WASHINGTON — Help for dealing with annoying, persistent and downright weird robocalls is coming. Slowly.

Washington, D.C. has launched an aggressive effort to hunt down scammers and make it easier for consumers to block them. Legislation passed this month by the Senate and the House will trigger an aggressive push to crack down on billions of unwanted calls.

The new push would allow fines of $10,000 per scammer call, give the Federal Communications Commission strong new clout to go after them, and require phone providers to block unauthorized calls. It will also help stop the faking of caller IDs, so consumers will know who is actually calling.

Paul Florack, vice president of product management and development at Transaction Network Services, a telecom solutions providers, said consumers are likely to see these changes in a few years:

- Many spam calls will simply be blocked so consumers won’t get them at all.

- If a spam call gets through, new technology will alert the consumer with a warning such as “potential spam.”

- If a call is legitimate, some symbol — like a check mark — will show up on caller ID.

Alex Quilici, chief executive officer at YouMail, which tracks and studies robocalls, called the legislation “a good first step. You’re going to see gradual improvement.”

“The bill moves the fight forward on robocalls,” added Margot Saunders, senior counsel at the National Consumer Law Center.

The bill won’t suddenly stop the calls, and it will take awhile before any significant effect is felt. Scammers are adept at creating new ways around enforcement efforts, and business interests have concerns about the government initiatives.

While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has not taken a position on the bill, it supports efforts to stop illegal robocalls.

The chamber, though, is concerned that legitimate calls will be blocked. What, officials ask, will happen to robocalls informing someone their medicine is ready or their credit card identity has been stolen?

The responsibility for stopping unwanted calls in the future will remain with the FCC, which oversees the nation’s communications networks.

The FCC, state attorneys general and others have been trying for years to crack down on the calls and the callers. About 60 percent of consumer complaints this year to the FCC involve such calls.

In June, the FCC ruled that phone companies could aggressively block unwanted robocalls before they reach consumers, and Chairman Ajit Pai has proposed a rule requiring carriers to adopt a call authentication system that will allow consumers to know exactly who’s calling.

In the first 11 months of this year, YouMail found Americans received 54 billion robocalls, already up from the 47.8 billion logged in all of 2018 and 30.5 billion in 2017.

The top robocall scam involved health-related calls, the company said, followed by calls about interest rates, Social Security and student loans. Each topic was the subject of at least 100 million robocalls.