Washington, D.C. – Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) today issued the following statement after the House Democratic Caucus unanimously elected him Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee for the 116th Congress:
“I thank my Democratic colleagues for their support in electing me Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. There is no better committee in Congress, and I am so fortunate to have the support of my colleagues in leading this committee in the 116th Congress. “I look forward to working with all of my colleagues to build a stronger economy, create more good-paying jobs and protect consumers from skyrocketing costs. In the coming months, we will push an aggressive agenda to rebuild America, combat climate change, make health care and prescription drugs more affordable, and protect peoples’ privacy. We’ll also conduct robust oversight of the Trump Administration’s ongoing actions to sabotage our health care system, exacerbate climate change and weaken consumer protections.”
The Committee on Energy and Commerce is the oldest continuous standing committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was established in 1795 to regulate interstate and foreign commerce. Today, the Committee has the broadest jurisdiction of any authorizing committee in Congress. It legislates on health care; health insurance; biomedical research and development; food safety; clean air and climate change; safe drinking water; national energy policy; nuclear facilities; electronic communications and the internet; privacy, cybersecurity and data security; consumer protection and product safety; travel, tourism and sports; interstate and foreign commerce; and other areas.
An Estimated 18 Billion Unwanted Calls Were Placed in the U.S. in 2017
Washington, D.C. – Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) today introduced the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act (H.R. 6026) in the House of Representatives to stop abusive robocall practices. Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA) introduced similar legislation in the Senate today as well.
Pallone’s bill would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enact strong consumer protections for authorized calls and empower the FCC with strong enforcement tools to reign in robocallers. The legislation would also ensure that consumers have the ability to stop calls they’d previously authorized, and require incoming calls to have authentic caller identification information before they are delivered to customers.
“There is nothing more annoying than repeatedly getting unwanted calls from people you don’t know and don’t want to talk to,” Pallone said. “Despite previous efforts like the Do Not Call Registry, robocalls are on the rise. The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act will better restrict unauthorized robocalls by providing consumer protection agencies with new tools designed to stop the abusive practices robocallers are employing.”
Last year, an estimated 18 billion unwanted calls were placed in the U.S., which represents a 76 percent increase in unwanted calls over the previous year. The staggering number of unwanted calls are returning huge profit margins for robocallers with every dollar spent by robocallers returning as much as $20 profit—a 2,000 percent profit margin. Though some robocalls are initiated by legitimate companies, robocalls are also used by scammers to steal from consumers, with more than 22 million Americans losing a total of $9.5 billion in robocall scams in 2016 alone.
“Whether at home or on their mobile phones, consumers should not be subject to intrusive and unsolicited calls,” said Senator Markey, the author of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. “While telephone technology has changed, that key goal has not. I am proud to join Ranking Member Pallone in introducing this legislation, clarifying the FCC’s obligation to strengthen the precious zone of privacy and control that has protected consumers from unwanted calls and texts for decades.”
The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would curb the rise of robocalls by:
Amending the TCPA to ensure that the FCC has the authority and the tools to take strong, quick action when they track down robocallers;
Allowing consumers to revoke consent they’d previously given to receive calls at any time and in any reasonable manner;
Creating a reassigned number database to put robocallers on notice when a telephone number they may have previously been authorized to call has been given to a new customer who hasn’t authorized their call;
Limiting the number of robocalls exempted from the TCPA under the FCC’s rules;
Requiring calls to have verified caller identification information associated with a call before the call can be put through; and
Extending the statute of limitations from one year to four years for callers violating robocall prohibitions.
Washington, D.C. – Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) delivered the following opening remarks today at a Subcommittee on Environment hearing on “The Fiscal Year 2019 Environmental Protection Agency Budget:”
Administrator Pruitt has brought secrecy, conflicts of interest and scandal to the EPA. In any other administration, Republican or Democrat, you would be long gone by now.
So far, 140 House Democrats have signed onto a resolution introduced by Ms. Castor expressing “no confidence” in you, Mr. Pruitt. Additionally, four Republican House Members have also called on you to step down.
And the voices are growing. Just look at the critiques from former Bush EPA Administrator and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, who called Administrator Pruitt’s tenure a, “slap in the face to fiscal responsibility and responsible governance” and said, “evidence is abundant of the dangerous political turn of an agency that is supposed to be guided by science.” Another former Republican EPA Administrator, William Reilly, called Administrator Pruitt a, “third rate ideologue.”
Past administrators of both parties believed in the EPA’s mission and understood that they had been given a sacred trust by the people of our country.
Unfortunately, this is not the case, Mr. Pruitt, clearly you do not believe in EPA’s mission, and appear to have forgotten that you are here to serve all the American people, not merely a select few, or just yourself. The fact is Administrator Pruitt has used this office as nothing more than an opportunity to enrich himself and his corporate friends, and President Trump seems to be perfectly fine with all of his actions. So much for draining the swamp.
When we met in December, you pledged to be more transparent. You promised to do a better job providing technical assistance, sending witnesses to hearings, and responding to Congressional requests. You have followed through on none of those promises.
What you have done is generate scandal after scandal. When confronted about them, you have repeatedly failed to take responsibility for your actions. Instead, you have blamed your staff, your security detail, your critics – pretty much anyone but yourself. You are accountable for your agency and all of these scandals. The buck stops at your desk.
There are so many outstanding questions that we need truthful answers to today, because so far, we’ve only gotten half-truths, misleading answers, or outright falsehoods. For instance, you rented a condo at well below market value, and then emphatically claimed on Fox News that your landlord’s lobbyist husband had no business before the EPA – a statement proven to be untrue.
It is that kind of conduct that prompted Ranking Members Tonko, DeGette, and Vice Ranking Member Castor and I to request that you be placed under oath for this hearing and that it be expanded to include the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. The Chairmen did not agree to that request but I would remind you what the Chairman said to the press when he declined our request: lying to Congress is a crime, regardless of whether or not you are sworn in.
Now, Committee Republicans have conveniently told the press they are investigating you for some your outrageous ethical abuses. Yet, I’ve seen no evidence from Committee Republicans that this is really happening.
Fortunately, Committee Democrats have been demanding answers and five independent federal investigations are now being done into your conduct at our request. Yesterday, I joined with Ranking Member Cummings of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to request an additional investigation by the Office of Special Counsel into your troubling pattern of apparently retaliating against EPA employees who question your extravagant spending.
I am confident that these investigations will affirm what I have come to believe is true: you are unfit to hold public office and undeserving of the public trust.
Washington, D.C. – Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) today issued the following statement on President Trump’s infrastructure proposal: “President Trump’s infrastructure proposal is woefully inadequate for addressing the urgent needs of modernizing our nation’s infrastructure. The proposal does not include any new funding, and it forces the majority of costs onto cash-strapped state and local governments. President Trump spared no expense and required no offsets for his tax scam benefiting corporations and the wealthiest few, but he refuses to provide any new funding to repair our crumbling infrastructure. “The President also wants people to believe that environmental protections are preventing infrastructure projects from moving forward when in reality the obstacle is a serious lack of funding. The harmful environmental rollbacks included in the President’s proposal will endanger human health and the environment and threaten our communities. Congress has already passed bipartisan legislation to speed up permitting, but the President has not implemented it. We do not need to sacrifice a safe environment in order to modernize our infrastructure and expand our economy. “Last week, House Democrats unveiled A Better Deal to Rebuild America, which invests $1 trillion in federal funds and creates more than 16 million jobs. This comprehensive proposal includes real and significant investments to fix and modernize our infrastructure. It puts real dollars where they are needed, creating jobs, revitalizing communities and addressing serious threats to human health and the environment.”
Washington, D.C. – Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) issued the following statement today after President Trump released his budget proposal for fiscal year 2019: “President Trump is once again proposing a budget that has little basis in reality and continues his ongoing assault on working families struggling to make ends meet. “Despite repeated attempts to gut our nation’s health care system, the President is once again proposing to strip away health care from tens of millions of Americans by repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. The President is also proposing a devastating $1.4 trillion cut to Medicaid, which will force states to ration care for seniors in nursing homes, people with disabilities, children and pregnant women. The budget also continues the Administration’s goal of restricting Medicaid coverage to the most vulnerable by adding co-payments and unnecessary paperwork requirements. “As the opioid crisis continues to devastate families and communities around the nation, the President’s harmful ACA and Medicaid proposals would make it extremely difficult for people struggling with opioid abuse to get the treatment they need. “The President’s proposed cuts to EPA are extreme and threaten the health and environment of all Americans. The President’s budget cuts the agency’s overall budget by 26 percent from Fiscal Year 2017, slashing funding for critical public health programs including clean air programs, chemical safety research and geographic programs. “The budget also decimates our nation’s investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, which will increase energy costs for consumers, undermine clean energy jobs and threaten our efforts to combat climate change. “These are reckless proposals that should be opposed by Congress.”
Congressman Pledges to Use Powerful Committee Position to Ensure Improved Disaster Preparedness
LONG BRANCH, NJ – Today, Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06), Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, held a Superstorm Sandy Field Forum with local officials, industry leaders and senior FirstNet representatives to take a critical look at lessons learned and progress made with public safety telecommunications since the hurricane. During and after Sandy there was a major breakdown of telecommunications networks, including cellular and home telephones, television, and internet services. This created a dangerous barrier to emergence response and recovery for residents and towns.
“When Sandy struck, I promised that I would keep fighting with you until we completely rebuilt. I vowed to roll up my sleeves to restore our area to greatness,” said Congressman Pallone in his remarks to open the event. “Three years later that fight unfortunately is not over—we still have a lot more work to do. We still have homes to replace. We still have businesses to restore. At the same time, we must also look ahead. We need to understand the lessons that Sandy taught us to make sure we are better prepared. That is why I called for this forum to focus on the services that keep us connected when we need it most.”
In his new role as the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Pallone reiterated his commitment to use his position and the broad jurisdiction of the Committee, which includes telecommunications and broadband issues, to ensure increased safety and disaster preparedness.
“Unlike three years ago, today I am here as the Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee,” continued Pallone. “My committee is responsible for overseeing the industries that are most crucial during a storm—the industries that must keep our power flowing; the industries that make sure we have adequate health care; and the industries that keep us connected when the worst occurs. As the Ranking Member of a Committee with such broad jurisdiction, I pledge to use every resource at my disposal to make sure we are better prepared than we were three years ago.”
Following Pallone’s opening remarks, local officials, including two mayors, discussed their experience during Sandy, with a focus on telecommunications, broadcast, social media, and first responder communications. Next, panelists from the telecommunications and energy industries were questioned by Pallone on what happened during Sandy, lessons learned, and steps that have been taken to improve their systems. To round out the forum, Pallone sat with FirstNet and JerseyNet officials to discuss the failure of interoperability and other public safety communications during Sandy, what FirstNet can do to solve the problem, and FirstNet’s progress in New Jersey.
Participants in the Local Roundtable were Susan Howard, Mayor of Monmouth Beach; Fred Tagliarini, Mayor of Aberdeen; John Ferguson, Middlesex County OEM Director; and Adam Hubeny, Business Administrator, Atlantic Highlands. Participants in the Industry Panel were Paul A. Sullivan, President, Mid-Atlantic North region, Verizon; Dave Davis, President & General Manager, WABC; Dan Finn, SVP/Regional General Manager, Greater Media; Justin Auciello, Founder, Jersey Shore Hurricane News; Ananda Kanapathy, Senior Director of Asset Strategy, PSEG; and Tony Hurley, VP of Operations, Jersey Central Power and Light. Participants in the FirstNet panel were T.J. Kennedy, Acting Executive Director, FirstNet; and Fred Scalera, Public Safety Broadband Manager, Office of Homeland Security & Preparedness, State of New Jersey.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) issued the following statement today regarding the release of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget:
“President Obama’s budget sets a framework that will help guide us on a road to economic recovery while both stopping the across the board cuts known as the sequester, set in place by Republicans’ failure to negotiate a budget compromise, and preserving funding for important programs that Americans rely on. I am, however, concerned that the president’s budget would change the cost of living adjustment for Social Security recipients, and result in cuts to benefits that seniors have paid into and earned.
“The President’s goals laid out in his budget are important, but I stand firm on my commitment that we must make protecting Medicare and Social Security our top priority. As the senior Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, I have long advocated for strengthening Medicare and Social Security, and I am deeply concerned that this budget does not protect the programs seniors rely on most.”
We must not lose sight of the fact that Medicare is ultimately about people: the grandfather who can barely afford his heart medication, or the widow who finds her savings wiped out after she is diagnosed with breast cancer.
Democratic staff on the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce recently dived into the consequences of the 2013 Republican “Ryan” budget on individuals. According to the Committee’s report, the budget would:
Increase prescription drug costs for 11,000 Central New Jersey seniors, forcing them to pay an extra $101 million for drugs over the next decade.
Eliminate new zero-copay preventive care benefits for 103,000 Central New Jersey Medicare beneficiaries.
Threaten affordable housing programs that provide rental support for 5,100 Central New Jersey senior households.
Put at risk the nursing home care for 2,300 Central New Jersey residents whose expenses are paid by Medicaid.
These are just the consequences of the budgets for seniors. Many others in Central New Jersey would face other consequences: cuts in federal investments in infrastructure, education, research and development, Food Stamps, and more. Yet even as it slashes these crucial programs, the Ryan plan provides such enormous tax breaks, mostly to the wealthy, that it would fail to balance our budget until 2040.
The budget is a moral document, as you may remember me saying. The Ryan plan is written down in black and white and approved by almost all Republicans and opposed by almost all Democrats in the House.
Federal Agencies Launch Spanish-Language Ciencia.Science.Gov
Science agencies across the U.S. federal government recently announced the launch of the Spanish version of Science.gov, http://ciencia.science.gov. Ciencia.Science.gov provides the same breadth and depth in science search as does Science.gov, covering over 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results from 17 organizations within 13 federal science agencies.
I hope you will share this resource with your Spanish-speaking friends.
Yo espero que Uds. comparten este nuevo recurso con sus amigos hispanohablantes.
A Poet’s Hopeful Yearning for America
In his new book, In Time, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poet C. K. Williams (who lives in Hopewell and teaches creative writing at Princeton) describes himself as a political poet who buries his political messages deep in his poems – and makes a perceptive observation, not buried.
He says that what some critics called rage in his Vietnam-era poems “was more a kind of hope” about the relation of self to society. He now worries that through a political “sleight of hand,” the “generations coming into political consciousness now” have had “foisted on them… the so-called necessities of economic inflations, recessions, [and] deficits” and inculcated “insecurity as a way of manipulating people.” “How hard,” he says, “will it be for them,” living with this “sad consciousness,” “to generate the hope they need to redeem their societies spiritually?”
To which I would say, we must show each other how to keep hope alive.
Washington, D.C.—Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06), the senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee, issued the follow statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in advance of a vote to pass the FDA Reform Act of 2012. The FDA Reform Act of 2012 passed the House with overwhelmingly bipartisan support by a vote of 387-5. Congressman Pallone was an original co-sponsor of the bill which will help bring new drugs and medical devices to the market faster and at lower costs to consumers.
The following is his statement:
“Thank you, M. Speaker. Today marks a very exceptional day in this body, one that deserves great praise. The bill before us, H.R. 5651, the FDA Reform Act of 2012, is the product of bipartisanship collaboration and compromise that I am proud to be a part of.
“This bill is the result of more than a year of negotiations between industry, FDA and Congress. In the Energy and Commerce Committee, we held a number of hearings on the critical issues within the bill and, earlier this month, it passed unanimously in both the Subcommittee and Full Committee. The bill is slightly modified from the bill reported by committee, as it now includes a bipartisan provision which results in the bill reducing the deficit by $370 million over the next 10 years. “The FDA Reform Act will ensure that Americans have access to safe and effective new medicines and medical devices by reauthorizing the user fee programs for prescription drugs and medical devices. It will reduce drug costs for consumers by speeding the approval of lower-cost generic drugs with the establishment of new user fee programs for generic drugs and for lower-cost versions of biotech drugs. The bill will also reform and revitalize many FDA programs to improve its regulatory scheme to facilitate a more efficient and predictable review process.
“The bill also makes permanent two complementary programs - the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act and the Pediatric Research Equity Act - which both help to foster the development and safe use of prescription drugs for children.
In addition, a significant improvement was made to the FDA’s ability to police an ever-growing global drug supply chain to improve patient safety. These provisions will give the FDA critical tools it needs to keep our medicine safer.
“It also includes important provisions to help prevent and mitigate drug shortages, by requiring that drug makers notify the FDA in advance of any expected disruptions in the supply of certain critical drugs, and for the FDA to inform health care providers of the potential drug shortage. “Thank you to Chairmen Upton and Pitts, Ranking Member Waxman, Mr. Dingell and my other colleagues on the Committee for their leadership and dedication to this important piece of legislation. A special thanks to the staffs on both sides of the aisle for their hard work – you all should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished. “Reauthorizing and revitalizing the FDA user fee system is a critical investment to our nation’s public health. M. Speaker, I urge all Members of the House to vote aye.”
If you didn't catch Congressman Frank Pallone on Fox News this morning, he was talking about the American Clean Energy and Security Act that passed in the House last week.
Pallone appeared with fellow House Committee on Energy and Commerce member Steve Scalise (R) of Louisiana to discuss the passage of the bill.
Congressman Pallone said that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created and that in the long run people will save money because we will not be buying oil from foreign countries and that this bill supports energy Independence.
Pallone also states on his Facebook page that the American Clean Energy and Security Act is the "Most important environmental bill during my time in Congress."
