think right now you have um of course advertisements across all sorts of different platforms and consumers benefit when they know who it is that's actually speaking to them uh transparency in this information is critical so that they can be informed consumers and understand what information they're receiving and whether or not it's trustworthy.

Um and as a follow-up, this bill also made clear that foreign governments who pay for ads in America must disclose their affiliate government. Do you believe that robust disclosure requirements for foreign government funded ads would increase public awareness of malign foreign influence efforts?

I think it's a great a great step forward. I think we wanna look comprehensively at all the different ways that that foreign influence can can seep in here, because what we're seeing in advertising and in commercial settings for example is that sometimes it'll be a step removed. So they might hire an influencer who does a, you know, some kind of information, so it's not a pay that instead it's uh organic um and and so i think we wanna make sure that disclosure trickles through the entire information economy

thank you and i i yield back my time mr. chairman

appreciate it very much and now i believe we're gonna yes we're gonna go to to congresswoman kelly you're recognized for five minutes requesting

thank you mr. chair and thank you

my pleasure

member this is such an important hearing and thank you to all the witnesses I think everyone on this committee shares the same goal. We want to protect American consumers from fraud, scams and dangerous products. Scammers use artificial intelligence to impersonate loved ones. Criminals use phishing attacks to steal Americans' personal information.

Yes.

And on-line marketplaces are flooded with counterfeit and unsafe goods. Consumers lose billions of dollars each year to fraud, almost sixteen billion in twenty twenty five, and those losses continue to grow. And that is why I'm also a co-sponsor of the strategic task force on scam prevention act. This bill would ensure that the federal government has a national strategy to stop scams and protect consumers. This legislation builds on my bill that passed the house last Congress, the Protecting Seniors from Emergency Scams Act, which directs the FTC to c- to create a searchable database of scams and work with the media and government agencies to distribute information to seniors. But as the Congresswoman just said, legislation alone doesn't protect consumers, and at the end of the day, these laws must be enforced. And the agency's tasks with enforcement need to be well-staffed. However, you've heard this already, since this administration's load's driven layoffs, key agencies tasked with protecting consumers are severely understaffed. Mister Grell, if Congress directs the FTC to lead this new inter-agency scan prevention task force, what personnel and expertise will be necessary to make that effort successful rather than simply another report on a shelf?

Thank you for the uh question, Congressman. Uh certainly this bill uh includes requirements that there be consultation with a range of agencies including the consumer protection agencies who all have a role in protecting consumers from frauds and scams we think it's a good mix and we also appreciate the fact that the bill envisions it uh th this task force consulting with consumer groups, with industry, as well as other stakeholders in the fight against fraud, because there's no one uh stakeholder that's gonna solve this problem alone. To the point of uh of uh resources, you know, the ti- at the times when the threats to consumers uh uh have never been greater,

Mm.

uh the fact that the CPSC and the FTC have uh uh said that they intend to reduce their workforce substantially uh I think is counter-productive to the goal of protecting consumers from frauds and scams. We need more cops on the beat. not fewer. And I think that this is and should be a bipartisan issue. Uh, people are don't want to be scammed, they don't want unsafe products in their houses, and it doesn't matter what political party they belong to. And so I think we should have a bipartisan representation of commissioners at both the CPSC and the FTC as soon as possible.

I couldn't agree more. Um, we've talked about the United States Supreme Court recently gutted nearly a century of precedents that protected independent uh agencies And if we're serious about strengthening consumer protection, we need to make sure that agencies have the legal authority, but also have sufficient workforce, staffing and leadership. Another question I have and all of you can answer. I know we talked about transparency in fees and you talked about the convenience of online, and I certainly take advantage of that when I wanna go see a play or a sporting ticket and all of that. My question is, why are the fees so high? you you know you even though there's transparency and you see that the ticket might cost let's say a hundred and fifty dollars but the fees are sixty dollars when everything is online what's the reason for the fees being so high or the excuse anybody can take a stab

uh i mean you're assuming we're referring to ticket fees

right

yes

why are they so high

yeah so the ticket marketplace is is complex there are many stakeholders who whose interests play into the price that you pay. There's the artist who needs to get paid, there's the promoter, there's the venue, there's the ticketing company who all want a cut of that ticket price. And that gets expressed not only in the face value of the ticket, but in all the fees that are paid.

Mm-hmm.

We think that the FTC and through this bill Congress has the opportunity to address this through all-in pricing. Uh, going to a show, seeing a theater, a f- performance, it costs what it costs to put on world-class entertainment. And we think that as long as consumers know up front what it's gonna cost to get in the door,

Mm-hmm.

um, whether that's a hundred dollars with fifty do- fifty dollars in fees, or if they wanna see that just cost a hundred and fifty dollars to get in to see that show, um, that that's the number that they see. We think that if all in pricing is mandated, as it is through the FTC's junk fee rule, and Congress has the opportunity to provide statutory basis for that, um, that consumers will be better off, competition will thrive, uh, and you'll have hopefully a little less frustration when you have to go to buy a ticket to see your favorite artist or sports team.

Thank you, and I yield back.

Thank you.

I thank the General Lady, now uh recognize Mister Goldman for his five minutes of questioning.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, very much, and thanks to all the panelists for being here today. Mister Castro, Consumer Trust depends on clear communication, sorry about that, about on-line service rules and confidence that those rules are applied fairly and consistently. My bill, the Terms Act, is intended to provide that transparency and accountability. In your testimony, you'd support those goals, but caution that the bill's notice provision should not prevent platforms from acting quickly against bad actors. How can Congress preserve both transparency and the ability to respond to urgent threats?

Uh, thank you for the question, and as you said, I'm very supportive of the bill and and just caution that um, there are cases, for example, where um a platform sees a a fraudulent actor, where there's a hijacked account, they're gonna wanna act swiftly. i think the bill currently outlines a number of exceptions for when that written notice period doesn't have to occur the seven day notice period. i think expanding that list to include a more comprehensive set of situations where there might need to be a fast response would address that concern, and i think there's a way forward to do that.

great thank you so much. uh miss winslow debt related scams and unclear financial products can be a major problem for many families. how can clear disclosure requirements help families better financial decisions before they are locked in the costly services.

Thank you so much, Congressman. Right now the advertisements and after this hearing you may be seeing them on your phone pop up that say if you have eight thousand five hundred dollars in debt, you can settle it for less. And there are no requirements for what exactly the customer has to uh know in advance. So they don't know, for example, that it could take four years or that a settlement may never occur at all. There's a number of creditors that don't work with settlement agencies. They don't know that when they're told to stop paying their bills, their credit score is going to decrease. So if they have all that information up front, they may still make the decision to go with a for-profit debt settlement company and that's fine. But they need to know what they're getting into before they sign those on the deadline.

Right. Thank you so much. And, Mister Castro, back to you, many US online marketplaces invest in the AI and other

so of course every platform is different but overall what we're seeing is that the um efforts made on these uh foreign online marketplaces the chinese online marketplaces aren't comparable um the us platforms are taking these issues of counterfeit and and dangerous goods incredibly seriously. Um, they want to make sure that a product that a seller is trying to list that's fraudulent that is detected before it's even listed so it doesn't get out there to the consumer if a product is listed that they're paying a lot of attention to make sure that if they're getting signals back from consumers that something's wrong, that they're notifying that, flagging it, and taking it down. They're very aggressive in this. In contrast on the Chinese platforms what we're seeing is is you know they do have policies um but the enforcement is inconsistent uh and the counterfeiters um and other scammers that are selling products on these platforms have found ways around it and they're able to continue to operate around those rules that are created and so the level um of effort that's been put in there is just a night and day difference and that's why when we found these products we could find them consistently across these Chinese platforms we look on the US platforms you wouldn't see the same types of products. Not that those, you know, fraudulent uh or counterfeits exist on the American platforms, but not nearly to the same degree.

Super, thank you very much. Again, thanks to all the panelists for being here today. Mister Chairman, thank you so much. I yield back the balance of my time.

Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Uh, next we have uh Doctor Schreier. She's recognized for five minutes of questioning.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses. I was just jotting down some recent text messages that I've gotten from random numbers. Um, one just said hi. Uh, another one said, hi Kim, I miss you, how are you doing? Another said, Kim, we'll be replacing roofs in your neighborhood, can we give you an estimate? Another, Kim, we'll be trimming some of your neighbor's trees, we'd like to help with yours too. Um, another one, I'm sure these sound familiar, your good to go pass is uh bill is overdue, you must pay it by the end of the day or we'll refer this case to the highway patrol, uh the scheduled payment for your has expired please click here to enter your updated credit card information and then i recently got one i still don't even know if it was a scam um but it said my doctor's name and said that they had recently gotten a prescription refill request and to please click here to answer some questions or clarify something um and this was actually truly the day after i requested a refill and so i called the doctor's office just to ask them if this was real or scam and they said they didn't know because they had just switched to a new electronic health record, so I still don't know, so now I'm just ignoring texts of all sort. Um so I um try not to fall for these and I don't think I'm falling for them, but I'm sure a lot of people do and thank you for being here. Consumers are just getting an onslaught these days, um sometimes it's incessant phone calls, um but texts and emails are are getting frightening and are very deceptive and more than half of Americans say that they receive some kind of scam attempt every day. I'm probably one of those. Um, and that number is especially high for seniors. Um, with the help of AI, they've got my name, they may have even had my doctor's number, and they may have even known that I'd made a prescription refill request the day before. Like, this is really spooky. And so scammers have gotten really good at impersonating government officials to scare victims into clicking on these links. or sending personal information or even cash to fraudsters in Washington State, scammers were recently impersonating the FTC itself, the very agency that is supposed to be going after them. And their s- their successful FBI data shows that Washington State residents lost nearly four hundred sixty million dollars in twenty twenty five to this kind of fraud. And it's, um, it's outrageous. Uh, so I'm glad to see several bills to address this fraud in the hearing t- today, particularly the strategic uh task force on scam prevention act, this bill would commission a federal task force to implement a national strategy to cut down on fraud and catch scammers. Uh, question for Mister Castro and uh Mister Breaux. Can you both touch on this bill um a little bit and like Mister Castro, you mentioned the need for the task force to prioritize data collection and sharing. Can you talk a little bit more about these criminals who operate the scams and why it's been so hard? for the ftc and law enforcement agencies to identify them and crack down on them

uh it's a great question i i we might have the same phone number because i have all those same texts or similar texts um the issue is that you know you these are again organized criminal operations oftentimes they um they operate using um services being sold to them specifically to engage in this type of activity uh we have to go after you the root cause of this you you know there's not consequences right now um it's uh you know if you wanna be a criminal this is a a pretty you know lucrative area to go into um very high reward very low risk and so we have to change that equation and so you know when i talk about more data collection it's partially so we can do more prosecution it's so we can identify and stop these things um you know some of these you know as i said we're we're getting very similar texts some of these mobile operating systems now are flagging these and saying likely scams but at some point you know we know these are scams, and they can be blocked entirely and we can feed that back into the network and we can also you know start being more proactive and less reactive and that's where again it's gonna have to take a partnership between industry and government. And we've talked about you know the FTC and these other agencies you know being the cops on the beat but it's also industry that I think can play a a really important role, if we're working together and so that's why I'm hoping to see you you know move forward out of this.

And it's been helpful to have Apple ask me to report things as as scams or s- or spam. Um, but it's not enough. And I really appreciate these efforts. Um, Mister Braille, b- before I have you comment, cuz I'm about to run out of time, just I just wanna say that we need a solid FTC and the recent actions of the Supreme Court, as many people have discussed today, have been outrageous. And if you don't have cops on the beat, you can't do any of this. But, Mister Braille, would you like to have the last word about these scammers?

Sure, I would just echo what Mister Castro has said, um, and also emphasize the need for coordination with our international partners. These scammers often operate overseas, far from the reach of US law enforcement, and so any solution to this needs to address that problem as well.

Thank you. I yield back.

Thank you. The chair now recognizes Representative Lee for five minutes of questions.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. Today's hearing is about a simple principle. consumers deserve to know who they're buying from, and they deserve confidence that the products arriving on their doorstep are safe. As more commerce moves online, and increasingly through platforms controlled by our foreign adversaries, we must ensure that our consumer protection laws keep pace. I'm pleased that the committee is discussing my draft of the Stop the Fraud Act, which gives consumers greater transparency when shopping online marketplaces, controlled by foreign adversaries and helps hold those marketplaces accountable, when they repeatedly put consumers at risk. Mister Castro, I'd like to start by going back to you, uh, specifically about the Stop Fraud Act. It seeks to address harmful practices by Chinese on-line retailers. Based on, uh, ITF's research on these issues, are there some, uh, would you share for us some of the key harms some of the principal things that you are concerned the risks that these Chinese marketplaces pose to American consumers and why Congress should be concerned

yes thank you for the question and thank you also for your leadership on this legislation um in our research we found that these Chinese online platforms are you know sometimes turning basically a blind eye to the piracy and counterfeits um being sold on them and what's I think so concerning as a consumer is that oftentimes the lister these listings that you'll see they use legitimate images, they use legitimate descriptions, so there's no way as the consumer making the purchase to know that the product is fraudulent until you receive it, and sometimes you receive it and even then you can't tell that it's a counterfeit because it's a very high quality counterfeit. And there are significant risks involved because you know these are products that, it might involve skincare, it might involve medicine, it might involve you know toys, or it might just involve you know um hurting the brands and reputations of american companies and so it's it's really important that i think you know we have platforms that consumers can go and purchase from that they trust i'll just emphasize that i think one of the the biggest uh most important things here is that we don't have reciprocity in the us we have these chinese companies they're selling into the us market but we don't have us companies selling to the chinese market and that's a huge issue that we should address as well and i appreciate the your bill does that

And you just touched on something that I think is is an important distinction. I think many people associate counterfeit pro- products as an intellectual property problem and they think about the manufacturer as the person that's the injured party but when you're seeing things like uh skin care, medicines, other things, clearly there can be direct physical harm to consumers. Isn't that right?

Absolutely, and we also looked for example at some of the recalls that CPSC did and we saw, you know, they'd recall a particular product and you know, Amazon and, you know, eBay and these other sites would take them down. And then we would go and we'd look on, um, some of these Chinese sites. And they had the same products, uh, and they hadn't taken them down. And, you know, th- th- th- you, of course, as a consumer, they might not even go to the CPSC site. So all they know is Amazon's not selling this, but look, I can get it over here. And it's a product that's dangerous that, you know, our government has said shouldn't be purchased, but it's still available. And that's a huge problem.

And, Mister Hewitt, I would like to refer uh you to the PAC Act and discuss the PAC Act briefly. From the perspective of companies that serve consumers nationwide, what challenges does the state-by-state approach to claims for recyclable, reusable, and compostable materials create for providing clear truthful information to consumers? And and why is it important for consumers to have confidence in these claims uh that they will mean the same

Yes, thank you for the question. Um, with respect to the pack deck, it it it is seeking to solve a very simple problem, and that's to eliminate the uncertainty that consumers face when looking at a packaging item and deciding whether or not or making a determination whether it's recyclable reusable uh or compostable and having a simplified recycling process with standardized definition's gonna ultimately reduce the amount of packaging that goes into landfills it's gonna save consumers money and these definitions and the certainty they provide are gonna provide uh businesses with the confidence to make domestic investments in our recycling infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

I thank the General Lady, now I recognize Mr. Vesey for his five minutes of questioning.

Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of times Americans talk about the fact that they want less plastic uh but i think that we all know that that's easier said than done uh of course we don't want plastic in our rivers and our oceans uh in our as we go walking along our sidewalks we wanna be able to do everything that we can to lessen that uh and most americans uh believe that all you have to do is place plastic in a blue bin uh after you're finished using it and that and that's going to get recycled we have the recycling bins here all around the Rayburn building and other parts of the capital. Um, but we know that the recycling rate still remains very low. Uh, and that's one of the reasons why I was pleased to vote for the Recycling and Composting Accountability Act, uh, and the Recycling Infrastructure and Access- Accessibility uh, Accessibility uh, uh, Act to advance our nation's recycling capabilities. Uh, I wanted to ask uh, Mister Hewitt uh this question, families across my district they would actually like to have just some practical solutions on how they can play their part. Um uh they don't want to wonder if they're sorting their their recycling correctly, uh only to find out that it ends up in a landfill anyway. Uh how can advanced recycling help make the recycling system work better for consumers and recover more of the materials they're already trying to recycle because a lot of this is just very difficult.

Uh, yes, sir. Thank first of all, thank you for your support of these important pieces of legislation, bipartisan pieces of legislation. We all wanna recycle more. We all want less to go to landfill, and and and we all want to use and incorporate more recycled content into our products, whether we're consumers or the manufacturing community. Um, but before we can maximize those goals, we need standardized definitions, as as as the bills do provide. Um, with respects to advanced recycling, it it's not a monolithic technology um it's a collection of technologies uh that will ultimately allow us to collect more packaging like like plastics that that are hard to recycle or often end up in landfills plastics bags artificial turf um textiles and clothing items as well these are items that currently are are not able to be recycled through the existing mechanical recycling infrastructure uh and that's why advanced recycling and non-mechanical recycling are so important, they play that complimentary role and provide that complimentary technology

Mm-hmm.

to allow us to recycle these these these items that are currently ending up in landfills. And I I will just quickly add um you know uh Progressive Policy Institute issued report May of twenty twenty six, just just a few short months ago and they said that the recycling rates we have an opportunity to increase recycling rates of plastic specifically from the current levels of nineteen percent up to nineteen to twenty-three percent, so more than doubling them um by making the investments in expanding our existing advanced and non-mechanical recycling facilities. So we look forward to the opportunities that these two pieces of legislation present for us.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I know that consumers also wanna know that when they um put a product uh labeled as as recycling uh, or made with recycled content, that these claims are are accurate and meaningful to them. Uh, how would establishing clear and standardized national definitions help consumer confusion, uh, and support innovation in recycling, uh, technologies, and ultimately keep more plastic out of landfills?

Yes, thank thank you for the question. Um, we have nearly ten thousand different recycling jurisdictions across the United States. Um, you you can only imagine. how many different uh instructions consumers are faced with whether they are at home at work um you know or or visiting their family members and and and quite frankly we've all been faced with that tough decision as to whether or not does this go in the bin does this not go in the bin

mmm

um it's it isn't a decision that we should have to be faced with on a on a on a regular and occurring basis and that's where these two bills PAC Act and RMA step in uh they would provide clear uniform definitions for basic terms like recyclable, um compostable, uh as as well as reusable and provide the certainty that third party certification comes along with that.

Can I ask you this in my I'm in I need a brief uh answer and my closing thirty seconds here, but can this help with clothes in the dumpster because a lot of people don't know what to do with their clothes and there are so many different pla- pieces of plastics in their clothes, it's a big part of greenhouse gases and we never talk about that is there will will something like this help with will or can could be helpful with clothes going in the dumpster

sir short answer yes

yeah

uh non-mechanical recycling provides us a pathway to recycle those textiles and clothing items that are currently being discarded in the landfills

yeah thank you very much thank you Mr. Chairman

thank you very much for a great gentleman yields back now i recognize doctor joyce who waived on the subcommittee uh you're recognized sir for five minutes

Thank you, Chairman Bill Arrakis, for allowing me to be part of this important hearing. Consumer deception is an ever-growing threat to Americans. From small towns to large cities, people are at heightened risk of encountering counterfeit products online every minute of every day. Many of these products come from China. Online retailers controlled by China have found ways to make their product appear more credible as they enter the US supply chain. As recently as February of this year, US Customs and Border Patrol officers in Pittsburgh seized a massive shipment of counterfeit handbags,

Mm-hmm.

jewelry, and scarves from China. The items were manufactured to appear as well-known brands that are sold in the United States. These products are marketed as authentic and they would have been valued at over three hundred thousand dollars. That is three hundred thousand dollars coming out of the pockets of Americans. and that is being spent on fake products. These items threaten the American consumer and they violate the law. The Chinese marketplace is working overtime right now as we're holding this hearing to f- thieve and steal and conceive to take money out of Americans' pockets. Mister Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter this August twenty twenty five report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on the prevalence of counterfeit goods from China, online stores into the record.

Without objection, so order.

Today, I have multiple counterfeit goods with me that were manufactured in China, and are available online to consumers on websites that are controlled by China. Potentially unsafe children's toys, like the beloved Yoda, made with untested products from from China have been sold online. looking a lot like the Yoda that we know and love, but being fooled by Americans to purchase these products. A cold medicine that closely resembles what is sold in US retail pharmacies, the packaging only differs slightly, making it difficult for American consumers to discern whether this is fake or whether it's the real product. As a dermatologist, the presence of counterfeit health products online is deeply alarming to me. If a patient decides to purchase a counterfeit product online and they ultimately receive a Chinese manufactured product, it's, can not only just be ineffective, but it could be harmful to the patient. These probiotic supplements for pets are counterfeit as well, and are a fake version of a legitimate product that is made in the United Kingdom. After pet owners purchased the fake product and gave these supplements to their dogs, Some of the dogs had to be hospitalized. There is no way to tell what is actually in these products, and American consumers unknowingly purchase these each and every day online. These criminals understand exactly how to target the US supply chain online and force their products into the homes of American families. And I think you all recognize that that threat continues to grow. Mister Crastro, criminals targeting the US marketplace with counterfeit products manufactured in China, are evolving each and every day and their deceptive practices are appearing more trustworthy to American families, especially when it comes to medicines and other health care products. What specific trends are you noticing?

Thank you for the question and and thank you for um, you know, highlighting the severity of the problem. One thing we're seeing is that some of these Chinese companies are trying to move up the value chain. So not only uh they're starting with producing the counterfeit goods, trading on the American brands getting trust um but they're then you know improving and eventually trying to sell their own products um that are basically replicating and stealing and building off of the IP of these American companies and so they're not just hurting them in the short term they're really trying to hurt these businesses in the long term.

Mister Castro in your written testimony you mentioned the stop the fraud act, which you and I recognize as being very important can you explain how a published list of foreign adversary controlled online retailers would be beneficial to the American consumer.

I think the American consumers need to know what they can trust and what they can't trust. And having that information available to them, that these are uh certain platforms that the US government has looked at, the national security experts have looked at, and deemed harmful, will help them make much more informed decisions about where they do their shopping.

As consumers right now are surfing the web, and looking at products, do you feel that there is an effective way for the consumer to know who is marketing these products and whether or not they are safe right now?

I don't think all consumers even know that they're buying from a a foreign online marketplace they see something on TikTok or Instagram and they click and buy.

And as this threat of counterfeit products grows and our communities are targeted by these criminals we in Congress must take the necessary steps to protect the consumers and defend their health and protect their safety. Thank you again, Mister Chairman, for allowing me to wave on to this important committee hearing today and I yield back the remainder of my talk.

I thank the gentlemen and I can agree more. Uh, now uh I'll recognize Mister Menendez who's waving on I believe to the subcommittee. Recognized for five minutes of questioning.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, I too appreciate the opportunity to wave on to this uh committee for today's hearing. Too many families and seniors in New Jersey and across the country are falling victim to increasingly Scammers are using AI, voice cloning, deepfakes, and other advanced technologies to make their deceptions more convincing and harder to detect than ever before. These scams are costing Americans billions of dollars, wiping out life savings, and leaving people uncertain about who they can trust. Scammers don't care about agency, jurisdiction, state or county borders or industry boundaries. They work together, act quickly, and exploit every gap in our processes. Meanwhile, no single federal agency has the authority, resources, or tools to confront the full scale of this threat. The siloed approach leaves victims searching for help and forces law enforcement to play catch up, all while scammers continue to profit. We need to coordinate a national effort that brings together federal agencies, state and local law enforcement, and the private sector to expose scams sooner, dismantle criminal networks faster, and protect people before their hard-earned savings are stolen. That is why Congresswoman Ho-Chun and I introduced the bipartisan strategic task force on scam prevention act. Our bill would unite relevant stakeholders behind a national strategy to prevent scams and hold criminals accountable, as well as strengthen support for victims, improve public awareness, and give local law enforcement stronger tools to crack down on scams quickly and effectively. Mister Castro, would you agree that scams are no longer isolated incidences, but a rapidly growing threat families seniors and businesses across the country

absolutely

in a few words what is driving this growth

it's profit opportunity for the criminals um they see opportunities to use the latest technology and uh use it to go after uh unwitting victims

um thank you and mister uh breyo breyo um just briefly how are these scams impacting american families

um thank you congressman menendez and thank you for championing this bill Um, beyond the financial cost, uh, which is huge, these, uh, scams are taking a toll on American families psychologically, emotionally. We hear from consumers every day who are struggling with this, struggling with family members who are victims of scams, that they just don't think they can stop. And unfortunately, in far too many instances, we've actually seen consumers who have been so deep into these scams that, uh, they've actually committed self-harm or even suicide when they find out they've been victims of fraud.

Cuz it's, it's generally a vulnerable population that people are trying to target. That's why we talk about seniors, right? People who are newer to the digital age may be more susceptible to these scams. But when I asked this question to different industries, they all say the same thing, is that no one is untouched in this moment. Would you agree with that?

I would.

Thank you. Uh, Miss Winslow, scammers often operate across international lines and through multiple platforms. In a few words, how would stronger coordination among federal agencies, state attorneys general, local law enforcement, and industry help

Uh, co-ordina- coordination is essential, particularly when we're talking about an industry like the vehicle finance industry that operates internationally as well as across state lines. So, in an easy example, title washing, that's where you can uh manipulate or clean a a title and so people can't tell who really owns that title. Uh, in a lot of states there's still paper titles, and so it's easy to take a title from one state and move it to another one. it's so you need coordination there between dmbs between state ags and of course dot uh doj and the ftc so we work with i represent the auto lenders but the auto dealers

mmm

obviously are involved and the manufacturers as well so a strong federal task force on that is the one thing that could unite all those players

it's a more efficient use of the resources that do exist right because if each if each entity is trying to grapple with this on their own right you're not having the maximum use everyone's talents, resources, et cetera. When the the volume of scams and sophistication is just rapidly increasing on a daily basis. Um, as scammers become more organized and techni technologically advanced, the federal government must take a more coordinated approach to combat, to combating scams. Every day we fail to act, more American families lose their savings, their peace of mind, and their trust that someone is looking out for them. Mister Breaux, how could the strategic task force on scam prevention act turn today's fragmented response into a coordinated national effort that stops scammers faster, and makes it easier for victims to get help.

Uh, thank you, Congressman. Uh, if the, uh, bill became law, it would put the, give us for the first time a national strategy that cut across all the different silos and brought together all of the agencies and partners who have the data that we need to better protect consumers. And importantly, it would also allow consumers some more peace of mind and hopefully some compensation for the victims who have been uh, scammed far too much.

I appreciate that, and I appreciate the chairman again for allowing me to wave on. I appreciate the bipartisan work to advance legislation that's gonna protect all our American families. You're back.

I thank the gentleman. Now, uh, last but certainly not least, my good friend, Mister Weber from the state of Texas. You're recognized for five minutes of questioning.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, for allowing me to wave on and saving the best for last. I would like to thank the subcommittee for that very opportunity hr sixty eight thirty two the packaging and the claims knowledge or pac act i would also like to thank the committee staff uh who have been working diligently with our office for several months to finalize this language and provisions within the pac act as it stands today finally i would like to thank ameripen and the larger coalition of food manufacturers packaging associations and consumer advocacy organizations for their continued support of the pac act and its goal to create a consistent and voluntary federal framework for environmental claims on various products. I like to say suffice it to say we we might be able to actually package a better life for our kids and our grandkids in a safer future for them. Uh, let me come to you, Mister Hewitt, if I can. Uh, one of the primary issues we are seeing with respect to recycling and environmental claims is consumer confusion. Uh, the lack of a standardized label Labeling regiment leaves consumers less informed when making purchasing decisions and confused, as we've all stood over two different bins. We've talked about that and tried to decide what to do with this particular piece of product. As I always like to say, it shouldn't take a lawyer to have to figure out a recycling bin. So, if we're able to put those clear definitions for recyclable, compostable, and yes, res- usable packaging into federal law, Wouldn't that be better than relying solely on non-binding guidance? Would that help consumers in our, I say my district, but actually across the country. You agree?

Yes, sir, I I I would agree, and thank you for bringing this important piece of legislation and your support of RMAA. But, yes, minimizing consumer confusion is the least we can do. We can accomplish that through your bill with standardized definitions, and then ensuring that consumers are protected with third-party certification that the PAC Act provides.

Then actually get a a better, like I said, or in my kind of open comments, a better environment for uh for our our children and, you know, I happen to have three kids, eight grandkids and two great-grandchildren. So it's important for me and absolutely, and I'ma stay with you, mister if I can, another one of the current problems with environmental claims I think we all recognize, is the patchwork of state regulations. And they vary very widely depending on where you are. And and of course, we're talking about California's lawmakers who enacted SB three forty three, which for the life of me, I don't understand, prohibits the use of the chasing arrows symbol. I, you know, I don't, I, they used to have that on cowboys and, you know, Indians, country westerns back in the day. I guess they all had arrow symbols. That's a joke. Y'all can laugh at that. Uh, but at any other any rate, other any other recyclability claim unless the product meets specific criteria, determined solely by one state, California, I know there's been some legal action on it, okay. Um, can you go further in our uh in the the how policies like those being presented in California would hurt? And I will say even not just California, cuz there's still that confusion. N- not only consumers in California, but in the long run, a direct impact of the increased burdens, having bus- business over thirty-five years. Businesses don't need those kinds of uncertain impacts on businesses. Would you agree? How can it change?

Why, I I I would agree, and I would note, just with respects to California, that just last week, um, the court issued the preliminary injunction finding that large portions of that, the definitions and and the mandates that they prescribed were unconstitutionally vague. So, you know, we, again, um, had a patchwork now cast into more uncertainty as as we navigate the the legal process with respect to that one state law. But it's not one state, it's dozens. Um, and and and that is part of the problem, companies must navigate these conflicting definitions, consumers must navigate these conflicting definitions across, like I said earlier, nearly ten thousand different, you know, recycling jurisdictions. And so, having this certainty with standardized definitions, with this, with with third party uh, accounting as well as third-party verification that goes along with it is ultimately good for consumers it's good for businesses.

I think it is too, and I think now we got thirty seconds left, but I think that's good for a standard voluntary packaging like we're talking about is a good thing. Do you agree, Miss Winslow, a standard voluntary?

Uh, I can't speak for the association, but me personally, sure.

Is is it Bray, did you say that?

Yes, sir.

A good standard policy is would be a good thing?

Congressman, I think we support bills like the California's that set a high bar in this space, uh,

Okay, I'm gonna take that as a note, Mister Castro.

and

Yes, I think in federal preemption here is important. Thank you.

Mister Breyer, I thank you. You're outvoted. Mister Chairman, I yield back.

I appreciate it very much. Thank you, sir. Alright, I I wanna give uh I think we're finished with the with the questioning, but I wanna give uh our ranking member an opportunity to to say a couple words as she requested and uh i gladly consented yeah

thank you very much mr. chairman this has been an important discussion today i think that we are finding people who are being scammed who are getting misinformation who are being hurt families that are actually seeing some of their children and their uh and i- and adults as well who are getting misinformation. And it's really important that this be investigated so that we know what the scams that are out there our and how we can protect people from the kinds of dangers that are that are there. Um I I'm very worried about um some of the people who are not sure about what is true, Yes. what has been told to them that are things that are not true, Yes. Yes, let's just do this. and families, Let's do this. kids,

Interesting.

individuals who are being harmed as we move along. Um, and that's just, I think, so incredibly important and, uh, that we have to do better here, that there are people who are in good faith trying to do best for theirmsel their their themselves and their families and their kids and it's not coming forward for them. So I just uh am hoping that we're gonna do better than we have done and uh make sure that we make all of these questions that are asked safer and that we make sure that all of our families are getting the best that they need to know and that can protect themselves and their kids. So we have uh a lot of we have a lot of work to do. Thank you.

Very very good and uh well said. Uh I just feel like uh again there's a lot of misrepresentation uh on the internet uh when you purchase a product. I I believe that the that the consumer has a right to know where it's coming from. Uh, so, anyway, I thought this was a very productive hearing, uh, and, uh, we'll continue to work on this issue. So, I appreciate the the witnesses for being here. Thanks for all the information you've given us, very valuable information, and, uh, we'll move forward with, uh, these bills. Uh, I'd like to thank, uh, our witnesses for being here today. members have additional uh if they have additional written questions and i know there are some i'll remind members that they have in the ten business days to submit questions for the record i ask the witness to respond to the questions promptly members should uh submit their questions by the close of business on august fifth and i'll ask unanimous consent that the documents on the staff the the the the documents uh on the staff list and there are quite a few be submitted for the record yes so without objection ok uh we're going to do that so ordered and this committee so all without objection the subcommittee is adjourned I thank you all

all

all those in favor