Congress targets offshore call centers with federal funding ban and location disclosure rules
S. 2495 — Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 · Filed by Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Jul 29, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill requires the Department of Labor to maintain a public list of employers that move call centers or call center work overseas, making them ineligible for federal grants and guaranteed loans for 5 years (with limited exceptions for national security or job loss). It also requires companies to disclose the physical location of customer service agents at the start of calls and to offer immediate transfer to a U.S.-based agent upon request, with the FTC enforcing these disclosure rules.
Why we flagged it
The bill combines two distinct mechanisms: (1) a protectionist measure penalizing offshore call center work through federal funding restrictions, and (2) a consumer-protection measure requiring disclosure of agent location and AI use in customer service. The protectionist element dominates the bill's structure and financial consequences.
What the text implies
- The 8.3% monthly penalty on existing federal grants/loans may incentivize rapid clawback and cancellation, effectively retroactively punishing companies that received grants before offshoring—creating legal and contractual uncertainty for federal grantees.
- The disclosure requirement to transfer to U.S.-based agents 'immediately' may be operationally impossible for some businesses during off-hours or for specialized services, creating a compliance trap and potential FTC enforcement exposure.
- The bill's definition of 'call center work' is not provided in the text, leaving ambiguity about whether it covers technical support, sales, collections, or only customer service—this gap may lead to inconsistent enforcement and litigation.
- Federal contractors must perform all call center work in the U.S., but the bill does not address whether this applies to subcontractors or only prime contractors, potentially creating loopholes or cascading compliance costs.
- The FTC's authority to exclude 'classes or types' of business entities from disclosure requirements is broad and undefined, creating risk of selective enforcement or industry favoritism.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Citizens gain transparency about where customer service agents are located and a right to speak with U.S.-based agents, plus visibility into which employers offshore call center work. However, the bill may increase costs for businesses, which could be passed to consumers through higher prices or reduced service availability, and the disclosure requirements create compliance burdens that may fall on smaller firms unable to absorb them.
Who stands to gain
- U.S.-based call center operators and staffing firms
- domestic customer service outsourcing companies
- companies competing for federal contracts that do not offshore call center work
Named in the bill
Department of Labor, Federal Trade Commission, U.S. employers, Federal contractors, Call center operators, Telecommunications companies (semantic affinity: AT&T)
Where it stands
1 cosponsor: 1 Republicans.
- Jul 29, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jul 29, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
8 lobbying clients named this bill on 12 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $6,561,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 25 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 88% of bills with at least one filing.
Ruben Gallego, the sponsor, reported $477,461 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle. $2,500 of that came from 1 PAC tied to these lobbying clients.
- Entertainment Software Association — $2,810,000 on 2 filings
- Allstate Insurance Company — $1,050,000 on 2 filings
- Principal Financial Group — $910,000 on 2 filings
- Doordash, Inc. — $750,000 on 1 filing
- Communications Workers of America — $431,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 24, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (11,301 characters) on Aug 17, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 24, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress targets offshore call centers with federal funding ban and location disclosure rules” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s2495 Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.