22. Department of the Treasury · Notable · Needs Congress
Return the Coast Guard and ATF to the Treasury Department
Printed page 710 22. Department of the Treasury
“Congress should examine whether to return the Treasury's former in-house law enforcement capabilities via the return of the United States Coast Guard and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.”
What has happened
- Not started
Neither agency was returned to Treasury and Congress did not examine returning them. The Coast Guard remains a service in the Department of Homeland Security under title 14; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives remains in the Department of Justice under 28 U.S.C. 599A. No bill in the 119th Congress would transfer either. Congress legislated on the Coast Guard repeatedly in the window — a Coast Guard Authorization Act passed the House and was held at the Senate desk, and more than a dozen other Coast Guard bills were introduced — and every one of them assumes and preserves its place in Homeland Security.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Queries recorded in docs/research/ch-22.md: bills.ndjson titles for Coast Guard, Alcohol, Tobacco, transfer and combinations with Treasury — 20 Coast Guard bills and 1 ATF bill, none transferring either agency; Federal Register corpus and fr-presdocu for any reorganization plan naming either agency; the Treasury press and statements indexes 2025-2026 for coast guard|atf|alcohol, tobacco|law enforcement.
The ATF bill in the corpus, H.R. 8863 (referred 2026-05-15), would add certain ATF employees to a federal workers’ compensation definition — subject-adjacent and unrelated to the ask.
- Action
- transfer
- Object
- U.S. Coast Guard and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
- ID
- 2003