https://www.cnet.com/news/congress-wants-to-put-a-stop-to-illegal-robocalls/

Americans received 47.8 billion robocalls last year, according to a Federal Communications Commission report released in February. And nearly 50 percent of those calls were from scammers. The report also highlighted that the number of complaints over illegal robocalls has been increasing, jumping from 172,000 complaints in 2015 to 232,000 complaints in 2018.

Robocalls use auto-dialers and recorded messages to make millions of phone calls. Often the numbers appear in the caller-ID appear to be from friends or neighbors when they are actually "spoofed." These calls hide the real number to trick people into answering the call. The FCC has adopted some policies to cut down on the number of calls people get, but Congress is also stepping in to ensure the agency has what it needs to give its policies teeth.