Electing Members to certain standing committees of the House of Representatives.

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Bill ID: 119/hres/162
Last Updated: March 4, 2025

Sponsored by

Rep. Aguilar, Pete [D-CA-33]

ID: A000371

Follow the money

The bill

Electing Members to certain standing committees of the House of Representatives.

HRES. 162, 119th Congress.

The sponsor

Rep. Aguilar, Pete [D-CA-33]

Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.

The money

$91,500 raised

30 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.

The alignment

55% match to Project 2025

This bill's text tracks the "Department of Homeland Security" section, p. 205-207 of the Mandate for Leadership.

Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law

Track this bill's progress through the legislative process

Latest Action

Motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.

February 24, 2025

Introduced

📍 Current Status

Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.

🏛️

Committee Review

🗳️

Floor Action

✅

Passed House

🏛️

Senate Review

🎉

Passed Congress

🖊️

Presidential Action

⚖️

Became Law

📚 How does a bill become a law?

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

Another thrilling episode of "Congressional Theater"! Let's dissect this riveting bill, shall we?

**Main Purpose & Objectives:** Oh boy, the suspense is killing me... The main purpose of HRES 162 is to elect members to certain standing committees. Wow, what a bold move! I bet the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

In all seriousness, this bill is a perfect example of "legislative busywork." It's a meaningless exercise designed to make it seem like Congress is doing something, anything, while they're actually just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** Ah, the excitement! The bill elects two members to the Committee on Agriculture and two members to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. I'm sure these appointments will have a profound impact on the course of human history... NOT.

There are no changes to existing law, just a bunch of self-congratulatory back-patting and photo ops for the newly elected committee members. It's like watching a group of toddlers playing "dress-up" in their parents' clothes.

**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** Oh, the list is endless! The affected parties include:

* The two newly elected committee members, who will now have to pretend to care about agriculture and foreign affairs. * Their constituents, who will be treated to a barrage of self-serving press releases and social media posts touting their "leadership" on these committees. * Lobbyists, who will continue to wine and dine the new committee members in an effort to influence policy (read: line their own pockets). * The American people, who will remain blissfully unaware of this meaningless exercise in bureaucratic navel-gazing.

**Potential Impact & Implications:** Ha! Don't make me laugh. This bill has all the impact of a feather in a hurricane. It's a non-event, a nothing-burger, a—well, you get the idea.

The only potential implication is that it might give some congressional staffer a chance to pad their resume with "committee experience." Wow, what a thrilling career goal!

In conclusion, HRES 162 is a textbook example of legislative fluff. It's a waste of time, money, and oxygen. But hey, at least the politicians get to pretend they're doing something important. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have better things to do... like watching paint dry.

Related Topics

Congressional Rules & ProceduresFederal Budget & Appropriations
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💰 Campaign Finance Network

Rep. Aguilar, Pete [D-CA-33]

Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle

Total Contributions
$91,500
21 donors
PACs
$0
Organizations
$91,500
Committees
$0
Individuals
$0

No PAC contributions found

1
UNITED STATES MARSHALS SERVICE
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2
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Donor Network - Rep. Aguilar, Pete [D-CA-33]

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Total contributions: $91,500

Top Donors - Rep. Aguilar, Pete [D-CA-33]

Showing top 21 donors by contribution amount

21 Orgs

Project 2025 Policy Matches

This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.

Department of Homeland Security

Weak
Vector: 55%
Pages: 205-207AI Enhanced

AI Analysis:

"HRES 162 concerns internal House committee elections, while the Project 2025 excerpt focuses on placing political appointees in the State Department; the only connection is the general theme of personnel placement for influence, but the subjects and mechanisms are unrelated."

Key themes:personnel appointmentsleadership placementinfluencecommittee assignments

— 173 — Department of State service and civil service personnel who share the President’s vision and policy agendas—to run the department. This can be done by taking these steps at the outset of the next Administration. Exert Leverage During the Confirmation Process. Notwithstanding the challenges and slowness of the modern U.S. Senate confirmation process, the next President can exert leverage on the Senate if he or she is willing to place State Department appointees directly into those roles, pending confirmation. Doing so would both ensure that the department has immediate senior political leadership and would force the Senate to act on nominees’ appointments instead of being allowed to engage in dilatory tactics that cripple the State Department’s function- ality for weeks, months, or even years. Assert Leadership in the Appointment Process. The next Administration should assert leadership over, and guidance to, the State Department by placing political appointees in positions that do not require Senate confirmation, including senior advisors, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretaries, and Deputy Assistant Sec- retaries. Given the department’s size, the next Administration should also increase the number of political appointees to manage it. To the extent possible, all non-confirmed senior appointees should be selected by the President-elect’s transition team or the new President’s Office of Presiden- tial Personnel (depending on the timing of selection) and be in place the first day of the Administration. No one in a leadership position on the morning of January 20 should hold that position at the end of the day. These recommendations do not imply that foreign service and civil service officials should be excluded from key roles: It is hard to imagine a scenario in which they are not immediately relevant to the transition of power. The main suggestion here is that as many political appoin- tees as possible should be in place at the start of a new Administration. Support and Train Political Appointees. The Secretary of State should use his or her office and its resources to ensure regular coordination among all political appointees, which should take the form of strategy meetings, trainings, and other events. The secretary should also take reasonable steps to ensure that the State Department’s political appointees are connected to other departments’ political appointees, which is critical for cross-agency effectiveness and morale. The sec- retary should capitalize on the more experienced political appointees by using them as the foundation for a mentorship program for less experienced political appointees. The interaction of political appointees must be routine and operational rather than incidental or occasional, and it must be treated as a crucial dimension for the next Administration’s success. Maximize the Value of Career Officials. Career foreign service and civil service personnel can and must be leveraged for their expertise and commit- ment to the President’s mission. Indeed, the State Department has thousands of employees with unparalleled linguistic, cultural, policy, and administrative skills, — 174 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and large numbers of them have been an enormous resource to the Secretaries of State under which they have served. The secretary must find a way to make clear to career officials that despite prior history and modes of operation, they need not be adversaries of a conservative President, Secretary of State, or the team of political appointees. Reboot Ambassadors Worldwide. All ambassadors are required to submit letters of resignation at the start of a new Administration. Previous Republican Administrations have accepted the resignations of only the political ambassadors and allowed the foreign service ambassadors to retain their posts, sometimes for months or years into a new Administration.5 The next Administration must go further: It should both accept the resignations of all political ambassadors and quickly review and reassess all career ambassadors. This review should commence well before the new Administration’s first day. Ambassadors in countries where U.S. policy or posture would substantially change under the new Administration, as well as any who have evinced hostility toward the incoming Administration or its agenda, should be recalled immediately. The priority should be to put in place new ambassadors who support the Presi- dent’s agenda among political appointees, foreign service officers, and civil service personnel, with no predetermined percentage among these categories. Political ambassadors with strong personal relationships with the President should be pri- oritized for key strategic posts such as Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United Nations, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). RIGHTING THE SHIP Ensuring the State Department is accountable for serving American citi- zens first will require—at a minimum—that the following steps be implemented immediately: Review Retroactively. Before inauguration, the President-elect’s department transition team should assess every aspect of State Department negotiations and funding commitments. Upon inauguration, the Secretary of State should order an immediate freeze on all efforts to implement unratified treaties and international agreements, allocation of resources, foreign assistance disbursements, domestic and international contracts and payments, hiring and recruiting decisions, etc., pending a political appointee-driven review to ensure that such efforts comport with the new Administration’s policies. The quality of this review is more import- ant than speed. The posture of the department during this review should be an unwavering desire to prioritize the American people—including a recognition that the federal government must be a diligent steward of taxpayer dollars. Implement Repair. The State Department must change its handling of international agreements to restore constitutional governance. Under prior Administrations, unnecessary institutional factors in the department caused

Department of Agriculture

Weak
Vector: 55%
Pages: 344-346AI Enhanced

AI Analysis:

"HRES 162 is a procedural resolution that merely fills vacancies on the House Agriculture and Foreign Affairs committees; it does not set or implement any agricultural policy. Any alignment with Project 2025's Department of Agriculture objectives is indirect and contingent on how the new members might influence future legislation."

Key themes:Agriculture CommitteeCommittee MembershipUSDA Policy Influence

— 311 — Department of Agriculture ENDNOTES 1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Summary, p.1, https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/ files/documents/2023-usda-budget-summary.pdf (accessed December 14, 2022). 2. See, for example, U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Transforming the U.S. Food System,” https://www.usda. gov/fst (accessed December 14, 2022). 3. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Summary, p.1. 4. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “USDA Celebrates 150 Years,” https://www.usda.gov/our-agency/about-usda/ history (accessed December 16, 2022). 5. The law stated, “[T]here is hereby established at the seat of government of the United States a Department of Agriculture, the general designs and duties of which shall be to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.” Gladys L. Baker et al., Century of Service: The First 100 Years of the United States Department of Agriculture, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963) p. 13, https://babel. hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4254098&view=1up&seq=33 (accessed December 16, 2022). 6. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Summary, p. 2. 7. Ibid., p. 2. 8. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Strategic Plan: Fiscal Years 2022–2026, p. 3, https://www.usda.gov/sites/ default/files/documents/usda-fy-2022-2026-strategic-plan.pdf (accessed December 14, 2022). 9. News release, “USDA Announces Framework for Shoring Up the Food Supply Chain and Transforming the Food System to Be Fairer, More Competitive, More Resilient,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, June 1, 2022, https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/06/01/usda-announces-framework-shoring-food-supply- chain-and-transforming (accessed December 14, 2022). 10. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Transforming the U.S. Food System.” 11. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Strategic Plan: Fiscal Years 2022–2026, pp. 1–2. 12. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Background on the U.S. Approach to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit,” August 4, 2021, https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Background-on-US-approach-2021-UN- Food-Systems-Summit.pdf (accessed December 14, 2022). 13. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “UN Food Systems Summit,” https://www.usda.gov/oce/sustainability/un- summit (accessed December 14, 2022). 14. Mark Bittman et al., “How a National Food Policy Could Save Millions of American Lives,” The Washington Post, November 7, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-a-national-food-policy-could- save-millions-of-american-lives/2014/11/07/89c55e16-637f-11e4-836c-83bc4f26eb67_story.html (accessed December 14, 2022); Daren Bakst and Gabriella Beaumont-Smith, “No, We Don’t Need to Transform the American Food System,” The Daily Signal, February 26, 2021, https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/02/26/ no-we-dont-need-to-transform-the-american-food-system/ (accessed December 14, 2022); and Daren Bakst, “Biden’s Food Conference Should Put People First, Not Environmental Extremism,” The Daily Signal, September 22, 2022, https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/22/bidens-food-conference-should-put-people- first-not-environmental-extremism/ (accessed December 14, 2022). 15. News release, “USDA to Invest Up to $300 Million in New Organic Transition Initiative,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, August 22, 2022, https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/08/22/usda-invest-300- million-new-organic-transition-initiative (accessed December 14, 2022). 16. Gary Baise, “Sri Lanka’s Green New Deal Was a Disaster,” Farm Futures, November 14, 2022, https://www. farmprogress.com/commentary/sri-lankas-green-new-deal-was-disaster (accessed December 16, 2022). 17. See, for example, Catherine Greene et al., “Growing Organic Demand Provides High-Value Opportunities for Many Types of Producers,” Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, February 6, 2017, https://www. ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/januaryfebruary/growing-organic-demand-provides-high-value-opportunities- for-many-types-of-producers/#:~:text=ERS%20research%20shows%20that%20many,flavor%20desired%20 by%20the%20consumer (accessed December 14, 2022), and Andrea Carlson, “Investigating Retail Price Premiums for Organic Foods,” Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, May 24, 2016, https://www.ers. usda.gov/amber-waves/2016/may/investigating-retail-price-premiums-for-organic-foods/ (accessed December 16, 2022). Further, there are many myths, such as those regarding the alleged health benefit of organic food. One

Department of Homeland Security

Minimal
Vector: 56%
Pages: 168-170AI Enhanced

AI Analysis:

"HRES 162 is a procedural resolution to fill committee vacancies in the House of Representatives and does not address any Department of Homeland Security functions, immigration enforcement, grant compliance, or leadership restructuring outlined in the Project 2025 DHS policy."

— 136 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Secure our coasts and economic zones; l Protect political leaders, their families, and visiting heads of state or government; and l Oversee transportation security. OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY (SEC) In the next Administration, the Office of the Secretary should take on the fol- lowing key issues and challenges to ensure the effective operation of DHS. Expansion of Dedicated Political Personnel. The Secretary of Homeland Security is a presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed political appointee, but for budgetary reasons, he or she has historically been unable to fund a dedi- cated team of political appointees. A key first step for the Secretary to improve front-office functions is to have his or her own dedicated team of political appoin- tees selected and vetted by the Office of Presidential Personnel, which is not reliant on detailees from other parts of the department, to help ensure the completion of the next President’s agenda. An Aggressive Approach to Senate-Confirmed Leadership Positions. While Senate confirmation is a constitutionally necessary requirement for appointing agency leadership, the next Administration may need to take a novel approach to the confirmations process to ensure an adequate and rapid transition. For example, the next Administration arguably should place its nominees for key positions into similar positions as “actings” (for example, putting in a person to serve as the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner of CBP while that person is going through the confirmation process to direct ICE or become the Secretary). This approach would both guarantee implementation of the Day One agenda and equip the department for potential emergency situations while still honoring the confirmation requirement. The department should also look to remove lower-level but nevertheless important positions that currently require Senate confirmation from the confirmation requirement, although this effort would require legislation (and might also be mooted in the event of legisla- tion that closes portions of the department that currently have Senate-confirmed leadership). Clearer, More Durable, and Political-Only Line of Succession. Based on previous experience, the department needs legislation to establish a more durable but politically oriented line of succession for agency decision-making purposes. The ideal sequence for line of succession is certainly debatable, except that in cir- cumstances where a career employee holds a leadership position in the department, that position should be deemed vacant for line-of-succession purposes and the next eligible political appointee in the sequence should assume acting authority. Further, — 137 — Department of Homeland Security individuals wielding acting Secretary authority should have explicit authority to finalize agency actions, including regulations, to ensure that the department’s homeland security mission is fulfilled. Soft Closure of Unnecessary Offices. Pending a possible presidential deci- sion to shrink or eliminate DHS itself, the next Administration will still have the obligation to protect the homeland as required by law. The Secretary therefore can and should use his or her inherent, discretionary leadership authority to “soft close” ineffective and problematic corners of the department. While those corners are to be determined, the Secretary could shift personnel, funding, and opera- tional responsibility to mission-essential components of the department, including the Office of the Secretary itself. This effort not only would make the department more efficient, but also would support a legislative move to shrink or dismantle the department by showing that the agency can fulfill national security–critical functions without its current bloated bureaucracy. Restructuring and Redistribution of Career Personnel. To strengthen political decision-making and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used legally and efficiently, the Secretary should make major changes in the distribution of career personnel throughout the department. For example, personnel from parts of the department undergoing soft closure could be redistributed to what will be workload-intensive corners of the department, including national security–critical and transparency functions. All personnel with law enforcement capacity should be removed immediately from office billets and deployed to field billets to maxi- mize law enforcement capacity. Compliance for Grants and Other Federal Funding. The next Adminis- tration should take steps to restore lawfulness and integrity to the department’s massive regimen of federal grant programs, most of which are managed and dis- tributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Secretary should direct FEMA to ensure that all FEMA-issued grant funding for states, localities, and private organizations is going to recipients who are lawful actors, can demon- strate that they are in compliance with federal law, and can show that their mission and actions support the broader homeland security mission. All applicants and potential recipients of such grant funding should be required to meet certain pre- conditions for eligibility (except for receipt of post-disaster or nonhumanitarian funding) or should simply be considered ineligible for funding. Such preconditions should include at least the following: l Certification by applicants that they comply with all aspects of federal immigration laws, including the honoring of all immigration detainers. l Certification by applicants that they are both registered with E-Verify and using E-Verify in a transparent and nonevasive manner. For states

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About These Correlations

Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.

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