To track taxpayer dollars sent to adversarial countries and foreign entities of concern, and for other purposes.
Sponsored by
Rep. Stefanik, Elise M. [R-NY-21]
ID: S001196
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, brought to you by the esteemed members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The TRACKS Act (because who doesn't love a good acronym?) claims to track taxpayer dollars sent to adversarial countries and foreign entities of concern. How noble. In reality, it's just another exercise in bureaucratic posturing, designed to make politicians look like they're doing something about the "problem" of foreign aid.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (because that one was working so well) to require reporting on subawards given to entities in countries or organizations deemed "of concern." Oh, the horror! It's not like we've been giving money to questionable regimes for decades already. The new guidance will ensure consistency across agencies, because heaven forbid they might have to think for themselves.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects: federal agencies, prime award recipients (i.e., contractors), and covered subaward recipients (i.e., foreign entities). But let's be real, the only ones who'll actually be affected are the bureaucrats tasked with implementing this mess. The rest will just find ways to circumvent or exploit the new regulations.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The impact? Zilch. This bill is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. It won't stop foreign aid from being misused or diverted; it'll just create more paperwork and red tape for everyone involved. The implications? More money wasted on bureaucratic overhead, more opportunities for corruption and cronyism, and more chances for politicians to grandstand about "transparency" while doing nothing meaningful.
Diagnosis: This bill is suffering from a bad case of "Legislative Theater-itis," where the symptoms are all show and no substance. The underlying disease? A severe lack of accountability, coupled with an overdose of bureaucratic self-preservation. Treatment? A healthy dose of skepticism, followed by a strong prescription of transparency and actual reform.
Prognosis: This bill will likely pass with flying colors, because who doesn't love the idea of "tracking" taxpayer dollars? But don't be fooled – it's just another example of Congress playing doctor, while the patient (the American people) continues to suffer from the real disease: a corrupt and ineffective government.
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
No campaign finance data available for Rep. Stefanik, Elise M. [R-NY-21]
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
— 267 — Agency for International Development benefits financially from extending and expanding these large-scale programs for years, even decades, ensures little scrutiny of these ever-increasing appropriations. The massive growth in “emergency” aid distorts humanitarian responses, wors- ens corruption in the countries we support, and exacerbates the misery of those we intend to help. The permanence of this assistance, particularly in countries where we have little to no in-country presence and must rely on U.N. agencies to self-monitor, has morphed into a co-governance scheme in which the U.S. govern- ment effectively finances the social services obligations of corrupt regimes that threaten the United States. These governments can then redirect scarce budget resources away from costly health and education toward financing their wars, sup- porting terrorism, repressing their citizens, and enriching themselves. Examples of this abuse are spread throughout the world. l Over the past decade, the U.S. government has expended $14 billion in aid to Syria where the bloody regime of Bashar al-Assad—a close ally of Iran and Russia—skims nearly half of foreign aid through inflated official exchange rates, the diversion of food baskets to its military units, and procurement arrangements with compromised local contractors. l Yemen, once the breadbasket of the Arabian Peninsula, is now dependent on billions of dollars of aid as formerly productive Yemeni farmers cannot compete against “free food” while irrigation systems remain in disrepair, leaving the country to suffer from water shortages during long summer droughts and flooding during its rainy season. Iran-backed Houthi rebels divert substantial amounts of aid to support their war efforts. l In Afghanistan, the aid infrastructure built over 20 years of American military presence that three Presidents wanted to end collapsed with the failure of U.S.-trained Afghan forces to repel the Taliban’s 2021 advances. Yet the country has received nearly $1 billion more in U.S. humanitarian aid since the Taliban’s takeover and absent a U.S. embassy to ensure that it is not diverted to the Taliban and other terrorist groups. l In Burma, U.S. aid finances all of the food and medical care for hundreds of thousands of persecuted Rohingya that the military regime forces to live in open-air concentration camps. l In northern Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis—targeted for genocidal extermination by ISIS—remain in miserable camps unable to return home because of the Iraqi government’s refusal to clear out Iran-backed militias occupying their homeland. — 268 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise In effect, humanitarian aid is sustaining war economies, creating financial incentives for warring parties to continue fighting, discouraging governments from reforming, and propping up malign regimes. Nefarious actors reap billions of dollars in profits from diversions of our human- itarian assistance, but so do international organizations. The WFP charges 36 percent in overhead while Oxfam International’s overhead has reached 70 percent in Yemen, reflecting the high costs of foreign staff, security, and logistics. With pow- erful lobbies in Washington, D.C., and in leadership positions throughout USAID and the Department of State, the aid industry adroitly exploits Congress’s dispo- sition to increase funding year on year to assist those in dire need but provides no evidence to justify the mounting budget requests. In 2020, USAID’s leadership fused formerly bifurcated food and nonfood emergency relief operations into a single Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance to improve the management of the agency’s largest portfolio, but this reform was not sufficient to address the problem. The next Administration should resize and repurpose USAID’s humanitarian aid portfolio to restore its original purpose of providing emergency short-term relief, prepare vulnerable communities for tran- sition, and do no harm in the following ways: l Work with Congress to make deep cuts in the IDA budget by ending programs that do more harm than good in places controlled by malign actors, such as in Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan, where our aid is consumed by fraud, diversion, and partner overhead costs. l Require USAID and the State Department to devise country-based exit strategies that term-limit the duration of humanitarian responses and transition funding from emergency to development projects. This will require robust diplomacy to press host governments to integrate displaced persons in lieu of keeping them in expensive and dehumanizing camps financed by the international community. l Transition from large awards to expensive, inefficient, and corrupt U.N. agencies, global NGOs, and contractors to local, especially faith-based, entities that are already operating on the ground. This approach provides a far less expensive and more effective alternative for aid delivery. Local partners more ably navigate corrupt environments and are more likely to steer vulnerable populations away from dependence on aid toward self-sufficiency. l Require that BHA avail itself of existing IDA authorities that it fails to use, including to dispense with the cost-reimbursement model that disqualifies
Introduction
— 267 — Agency for International Development benefits financially from extending and expanding these large-scale programs for years, even decades, ensures little scrutiny of these ever-increasing appropriations. The massive growth in “emergency” aid distorts humanitarian responses, wors- ens corruption in the countries we support, and exacerbates the misery of those we intend to help. The permanence of this assistance, particularly in countries where we have little to no in-country presence and must rely on U.N. agencies to self-monitor, has morphed into a co-governance scheme in which the U.S. govern- ment effectively finances the social services obligations of corrupt regimes that threaten the United States. These governments can then redirect scarce budget resources away from costly health and education toward financing their wars, sup- porting terrorism, repressing their citizens, and enriching themselves. Examples of this abuse are spread throughout the world. l Over the past decade, the U.S. government has expended $14 billion in aid to Syria where the bloody regime of Bashar al-Assad—a close ally of Iran and Russia—skims nearly half of foreign aid through inflated official exchange rates, the diversion of food baskets to its military units, and procurement arrangements with compromised local contractors. l Yemen, once the breadbasket of the Arabian Peninsula, is now dependent on billions of dollars of aid as formerly productive Yemeni farmers cannot compete against “free food” while irrigation systems remain in disrepair, leaving the country to suffer from water shortages during long summer droughts and flooding during its rainy season. Iran-backed Houthi rebels divert substantial amounts of aid to support their war efforts. l In Afghanistan, the aid infrastructure built over 20 years of American military presence that three Presidents wanted to end collapsed with the failure of U.S.-trained Afghan forces to repel the Taliban’s 2021 advances. Yet the country has received nearly $1 billion more in U.S. humanitarian aid since the Taliban’s takeover and absent a U.S. embassy to ensure that it is not diverted to the Taliban and other terrorist groups. l In Burma, U.S. aid finances all of the food and medical care for hundreds of thousands of persecuted Rohingya that the military regime forces to live in open-air concentration camps. l In northern Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis—targeted for genocidal extermination by ISIS—remain in miserable camps unable to return home because of the Iraqi government’s refusal to clear out Iran-backed militias occupying their homeland.
Introduction
— 691 — 22 DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY William L. Walton, Stephen Moore, and David R. Burton INTRODUCTION The U.S. Treasury Department has a broad regulatory and policy reach. The next Administration should make major policy changes to: (1) reduce regulatory impediments to economic growth that reduce living standards and endanger pros- perity; (2) reduce regulatory compliance costs that increase prices and cost jobs; (3) promote fiscal responsibility; (4) promote the international competitiveness of U.S. businesses; and (5) better respect the American people’s due process and privacy rights. These goals should be accomplished through: executive action (primar- ily treasury orders and treasury directives) and departmental reorganization; rulemakings; promoting constructive policies in Congress; actions in international organizations; and treaties. The primary subject matter focus of the incoming Administration’s Treasury Department should be: l Tax policy and tax administration; l Fiscal responsibility; l Improved financial regulation; l Addressing the economic and financial aspects of the geopolitical threat posed by China and other hostile countries; — 692 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Reform of the anti-money laundering and beneficial ownership reporting systems; l Reversal of the racist “equity” agenda of the Biden Administration; and l Reversal of the economically destructive and ineffective climate-related financial-risk agenda of the Biden Administration. BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TREASURY DEPARTMENT The Biden Administration Treasury Department has failed badly in achieving every one of the agency’s core objectives. The financial affairs of the nation have seldom been in worse condition, with the national debt expanding by more than $4 trillion in Biden’s first two years in office. No President in modern times—perhaps ever—has been more fiscally reckless than has the Biden Administration. The soundness and stability of U.S. currency, the dollar, has been put at risk because of the worst inflation in four decades. American families have been made poorer by Biden’s economic strategy of taxing, spending, borrowing, regulating, and printing money. The average family has seen real annual earn- ings fall about $6,000 during the Biden Administration.1 In 2022, the average American’s 401(k) plan dropped in value from $130,700 to $103,900—more than 20 percent.2 Why has the Biden Administration failed to achieve virtually all components of its mission? Under the leadership of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the depart- ment has made “equity” and “climate change” among its top five priorities. The next Administration must act decisively to curtail activities that fall outside Trea- sury’s mandate and primary mission. Treasury must refocus on its core missions of promoting economic growth, prosperity, and economic stability. For a clear statement of Treasury’s mission drift, one need look no further than Secretary Yellen’s introduction in the Treasury Department’s Fiscal Year 2022–2026 Strategic Plan: We will have to address the structural problems that have plagued our economy for decades: the decline in labor force participation, income and racial inequality, and serious underinvestment in crucial public goods like childcare, education, and physical infrastructure. And then there are rising challenges, like climate change, which, left unchecked, will undermine every aspect of our economy from supply chains to the financial system.3 Treasury’s mission drift into a “woke” agenda, is exemplified in a comparison of Domestic Finance’s changed responsibilities from 2015 to 2023:
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.