CATCH Fentanyl Act
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Rep. Higgins, Clay [R-LA-3]
ID: H001077
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Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the 119th Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The CATCH Fentanyl Act (HR 1569) claims to establish a pilot program to assess the use of technology to speed up and enhance cargo inspection at land ports of entry along the border. How quaint. In reality, this bill is just another attempt to throw money at a problem without addressing its root causes.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill creates a pilot program for testing and assessing various technologies (AI, machine learning, high-performance computing, etc.) to improve cargo inspection efficiency and accuracy. Because what we really need is more technology to fix the problems created by our own ineptitude. The CBP Innovation Team will oversee this boondoggle, because who better to innovate than a bunch of bureaucrats?
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, technology providers, and private sector interests looking to cash in on government contracts. Don't worry, the taxpayers will foot the bill for this experiment.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a Band-Aid solution to a festering wound. By throwing more technology at the problem, we'll only create new vulnerabilities and inefficiencies. The real issue is our porous borders and lack of effective immigration policies. This bill won't stop fentanyl or other contraband from entering the country; it will merely provide a false sense of security.
In medical terms, this bill is akin to treating a patient's symptoms without addressing the underlying disease. We're not curing the problem; we're just masking its symptoms with more technology and bureaucracy. The diagnosis? A bad case of " Politician-itis" – a chronic condition characterized by an inability to think critically and a penchant for grandstanding.
In conclusion, HR 1569 is a textbook example of legislative malpractice. It's a feel-good bill that accomplishes nothing but provides a nice photo op for its sponsors. Wake me up when someone in Congress decides to tackle the real issues plaguing our nation.
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Rep. Higgins, Clay [R-LA-3]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 710 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise in-house law enforcement capabilities via the return of the United States Coast Guard and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Bringing these agencies back from the Department of Homeland Security and the Depart- ment of Justice, respectively, would allow Treasury, in the case of U.S. Coast Guard, to increase border security via a vigilance with respect to economic crimes (for example, drug smuggling and tax evasion). U.S. Trade and Development Agency. Congress should eliminate the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). The USTDA is intended to help com- panies create U.S. jobs through the export of U.S. goods and services for priority development projects in emerging economies. The USTDA links U.S. businesses to export opportunities by funding project planning activities, pilot projects, and reverse-trade missions while creating sustainable infrastructure and economic growth in partner countries. These activities more properly belong to the private sector. The best way to promote trade and development is to reduce tariff and non-tariff trade barriers. Another way is to reduce the federal budget deficit, and thereby federal borrowing from abroad, freeing more foreign dollars to be spent on U.S. exports instead of federal treasury bonds. Other Issues. Many Treasury Department issues cut across multiple parts of Treasury or other governmental agencies. Several are discussed in this chapter, but not all can be covered here in depth. Other issues of concern include China, cybersecurity, digital assets, digital services taxes, international debt defaults, Iran, Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds and private sector pensions, sanctions policy, and treasury auction and debt issuance. AUTHORS’ NOTE: The preparation of this chapter was a collective enterprise of individuals involved in the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. All contributors to this chapter are listed at the front of this volume, but Monica Crowley, Tom Dans, John Berlau, Austin Bramwell, Preston Brashers, Alexandra Harrison Gaiser, Nathan Hitchen, Adam Korzeniewski, and Jonathan Moy deserve special mention. The authors alone assume responsibility for the content of this chapter, and no views expressed herein should be attributed to any other individual. — 711 — Department of the Treasury ENDNOTES 1. EJ Antoni, “Biden Keeps Making Claims About the Economy That Just Aren’t True. These Facts Don’t Lie,” Heritage Foundation Commentary, February 8, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/ commentary/biden-keeps-making-claims-about-the-economy-just-arent-true-these. 2. “Fidelity 2022 Retirement Analysis: In the Midst of Inflation and Uncertainty, Retirement Account Balances Are Rising,” table, “Average Retirement Account Balances,” February 23, 2023, https://newsroom.fidelity.com/ pressreleases/fidelity--2022-retirement-analysis--in-the-midst-of-inflation-and-uncertainty--retirement- account-ba/s/095bb4a8-cf3a-484e-a911-bc0c61c460ff (accessed March 22, 2023). 3. See U.S. Department of the Treasury, Fiscal Year 2022–2026 Strategic Plan and Budget Request for FY 2023, 2022, https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/266/COMBINED-CJ-Web-Version-FY-2023.pdf (accessed March 18, 2023). 4. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Agency Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2015, November 16, 2015, p.4 https:// home.treasury.gov/system/files/266/AFR-FY15-508.pdf (accessed March 19, 2023). 5. Domestic Finance, U.S. Department of the Treasury https://home.treasury.gov/about/offices/domestic-finance. 6. U.S. Constitution, art. I, sec. 9. 7. Ibid., p. ES 1. 8. Including direct and reimbursable employees. See ibid., “Fiscal Year Comparison of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Staffing (Direct and Reimbursable),” p. ES 4. 9. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Offices,” https://home.treasury.gov/about/offices (accessed March 18, 2023). 10. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Bureaus,” https://home.treasury.gov/about/bureaus (accessed March 18, 2023). 11. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of the Inspector General, “Overview,” https://oig.treasury.gov (accessed March 19, 2023). 12. William M (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, Public Law 116–283, §§ 6001–6511. 13. See, for example, Timothy Vermeer, “The Impact of Individual Income Tax Changes on Economic Growth,” Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 793, June 2022, https://files.taxfoundation.org/20220610142519/The-Impact-of- Individual-Income-Tax-Changes-on-Economic-Growth-2.pdf (accessed March 18, 2023), and Karel Mertens and José Luis Montiel Olea, “Marginal Tax Rates and Income: New Time Series Evidence,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 133, No. 4 (November 2018), pp. 1803–1884. 14. The current tax system is not neutral toward investment. This neutrality criterion is sometimes expressed as ensuring that the private rate of return equals the social rate of return, that the tax system does not raise the user cost of capital, that all factor incomes are taxed once and equally, that the tax system defines income properly, or that the tax is a consumption tax. For the basic user cost of capital analysis with taxes, see Robert E. Hall and Dale W. Jorgenson, “Tax Policy and Investment Behavior,” American Economic Review, Vol. 57, No. 3 (June, 1967), pp. 391–414, https://web.stanford.edu/~rehall/Tax-Policy-AER-June-1967.pdf (accessed March 19, 2023). See also Kevin A. Hassett and Kathryn Newmark, “Taxation and Business Behavior: A Review of the Recent Literature,” in John W. Diamond and George R. Zodrow, eds., Fundamental Tax Reform: Issues, Choices, and Implications (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), and Alan J. Auerbach, “Taxation and Capital Spending,” University of California, Berkeley, September 2005, http://eml.berkeley.edu//~auerbach/capitalspending.pdf (accessed March 19, 2023). 15. Scott A. Hodge, “The Compliance Costs of IRS Regulations,” Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 512, June 2016, https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/TaxFoundation_FF512.pdf (accessed March 19, 2023), and Jason J. Fichtner and Jacob M. Feldman, “The Hidden Costs of Tax Compliance,” Mercatus Center, May 20, 2013, https:// papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2267971 (accessed March 19, 2023). 16. In formal terms, tax policy should seek to minimize the excess burden or deadweight loss of the tax system. See John Creedy, “The Excess Burden of Taxation and Why it (Approximately) Quadruples When the Tax Rate Doubles,” New Zealand Treasury Working Paper No. 03/29, December 2003, https://www.econstor.eu/ bitstream/10419/205534/1/twp2003-29.pdf (accessed March 19, 2023). See also, for example, N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics, 4th ed. (South-Western College Pub, 2006), ch. 8, or many other textbooks on price theory, microeconomics, or principles of economics.
Introduction
— 139 — Department of Homeland Security also simultaneously add efficiencies to our nation’s capacity to facilitate lawful trade and travel. The BSIA should establish clear mission requirements, responsibilities, and mandates under existing law regarding the persistent need for and utilization of U.S. military personnel and resources to assist BSIA with increasing whole-of-gov- ernment efforts and long-term strategy to secure our nation’s borders effectively. In addition, appropriate elements within the newly created BSIA should be desig- nated as part of the U.S. National Security and Intelligence Community. A conservative Administration should eliminate any prohibitive guidance, direction, or mandate from DHS or the Administration that curtails or limits CBP from publishing detailed border security and enforcement data not impacting intelligence, interdiction, and investigative operations, methods, or sources. DHS should issue a regulation mandating that CBP publish accurate and timely border security data, readily available to the public, on a regular basis that avoid White House and DHS leadership review and approval. The White House should grant the authority for CBP and DHS executives to utilize component aviation assets under the Office of Air and Marine (OAM). CBP and DHS have worldwide missions with personnel and facilities that are deployed across the globe and in every state in the U.S. With a CBP workforce alone of more than 60,000 people (240,000-plus for DHS) encompassing more than a thousand sea, land, and airports, it is essential that the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Secretary, and Deputy Secretary can travel efficiently to facilities to maintain appropriate situational awareness across the department’s vast mission set and interact with the expansive workforce. Although CBP operates one of the largest aviation components of any domestic U.S. law enforcement agency, executives are prohibited from utilizing the agency’s aviation assets to facilitate official travel. Executives are required to fly on commercial airlines, and this requirement sig- nificantly limits their ability to have classified communications and takes them offline for extended periods of time. Border Patrol (BP) and OAM should be combined within CBP. BP has more than 20,000 personnel, and OAM has approximately 1,800. OAM’s assets are dedicated in support of BP operations the vast majority of the time, yet redundant approv- als, strategies, and independent hierarchal commands serve as impediments to efficient and practical resource deployments. CBP should restart and expand use of the horseback-mounted Border Patrol. As part of this announcement, the Secretary should clear the records and personnel files of those who were falsely accused by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of whip- ping migrants and issue a formal apology on behalf of DHS and CBP. The Secretary should combine the Office of Trade (OT) and Trade Relations with the Office of Field Operations (OFO). The OT is the smallest of CBP’s compo- nents, and its operational counterpart, OFO, has a workforce of more than 30,000. — 140 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise OT’s function is interwoven with that of its OFO operational counterpart. Combin- ing OT with OFO would achieve streamlined operations and increase OT’s capacity and capability by leveraging OFO’s expansive resources. CBP, ICE, and USCIS all have authority to issue Notices to Appear (NTA) to removable aliens in their presence, which begins removal proceedings. In most instances, CBP should turn illegal aliens over to ICE for detention, and ICE can then issue any needed NTA. CBP should issue NTAs only in limited situations for humanitarian reasons, such as medical emergencies. In addition, CBP should eliminate use of Notices to Report (NTR) altogether. CBP’s established national standards of Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS) have been widely interpreted and expanded by lower courts. This has resulted in unrealistic and differing detention standards for CBP facilities based on the jurisdiction within which they fall, negatively impacting operations. ICE has suffered similarly. A single nationwide detention standard should be codified that prevents individual states from mandating that federal government agencies adhere to widely expansive and ever-changing sets of standards. Such standards should allow the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents. The annual costs associated with establishing and maintaining temporary facil- ities to address the flow of illegal migration and associated care, transportation, and processing are prohibitive, and CBP’s budget is inadequate. CBP is forced to forgo critical mission-essential endeavors to fund the additional associated costs. Often, this requires the reprogramming of funding at the DHS level, which has a negative impact on other DHS components’ operations. This predictable cost that has to be paid from existing CBP and DHS funding levels reduces CBP’s operational readiness and ability to accomplish its diverse and critical missions to protect the American people. The next President should request a realistic budget that fully pays for these costs. Increased funding is needed for BP to hire additional support personnel, which would relieve uniformed BP agents from administrative duties associated with processing aliens and allow them to return to their national security mission. Congress should increase funding for facility upgrades at strategic land Ports of Entry (POEs), including expanding state-of-the-art technology such as Non-Intru- sive Inspection equipment. Today, the cartels exploit the aging facilities and lack of adequate technology to smuggle illicit drugs, contraband, and more successfully through our nation’s POEs. U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE) Needed Reforms Since the formation of DHS, ICE has increasingly been tasked with auxiliary missions that have little or nothing to do with either immigration or customs
Introduction
— 555 — Department of Justice 1. Rigorously prosecute as much interstate drug activity as possible, including simple possession of distributable quantities.46 Recent efforts to create the impression that drug possession crimes are not serious offenses has contributed to the explosion of criminal organization activities in the United States. 2. Aggressively deploy the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO),47 which Congress expressly created to empower the Department of Justice to treat patterns of intrastate- level crimes, such as robbery, extortion, and murder, as federal criminal conduct for criminal organizations and networks. The next Administration can use existing tools while it works with Congress to develop new tools. l Secure the border,48 which is the key entry point for many criminal organizations and their supplies, products, and employees. Mexico— which is arguably functioning as a failed state run by drug cartels—is the main point of transit for illegal drugs produced in Central and South America, fentanyl precursors from the Chinese Communist Party–led People’s Republic of China,49 weapons, human smuggling and trafficking, and other contraband. Mexican drug cartels, including the dominant Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), are the main drivers of fentanyl production and distribution in the United States. The southwestern land border is sufficiently porous that Mexican drug cartels have operational control of large sections of the border, which facilitates easy movement of product and personnel. These cartels are also violent and not afraid to demonstrate force on both sides of the border. Their conduct represents a clear and present danger to the United States and its citizens. In addition to finalizing the southwestern land border wall, the next Administration should take a creative and aggressive approach to tackling these dangerous criminal organizations at the border. This could include use of active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to assist in arrest operations along the border—something that has not yet been done. A new and forceful approach to interdiction will have a ripple effect on the operations of these criminal organizations, which currently operate freely without concern for criminal prosecution, and will lay the necessary groundwork for initial prosecutions of these organizations and their leaders. It is critical that the federal government staunch the flow of drugs by preventing the far-too-easy access to the United States that now exists. — 556 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise There can be no serious dispute that the Biden Administration has opened the southwest border to whomever wants to enter and that some of those entrants are smuggling fentanyl into the country. More than 100,000 Americans died in a one-year period from opioid overdoses, and many of them died specifically from having used fentanyl.50 The federal government should treat this problem as aggressively as necessary. Enforcing the customs and immigration laws is a matter of life and death. PURSUING A NATIONAL SECURITY AGENDA AIMED AT EXTERNAL STATE AND NON-STATE ACTORS, NOT U.S. CITIZENS EXERCISING THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS The Department of Justice plays a vital role in protecting our national security, and it must not refrain from engaging in public initiatives that identify our adver- saries and educate the American people about their activities. The DOJ’s China Initiative under President Trump reflected the department’s priority of combating Chinese threats to our national security.51 Because China was accountable for approximately 80 percent of all prosecutions for economic espionage and approximately 60 percent of all thefts of trade secrets, then-At- torney General Jeff Sessions set key goals for the China Initiative that included development of an enforcement strategy concerning researchers in labs and universities who were being coopted into stealing critical U.S. technologies, iden- tification of opportunities to address supply-chain threats more effectively, and education of colleges and universities about potential threats from Chinese influ- ence efforts on campus. In February 2022, the Biden Administration terminated the department’s China Initiative largely out of a concern for poor “optics.”52 While the Biden Administra- tion correctly identified China as America’s “only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,”53 it folded in the face of political cor- rectness and sent the message that liberal sensitivities outweighed bringing justice to threats from China. The next conservative Administration should therefore: l Restart the China Initiative. l Pursue other programs to educate the American people about the real and dangerous threats to our national security and economic security that are posed by actors across the globe, most notably China and Iran. l Ensure that it is agile enough to devote sufficient resources and attention to other emerging threats that involve federal interests
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About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.