Recognizing the difficult challenges Black veterans faced when returning home after serving in the Armed Forces, their heroic military sacrifices, and their patriotism in fighting for equal rights and for the dignity of a people and a Nation.
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Rep. Beatty, Joyce [D-OH-3]
ID: B001281
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Bill Summary
Another meaningless resolution from our esteemed Congress, designed to make politicians feel good about themselves while accomplishing nothing of substance.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** This concurrent resolution is a feel-good exercise in self-congratulation, recognizing the "difficult challenges" faced by Black veterans and their "heroic military sacrifices." The main objective is to provide a platform for politicians to grandstand and pretend they care about the welfare of Black veterans.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** There are no actual provisions or changes to existing law. This resolution is purely symbolic, a hollow gesture devoid of any tangible benefits for Black veterans. It's a masterclass in legislative theater, where politicians get to pat themselves on the back without doing any real work.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The only parties affected by this resolution are the politicians who sponsored it and the voters they're trying to dupe into thinking they care about Black veterans. In reality, this resolution will have zero impact on the lives of actual Black veterans, who continue to face systemic barriers in healthcare, education, and employment.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The potential impact of this resolution is precisely nothing. It won't improve the lives of Black veterans or address the systemic issues they face. Instead, it will serve as a distraction from the real problems plaguing our country, allowing politicians to pretend they're doing something meaningful while actually accomplishing nothing.
In short, this resolution is a classic case of "legislative placebo effect," where politicians prescribe a symbolic gesture instead of actual policy changes. It's a cynical ploy to manipulate public opinion and maintain the status quo of systemic inequality.
As I always say, "Everybody lies." In this case, the lie is that our politicians care about Black veterans. The truth is they only care about their own self-interest and re-election prospects. Wake up, folks!
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Rep. Beatty, Joyce [D-OH-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
— 644 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise In sum, the VA for the foreseeable future will experience significant fiscal, human capital, and infrastructure crosswinds and risks. Budgets are at historic highs, and with a workforce now above 400,000, the VA is contending with a lack of new veteran enrollees to offset the declining population of older veterans. Recruitment of medical and benefits personnel has become more challenging. Veterans are migrating from the northern states to the southern and western states for retirement and employment. Meanwhile, VA information technol- ogy (IT) is struggling to keep pace with the evolution of patient care and record keeping. Consequently, VA leaders in the next Administration must be wise and courageous political strategists, experienced managers to run day-to-day oper- ations more effectively, innovators to address the changing veteran landscape, and agile “fixers” to mitigate and repair systemic problems created or ignored by the present leadership team. VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION (VHA) Needed Reforms l Rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery. Neither aligns with service-connected conditions that would warrant VA’s providing this type of clinical care, and both follow the Left’s pernicious trend of abusing the role of government to further its own agenda. l Focus on the effects of shifting veteran demographics. At least during the next decade, the VA will experience a significant generational shift in its overall patient population. Of the approximately 18 million veterans alive today, roughly 9.1 million are enrolled for VA health care, and 6.4 million of these enrollees use VA health care consistently. These 6.4 million veterans are split almost evenly between those who are over age 65 and those who are under age 65, but the share of VA’s health care dollars is spent predominantly in the over-65 cohort. That share increases significantly as veterans live longer and use the VHA system at a higher rate. VHA enrollments of new users are increasingly at risk of being exceeded by the deaths of current enrollees, primarily because significant numbers of the Vietnam generation are reaching their life expectancy. The generational transition from Vietnam-era veterans to post-9/11 veterans will take several years to complete. The ongoing demographic transition is a catalyst for needed assessments of how the VA can improve the delivery of care to a numerically declining and differently dispersed national population — 645 — Department of Veterans Affairs of veterans—a population that is more active, reaching middle age or retirement age, and migrating for lifestyle and career reasons. At the center of the VHA’s evolution during this generational transition is an ongoing tension, some of it politically contrived, between Direct Care for Veterans provided from inside the VHA system and Community Care for Veterans who are referred to private providers participating in the VHA’s two Community Care Networks (CCNs). In recent years, the budget for Community Care has grown as demand from veterans has risen sharply, sometimes outpacing the budgets for Community Care at individual VAMCs. The Trump Administration made Community Care part of its “Veteran- centric” approach to ensure that veterans would be able to participate more fully in their health care decisions and have options if or when the VHA was unable to meet their needs. The Biden Administration has watered down that effort, has sought various procedural ways to slow the rate of referrals to private doctors, and at some facilities is reportedly manipulating the Community Care access standards required by the VA MISSION Act of 2018. If the makeup of Congress is favorable in 2025, the next Administration should rapidly and explicitly codify VA MISSION Act access standards in legislation to prevent the VA from avoiding or watering down the requirements in the future. First and foremost, a veterans bill of rights is needed so that veterans and VA staff know exactly what benefits veterans are entitled to receive, with a clear process for the adjudication of disputes, and so that staff ensure that all veterans are informed of their eligibility for Community Care. Currently, veterans are not routinely and consistently told that they are eligible for Community Care unless they request information or are given a referral. l To strengthen Community Care, the next Administration should create new Secretarial directives to implement the VA MISSION Act properly. Sections for consideration and areas for reform include the following: 1. Sections 101 and 103 (Community Care eligibility for access standards and the best medical interest of the veteran). 2. Section 104 (Community Care access standards and standards for quality of care).
Introduction
— 653 — Department of Veterans Affairs l Manage the relationship with organized labor effectively and proactively. 1. Ensure that any agenda that includes labor/civil service reform in the VA has a clear direction from the Secretarial level, support from the General Counsel, alignment with the Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration, and a unified and strong political will to carry it out. Without those elements, labor reforms are very difficult to accomplish. 2. Ensure that each senior leader in the process gets buy-in from reform- minded career employees willing to accept and support change. Those mid-level and senior-level managers exist, but they will need to be identified early and shown trust and confidence. 3. Ensure that the White House communicates the labor reform agenda swiftly. Trump Administration executive orders on civil service reform (official time, government-furnished office space) were issued too late, and departments and agencies were not prepared to execute them. 4. Anticipate the inevitable opportunities for legal challenges from organized labor, and be prepared for them to happen and be dragged out—which makes early, decisive timing all the more important. 5. Ensure that the White House is prepared to support a concerted and deliberate effort on implementation to avoid perceptions of a disconnected strategy and disaggregated effort. 6. Remain mindful of which labor contracts end, when they end, and what the agency’s goals for renegotiation are. If not done effectively, contract end dates will be missed or lack notification. It is therefore essential to have a clear strategy with respect to what leadership wants from a new contract: Do not make the perfect the enemy of the good in contract negotiations. l Work with Congress to sunset the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP). OAWP was well intentioned when formed, but it is redundant with the activities of supervisors as well as equal employment opportunity, Office of the Inspector General, Office of Special Counsel, and other policies, programs, and procedures for holding employees accountable. This redundancy results in lengthy investigations, gaps in coverage, and an overall ineffective method of employee and supervisor accountability. — 654 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Consider decoupling HRA and the Office of Security and Preparedness (OSP). When Congress directed that the OAWP be established, it did not include authorities for a new Assistant Secretary position; consequently, the OSP was combined with HRA to free a PAS position. The functions of HRA and OSP are dissimilar and thus create an organization that is difficult to staff with the talent needed to execute both missions effectively. AUTHOR’S 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 Darin Selnick, Paul R. Lawrence, and Christopher Anderson deserve special mention. The author alone assumes responsibility for the content of this chapter, and no views expressed herein should be attributed to any other individual.
Introduction
— 655 — Department of Veterans Affairs ENDNOTES 1. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Division, VHA Directive 1003, “VHA Veteran Patient Experience,” April 14, 2020, pp. 1 and B-1. 2. S. 2372, VA Mission Act of 2018, Public Law No. 115-182, 115th Congress, June 6, 2018, https://www.congress. gov/115/plaws/publ182/PLAW-115publ182.pdf (accessed January 30, 2023). 3. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA History Office, “VA History,” last updated May 27, 2021, https://www. va.gov/HISTORY/VA_History/Overview.asp (accessed January 28, 2023). 4. 38 U.S. Code § 1116, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/38/1116 (accessed January 28, 2023). 5. S. 3373, Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022 (Honoring Our PACT Act of 2022), Public Law No. 117-168, 117th Congress, August 10, 2022, https://www. congress.gov/117/plaws/publ168/PLAW-117publ168.pdf (accessed January 28, 2023). 6. H.R. 2471, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Public Law No. 117-103, 117th Congress, March 15, 2022, Division S, Title I, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ103/PLAW-117publ103.pdf (accessed March 18, 2023). Known variously as the Department of Veterans Affairs Nurse and Physician Assistant Retention and Income Security Enhancement Act and the VA Nurse and Physician Assistant RAISE Act. 7. See note 5, supra. — 657 — Section Four THE ECONOMY The next Administration must prioritize the economic prosperity of ordi- nary Americans. For several decades, establishment “elites” have failed the citizenry by refusing to secure the border, outsourcing manufacturing to China and elsewhere, spending recklessly, regulating constantly, and generally controlling the country from the top down rather than letting it flourish from the bottom up. The proper role of government, as was articulated nearly 250 years ago, is to secure our God-given, unalienable rights in order that we might enjoy the pursuit of happiness, the benefits of free enterprise, and the blessings of liberty. Finding the right approach to trade policy is key to the fortunes of everyday Americans. In Chapter 26, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute Kent Lassman and former White House director of trade and manufacturing policy Peter Navarro debate what an effective conservative trade policy would look like. Lass- man argues that the best trade policy is a humble, limited-government approach that would encourage free trade with all nations. He maintains that aggressive trade policies involve an increased government role that future leftist Administra- tions will utilize to push “climate change” and “equity”-based activism. Focusing more on gross domestic product (GDP) growth than on median income, he writes that “people mistakenly believe that U.S. manufacturing and the U.S. economy are in decline” when in truth “American manufacturing output is currently at an all-time high.” Meanwhile, we continue to experience “record-setting real GDP” despite our “long-run decline in manufacturing employment.” Lassman does not think that an aggressive U.S. trade policy would lead to more manufacturing jobs. Rather, he writes, “Federal Reserve research shows” that the
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
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.