CONSTRUCTS Act of 2025
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Rep. Ciscomani, Juan [R-AZ-6]
ID: C001133
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Joy, another bill that's going to "help" people by throwing money at a problem and hoping it sticks. The CONSTRUCTS Act of 2025 is a perfect example of how politicians think they can fix complex issues with simplistic solutions.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The main purpose of this bill is to expand the capacity of junior or community colleges and area career and technical education schools to provide training services, education, and outreach activities for careers in the residential construction industry. Because, you know, what America really needs is more unskilled laborers who can't even afford a decent place to live.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to establish a program that awards grants to eligible entities (junior or community colleges, area career and technical education schools, and providers of training services) to expand their capacity to provide training services, education, and outreach activities for careers in residential construction. The grants will be awarded on a competitive basis, because nothing says "fair" like a bureaucratic process that favors those with the most connections.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties include:
* Junior or community colleges * Area career and technical education schools * Providers of training services * Incumbent workers (because they need retraining, apparently) * Individuals in rural areas (who will somehow magically benefit from this bill) * Opportunity youth (whatever that means) * In-school youth (because they're not already overwhelmed with schoolwork) * Underserved populations (a.k.a. anyone who's not white and middle-class)
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The potential impact of this bill is to create a new generation of unskilled laborers who will be exploited by the construction industry. The implications are:
* More money will be wasted on bureaucratic programs that don't actually address the root causes of poverty and lack of affordable housing. * The construction industry will continue to exploit workers, paying them minimum wage for backbreaking work while executives reap the benefits. * The bill's focus on "underserved populations" is just a euphemism for "we're going to throw some crumbs at minorities and pretend we care." * The grant process will be a bureaucratic nightmare, favoring those with connections over those who actually need the funding.
In short, this bill is a Band-Aid solution that doesn't address the underlying issues of poverty, lack of affordable housing, and exploitation in the construction industry. But hey, at least it sounds good on paper, right?
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Rep. Ciscomani, Juan [R-AZ-6]
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
— 341 — Department of Education market prices and signals to influence educational borrowing, introducing consumer-driven accountability into higher education. Pell grants should retain their current voucher-like structure. If Congress is unwilling to reform federal student aid, then the next Adminis- tration should consider the following reforms: l Switch to fair-value accounting from FCRA accounting, and l Consolidate all federal loan programs into one new program that 1. Utilizes income-driven repayment, 2. Includes no interest rate subsidies or loan forgiveness, 3. Includes annual and aggregate limits on borrowing, and 4. Requires “skin in the game” from colleges to help hold them accountable for loan repayment. The Biden Administration has mercilessly pillaged the student loan portfolio for crass political purposes without regard to the needs of current taxpayers or future students. This must never happen again. l As detailed in Section III, the next Administration should work with Congress to spin off federal student aid into a new government corporation with professional governance and management. NEW POLICY PRIORITIES FOR 2025 AND BEYOND New Legislation That Should Be Prioritized For nearly 250 years, Congress has incorporated public and private institutions, including banks, the District of Columbia’s city government, and other organiza- tions that federal officials deem to be conducting operations in the public interest. Such charters offer a certain status to organizations, often viewed as a “seal of approval” according to one Congressional Research Service report, which can help these organizations in their fundraising and other advocacy efforts. When the nation’s largest teacher association, the National Education Associ- ation (NEA), cites its federal charter, it lends the NEA a level of significance and suggests an effectiveness that is not supported by evidence. In fact, the NEA and the nation’s other large teacher union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), — 342 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise use litigation and other efforts to block school choice and advocate for additional taxpayer spending in education. They also lobbied to keep schools closed during the pandemic. All of these positions run contrary to robust research evidence showing positive outcomes for students from education choice policies; there is no conclusive evidence that more taxpayer spending on schools improves student outcomes; and evidence finds that keeping schools closed to in-person learning resulted in negative emotional and academic outcomes for students. Furthermore, the union promotes radical racial and gender ideologies in schools that parents oppose according to nationally representative surveys. l Congress should rescind the National Education Association’s congressional charter and remove the false impression that federal taxpayers support the political activities of this special interest group. This move would not be unprecedented, as Congress has rescinded the federal charters of other organizations over the past century. The NEA is a demonstrably radical special interest group that overwhelmingly supports left-of-center policies and policymakers. l Members should conduct hearings to determine how much federal taxpayer money the NEA has used for radical causes favoring a single political party. Parental Rights in Education and Safeguarding Students l Federal officials should protect educators and students in jurisdictions under federal control from racial discrimination by reinforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and prohibiting compelled speech. Specifically, no teacher or student in Washington, D.C., public schools, Bureau of Indian Education schools, or Department of Defense schools should be compelled to believe, profess, or adhere to any idea, but especially ideas that violate state and federal civil rights laws. By its very design, critical race theory has an “applied” dimension, as its found- ers state in their essays that define the theory. Those who subscribe to the theory believe that racism (in this case, treating individuals differently based on race) is appropriate—necessary, even—making the theory more than merely an analyti- cal tool to describe race in public and private life. The theory disrupts America’s Founding ideals of freedom and opportunity. So, when critical race theory is used as part of school activities such as mandatory affinity groups, teacher training programs in which educators are required to confess their privilege, or school
Introduction
— 341 — Department of Education market prices and signals to influence educational borrowing, introducing consumer-driven accountability into higher education. Pell grants should retain their current voucher-like structure. If Congress is unwilling to reform federal student aid, then the next Adminis- tration should consider the following reforms: l Switch to fair-value accounting from FCRA accounting, and l Consolidate all federal loan programs into one new program that 1. Utilizes income-driven repayment, 2. Includes no interest rate subsidies or loan forgiveness, 3. Includes annual and aggregate limits on borrowing, and 4. Requires “skin in the game” from colleges to help hold them accountable for loan repayment. The Biden Administration has mercilessly pillaged the student loan portfolio for crass political purposes without regard to the needs of current taxpayers or future students. This must never happen again. l As detailed in Section III, the next Administration should work with Congress to spin off federal student aid into a new government corporation with professional governance and management. NEW POLICY PRIORITIES FOR 2025 AND BEYOND New Legislation That Should Be Prioritized For nearly 250 years, Congress has incorporated public and private institutions, including banks, the District of Columbia’s city government, and other organiza- tions that federal officials deem to be conducting operations in the public interest. Such charters offer a certain status to organizations, often viewed as a “seal of approval” according to one Congressional Research Service report, which can help these organizations in their fundraising and other advocacy efforts. When the nation’s largest teacher association, the National Education Associ- ation (NEA), cites its federal charter, it lends the NEA a level of significance and suggests an effectiveness that is not supported by evidence. In fact, the NEA and the nation’s other large teacher union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT),
Introduction
— 348 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise materials, private school tuition, transportation and more—accounts modeled after the accounts in Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and seven other states. l Members of Congress should design the same account system for students in active-duty military families, including students attending schools that receive funding under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).18 Heritage Foundation research found that if even 10 percent of the students eli- gible for accounts under such a proposal transferred from an assigned school to an education savings account, the change for the sending district would be 0.1 percent of that school district’s K–12 budget. Even in heavily impacted districts (districts with a large number of students receiving Impact Aid), the budgetary effect would be less than 2 percent. Yet these children would then have the chance to receive a customized education that meets their unique needs. As with state ESA programs, families who are homeschooling are distinct in statute from families who use an ESA to customize an education at home. Furthermore, research from the Claremont Institute used documents pro- vided by a whistleblower demonstrating how educators at Department of Defense schools around the world are using radical gender theory and critical race theory in their lessons. This instructional material discards biology in favor of political indoctrination and applies critical race theory’s core tenets advocating for more racial discrimination. Such ideas are highly unpopular among parents, accord- ing to nationally representative surveys, and the course material attempts to indoctrinate students with radical ideas about race and the ambiguous concept of “gender.” Finally, schools on tribal lands and under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) are among the worst-performing public schools in the country. Research from Rep. Burgess Owens’ office reports that the graduation rate for BIE students is 53 percent, lower than the average for Native American students in public schools around the country, and nearly 30 percentage points lower than the national average for all students. In 2015, Arizona lawmakers expanded the state’s education savings account program to include children living on tribal lands, and by 2021, nearly 400 Native American children were using the accounts. l Federal officials should design a federal education savings account option for all children attending BIE schools. The next Administration should make the K–12 systems under federal juris- diction examples of quality learning opportunities and education freedom. — 349 — Department of Education Washington should convert some of the lowest-performing public school systems in the country into areas defined by choices, creating rigorous learning options for all children and from all backgrounds, income levels, and ethnicities. Expand Education Choice Through Portability of Existing Federal Funds Setting education policy on the right track long term would require sunsetting the U.S. Department of Education altogether. Doing so would not result in fewer resources and less assistance for children with special needs or from low-income families. Rather, closing the federal behemoth would better target existing taxpayer resources already set aside for these students by shifting oversight responsibilities to federal and state agencies that have more expertise in helping these populations. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the federal law gov- erning taxpayer spending on K–12 students with special needs. The law stipulates that students have a right to a “free and appropriate education,” and 95 percent of children with special needs attend assigned public schools. The education is not always appropriate, however: Special education is fraught with legal battles. Some argue that the education of children with special needs is the most litigated area of K–12 education. Thus, despite a nearly 50-year-old federal law that sees regular revision and reauthorization and approximately $13.5 billion per year in federal taxpayer spending, parents still struggle to establish intervention plans for their students with public school district officials regarding the physical and educational requirements for their children with special needs. State-level education options often exclusively serve children with special needs for these very reasons. Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina, to name a few states, all have education savings accounts or K–12 private school scholarship options for children with special needs. l Federal lawmakers should move IDEA oversight and implementation to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. l Officials should then consider revising IDEA to require that a child’s portion of the federal taxpayer spending under the law be made available to families so parents can choose how and where a child learns. l IDEA already allows families to choose a private school under certain conditions, but federal officials should update the law so that families can use their child’s IDEA spending for textbooks, education therapies, personal tutors, and other learning expenses, similar to the way in which parents use education savings accounts in states such as Arizona and Florida. These micro-education savings accounts
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.