Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation, H.R. 3950, the TICKET Act.

As my colleague and the chair of the subcommittee, Mr. Bilirakis, has said, we worked for months to finally get to this legislation being here today. I am so excited about it.

Madam Speaker, we have been hearing about this issue for a very long time, and I appreciate Congressman Pascrell pushing it for as long as he did. Here we finally are. Totally bipartisan, this bill passed unanimously out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, but it took some work for us to finally get here. I am very happy that we have.

The bill really has three separate parts.

One is that we make sure that the price consumers think they are going to pay when they first go online or see an advertisement is the price they will pay. Right now, many consumers have found they think they know the price when they go online, but when they finally finish and are at the end of the contract that they want to sign, they find that it could be 10, 20, 30, 40 percent more than they thought it was going to be.

That is a decision moment. Are they going to be able to go to that venue? Are they going to be able to go to that concert? Are they going to be able to go to that ballpark or to that game? Can they really afford it? Their children are begging to be able to go to that concert, yet it is far more than they thought it was going to be.

This legislation will finally put an end to those hidden prices. The price consumers see is the price that they will pay.

Number two, for refunds, how many times have people gotten tickets and then found out that the concert or the event has actually been canceled? Now, they will have to be compensated fully if that happens.

The third is the scammers. There are websites that are fake that are hooking in people to buy from them, and now under this legislation, the Federal Trade Commission will go strongly after them.

This is not necessarily one of these pieces of legislation that saves your life, as we have heard today from the Energy and Commerce Committee, but it is one of the great aggravations that lots of families face when they want to have that special day.

I am very happy not only for consumers but also for artists and also for the venues that are going to benefit from this legislation.

I certainly urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this important legislation, and once again, I applaud the bipartisan effort of all the players who were involved in getting this passed.

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