00:00Now I yield five minutes to the ranking member of the subcommittee, Ms. Schakowsky.
00:07I take great pride in having been a consumer protection leader for years and years in the
00:17state legislature and here now in the Congress. But one of the things that has been such a help
00:25is to have the Federal Trade Commission to be the cop on the beat to make sure
00:34that these things are happening. If this were to go through as the president wanted it,
00:43which would be illegal, so I'm hoping that you will take this to court, how would this affect
00:54consumers and all the people who need the work that you do, if you could tell me that. Thank you.
01:05Thank you. Yeah, you're right. The FTC does very vital consumer protection work,
01:10including advocacy, including getting money back to people who have been harmed. In fact,
01:15last year the FTC returned $337 million back into the pockets of people who had it wrongfully taken
01:23from them from frauds and scams. And it does that on a bipartisan basis through changes in
01:28administration, through transitions. That bipartisan structure of the FTC that Congress
01:34created provides enormous value to the people that we serve, the children, the parents, the consumers,
01:40the workers, the honest businesses, because it provides continuity and credibility in our work.
01:47Let me give you a couple of examples. There are ways in which the commissioners come together
01:53and find consensus on important cases and important matters that protect consumers. So,
01:59for example, when we're thinking about children, we brought a case against Epic, where we got
02:05$500 million in penalties from Epic for how they treated children through Fortnite, including
02:13how kids were tricked into paying for games, and also, importantly, to the witnesses in the
02:20subcommittee, allowing strangers to have access to children to communicate through that online
02:28game. That was an important bipartisan effort of the committee. My former colleague, Commissioner
02:33Wilson, wrote a very powerful concurrence in that case about that work related to children
02:39in particular. Sometimes we don't find consensus, and that is also important for the commission,
02:45because we can help provide accountability and transparency to Congress and to the public about
02:52other ways things could be done, maybe more relief that was left on the table, or where
02:59commissioners think there was an overreach by the commission. That's also an important thing
03:04to highlight. So, I think the structure of the FTC that Congress created drives towards bipartisan
03:10consensus, continuity, credibility, and provides accountability and transparency even where that
03:16consensus isn't reached, and all of that redounds to the benefit of the people that we serve.
03:23So, what you're saying, though, is that because of the ability of the Federal Trade Commission,
03:31things really can happen. I mean, there are laws that make it safer for our kids and our consumers.
03:41Yeah, that's exactly right. The Federal Trade Commission administers the Federal Trade
03:45Commission Act, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and various other laws that are
03:50designed by Congress to protect children, to protect consumers, and we want that administration
03:58to be done without fear or favor, impartially based on the facts and the law in front of the commission,
04:05not based on fear of removal, for failure to do a favor for a political donor,
04:11or at one of the big tech companies that don't particularly care for our aggressive
04:17enforcement approach. Well, I want to thank you, Congresswoman Slaughter.
04:24Congresswoman? No, that's not correct. For the work that you do, and let us hope
04:33that the courts will decide that the Federal Trade Commission is the appropriate way
04:42that we protect our consumers, and you do it in a bipartisan way, except that right now,
04:50the Democrats have been excluded from this, so we have to fight back. Thank you very much,
04:58and I yield back.
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