The bill directed the Transportation Department to designate an official to coordinate human trafficking prevention efforts and called for establishing an advisory committee on human trafficking. The committee submitted a 128-page report in July 2019 that included recommendations to combat human trafficking.
Following coverage of his vote in his home newspaper, the Northwest Florida Daily News, Gaetz went on Facebook live to explain his opposition. Gaetz called the bill "mission creep" and an "expansion of the federal government" beyond what is in the Constitution.
Gaetz said when a proposed bill creates a new government entity or board, his office scrutinizes the legislation.
"Unless there is an overwhelming, compelling reason that our existing agencies in the federal government can't handle that problem, I vote no because voters in Northwest Florida did not send me to Washington to go and create more federal government," Gaetz said. "If anything, we should be abolishing a lot of the agencies at the federal level like the Department of Education, like the EPA and sending that power back to our state governments." However, Gaetz said it is important to combat human trafficking — and said when he was in the state Legislaure he worked to make it easier for prosecutors to bring cases against human traffickers. We contacted Gaetz’s congressional office to ask them to point to a bill he appeared to reference but did not receive a reply by our deadline.