Sponsored by
Rep. Mfume, Kweisi [D-MD-7]
ID: M000687
Follow the money
The bill
HRES. 187, 119th Congress — read as touching Private Equity & Hedge Funds.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
20 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Executive Office of the President of the United States" section, p. 99-102 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Placed on the House Calendar, Calendar No. 23.
April 8, 2025
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
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!
Another exercise in futility from the esteemed members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The main purpose of HRES 187 is to pretend that Congress cares about transparency and accountability. The bill requests the President to transmit information related to the termination, removal, or placement on administrative leave of Federal employees and Inspectors General of agencies. Wow, how noble.
In reality, this is a thinly veiled attempt to score political points by "investigating" the Trump administration's alleged wrongdoing. It's a classic case of "look over here, folks, while we ignore our own corruption."
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill requests documents and communications related to:
1. Federal employees placed on administrative leave or removed due to Elon Musk's involvement (because that's exactly what we need – more Musk drama). 2. The Office of Personnel Management's determination regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices being subject to reduction in force notices. 3. Documents related to the removal or termination of agency inspectors general.
These provisions are nothing but a fishing expedition, hoping to catch some juicy gossip or scandalous information to feed the 24-hour news cycle.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties include:
* Federal employees and Inspectors General who might have been terminated or removed (poor babies). * Elon Musk, because why not? * The Trump administration, which is already a punching bag for Congress. * The Office of Personnel Management, which will likely be forced to waste resources responding to this inquiry.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The potential impact of this bill is zero. Zilch. Nada. It's a symbolic gesture designed to appease the party faithful and create a false narrative about Congressional oversight.
In reality, this bill will:
* Waste taxpayer dollars on unnecessary investigations and document requests. * Provide a platform for grandstanding politicians to pontificate about transparency and accountability while ignoring their own corruption. * Further erode trust in government by perpetuating partisan theater.
Diagnosis: This bill is suffering from a severe case of "Potemkin Village Syndrome" – all show, no substance. It's a distraction from the real issues plaguing our country, and a testament to Congress's inability to address actual problems.
Rep. Mfume, Kweisi [D-MD-7]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No organization contributions found
No committee contributions found
This bill has 10 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
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Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 46 nodes and 32 connections (42 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $106,150
Showing top 16 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 3 harmed.
Section (4) mentions documents and communications between the Office of Management and Budget or the Office of Personnel Management and Elon Musk, any member, official, or non-official representative of the Trump Campaign, Trump Transition Team, or Trump Administration regarding the removal or termination of any Inspector General of an agency, which could imply increased scrutiny on private equity and hedge fund dealings with government agencies.
The mention of Elon Musk, who is associated with large tech platforms through his role in companies like Twitter (formerly), could imply that big tech platforms might face increased scrutiny or regulatory actions related to their interactions with government agencies or officials.
The mention of Elon Musk in sections (1) and (4) may imply a connection to the crypto industry, given his public involvement with cryptocurrency, particularly DOGE. Increased scrutiny on his dealings could affect the broader crypto and fintech space.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
AI Analysis:
"HRES 187 aligns with Project 2025's emphasis on presidential authority over personnel management and oversight of executive branch agencies, particularly through scrutiny of OPM, IG removals, and White House influence on federal workforce decisions."
— 67 — Executive Office of the President of the United States 33. H.R. 10230, National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976, Public Law No. 94-282, 94th Congress, May 11, 1976, https://www.congress.gov/94/statute/STATUTE-90/STATUTE-90-Pg459. pdf (accessed February 1, 2023). 34. H.R. 4346, CHIPS [Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors] and Science Act, Public Law No. 117-167, 117th Congress, August 9, 2022, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ167/PLAW-117publ167.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023). 35. S. 169, Global Change Research Act of 1990, Public Law No. 101-606, 101st Congress, November 16, 1990, https://www.congress.gov/101/statute/STATUTE-104/STATUTE-104-Pg3096.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023). 36. S. 1075, National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, Public Law No. 91-190, 91st Congress, January 1, 1970, https://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/91/190.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023). 37. Andrus v. Sierra Club, 442 U.S. 347, 358 (1979), https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep442/ usrep442347/usrep442347.pdf (accessed March 7, 2023). 38. Title XLI (41) in H.R. 22, Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), Public Law No. 114-94, 114th Congress, December 4, 2015, https://www.congress.gov/114/statute/STATUTE-129/STATUTE-129-Pg1312.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023). 39. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13807, “Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects,” August 15, 2017, in Federal Register, Vol. 82, No. 163 (August 24, 2017), pp. 40463–40469, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-08-24/ pdf/2017-18134.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023). 40. H.R. 5210, Anti-Drug Abuse of 1988, Public Law No. 100-690, 100th Congress, November 18, 1988, https://www. congress.gov/100/statute/STATUTE-102/STATUTE-102-Pg4181.pdf (accessed February 1, 2023). 41. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Executive Order 14020, “Establishment of the White House Gender Policy Council,” March 8, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 46 (March 11, 2021), pp. 13797–13801, https://www. govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-03-11/pdf/2021-05183.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023). 42. U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXV, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv (accessed March 9, 2023). 43. 50 U.S.C. § 3021(c)(1), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3021 (accessed March 9, 2023). 44. 20 U.S.C. § 20(a), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/42#:~:text=The%20business%20of%20the%20 Institution%20shall%20be%20conducted,no%20two%20of%20them%20of%20the%20same%20State (accessed March 9, 2023). 45. Vice Presidents Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson assumed (Ford) or initially assumed (Johnson) the office of the presidency by a process of succession. — 69 — 3 CENTRAL PERSONNEL AGENCIES: MANAGING THE BUREAUCRACY Donald Devine, Dennis Dean Kirk, and Paul Dans OVERVIEW From the very first Mandate for Leadership, the “personnel is policy” theme has been the fundamental principle guiding the government’s personnel management. As the U.S. Constitution makes clear, the President’s appointment, direction, and removal author- ities are the central elements of his executive power.1 In implementing that power, the people and the President deserve the most talented and responsible workforce possible. Who the President assigns to design and implement his political policy agenda will determine whether he can carry out the responsibility given to him by the American people. The President must recognize that whoever holds a government position sets its policy. To fulfill an electoral mandate, he must therefore give per- sonnel management his highest priority, including Cabinet-level precedence. The federal government’s immense bureaucracy spreads into hundreds of agen- cies and thousands of units and is centered and overseen at the top by key central personnel agencies and their governing laws and regulations. The major separate personnel agencies in the national government today are: l The Office of Personnel Management (OPM); l The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB); l The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA); and l The Office of Special Counsel (OSC).
AI Analysis:
"Both the bill and the Project 2025 excerpt concern ensuring that federal personnel decisions align with the President's agenda and removing those deemed misaligned, though the bill focuses on congressional oversight of specific actions while Project 2025 outlines internal NSC staffing reforms."
— 51 — Executive Office of the President of the United States of personnel with technical expertise and experience as well as an alignment to the President’s declared national security policy priorities. The NSC must then chart a course that articulates and achieves the President’s national security goals and objectives. The President should empower a strong NSC that not only has the power to convene the policy process, but also is entrusted with the full power of the presidency to drive the bureaucracy. In organizing (by means of Presidential Directive31) an NSC staff that is more responsive and aligned with the President’s goals and empowered to implement them, the NSA should immediately evaluate and eliminate directorates that are not aligned with the President’s agenda and replace them with new directorates as appropriate that can drive implementation of the President’s signature national security priorities. In addition to realigning the staff organization to the President’s priorities, the NSA should assign responsibility for implementation of specific policy initiatives to senior NSC officials from across the NSC staff structure. These officials should develop, direct, and execute tangible action plans in coordination with multiple agencies to achieve measurable, time-defined milestones. Aligning NSC staff to the President’s national security goals will provide clearer direction, a mandate for action, and a baseline of accountability that can be used to evaluate staff performance and the NSC’s overall progress. Accountable senior officials, themselves either political appointees or a minimum number of career detailees, who are selected and vetted politically and report directly to political staff should be the main day-to-day managers for interagency coordination and implementation of their assigned national security policy objectives. They should provide policy analysis for consideration by the broader NSC and relevant agencies and ensure timely responses to decisions made by the President. The accountable senior officials should be established at the direction of the NSA and draw on per- sonnel and expertise from beyond the NSC, including OMB, the National Economic Council, and relevant federal agencies. The NSC staff and principals should work in tandem with the National Eco- nomic Council and OMB at all levels, presenting a united effort to achieve the President’s goals and drawing on the latter’s statutory authorities to guide the bureaucracy. To accomplish national objectives effectively, foreign policy should fully incorporate the economic instruments of national power. National security policy must also include the prioritized allocation of resources. When policies are divorced from the resources required to implement them, they are stillborn—aca- demic exercises that undermine our national security and leave departments and agencies to their own devices. The accountable senior officials should be empowered to identify, recruit, clear, and hire staff who are aligned with and willing to shepherd the President’s national security priorities. NSC staff leads, under the direction of the NSA, should have the discretion to reduce the number of positions that need high-level clearances, — 52 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and the NSC should be adequately resourced and authorized to adjudicate and hold security clearances internally with investigators who work directly for the NSC and whose sole task is to clear NSC officials. If certain staff are determined not to need high-level clearances, the question becomes whether they should be part of the NSC at all. The NSC should take a leading role in directing the drafting and thorough review of all formal strategies: the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strat- egy, the Nuclear Posture Review, the Missile Defense Strategy, etc. In particular, the National Defense Strategy, which by tradition has evaded significant review, should be prioritized for White House review by the NSC and OMB. Both should also conduct reviews of operational war plans and global force planning and allo- cations with the Secretary of Defense to align them with presidential priorities and review all key policy and guidance intended for implementation by the heads of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the Intelligence Community before they are authorized for distribution. The NSC should rigorously review all general and flag officer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense matters, including climate change, critical race theory, manufactured extremism, and other polarizing policies that weaken our armed forces and discourage our nation’s finest men and women from enlisting to serve in defense of our liberty. The NSC staff will need to consolidate the functions of both the NSC and the Homeland Security Council (HSC), incorporate the recently established Office of the National Cyber Director, and evaluate the required regional and functional directorates. Given the aforementioned prerequisites, the NSC should be prop- erly resourced with sufficient policy professionals, and the NSA should prioritize staffing the vast majority of NSC directorates with aligned political appointees and trusted career officials. For instance, the NSA should return all nonessen- tial detailees to their home agencies on their first day in office so that the new Administration can proceed efficiently without the personnel land mines left by the previous stewards and as soon as possible should replace all essential detailees with staff aligned to the new President’s priorities. The HSC has overseen pandemic response, and its incorporation is important. In the end, change requires intervention, and the NSC staff should be appro- priately recruited, manned, and empowered to achieve the President’s national security and foreign policy objectives and maintain robust policy analysis and discussion while minimizing resistance from those who have an agenda or who jealously guard their resources and autonomy at the expense of national security and sound policy development. This resistance and inertia can be inadvertently enabled by a small and unempowered NSC. Additionally, the White House Chief of Staff and NSA must ensure that the NSC is functioning in tandem with the rest of the White House staff to benefit from
AI Analysis:
"HRES 187 focuses on congressional oversight of executive personnel decisions, particularly involving OMB and White House communications, which aligns with Project 2025's emphasis on OMB's role in coordinating agency communications with Congress and ensuring policy implementation. However, the bill is reactive and investigative, while Project 2025 is proactive in strengthening OMB's authority within the EOP."
— 45 — Executive Office of the President of the United States l Coordinating and clearing agency communications with Congress, including testimonies and views on draft legislation. OMB cannot perform its role on behalf of the President effectively if it is not inti- mately involved in all aspects of the White House policy process and lacks knowledge of what the agencies are doing. Internally to the EOP, ensuring that the policy-for- mulation procedures developed by the White House to serve the President include OMB is one of any OMB Director’s major responsibilities. A common meme of those who intend to evade OMB review is to argue that where “resources” are not being discussed, OMB’s participation is optional. This ignores both OMB’s role in all down- stream execution and the reality that it has the only statutory tools in the White House that are powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies. The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approxima- tion of the President’s mind as it pertains to the policy agenda while always being ready with actual options to effect that agenda within existing legal authorities and resources. This role cannot be performed adequately if the Director acts instead as the ambassador of the institutional interests of OMB and the wider bureaucracy to the White House. Once its reputation as the keeper of “commander’s intent” is established, then and only then does OMB have the ability to shape the most efficient way to pursue an objective. Externally, the Director must ensure that OMB has sufficient visibility into the deep caverns of agency decision-making. One indispensable statutory tool to that end is to ensure that policy officials—the Program Associate Directors (PADs) managing the vast Resource Management Offices (RMOs)—personally sign what are known as the apportionments. In 1870, Congress passed the Anti-Deficiency Act3 to prevent the common agency practice of spending down all appropriated funding, creating artificial funding shortfalls that Congress would have to fill. The law mandated that all funding be allotted or “apportioned” in installments. This process, whereby agencies come to OMB for allotments of appropriated funding, is essential to the effective financial stewardship of taxpayer dollars. OMB can then direct on behalf of a President the amount, duration, and purpose of any appor- tioned funding to ensure against waste, fraud, and abuse and ensure consistency with the President’s agenda and applicable laws. The vast majority of these apportionments were signed by career officials—the Deputy Associate Directors (DADs)—until the Trump Administration placed this responsibility in the hands of the PADs and thereby opened wide vistas of oversight that had escaped the attention of policy officials. The Biden Administration sub- sequently reversed this decision. No Director should be chosen who is unwilling to restore apportionment decision-making to the PADs’ personal review, who is not aggressive in wielding the tool on behalf of the President’s agenda, or who is unable to defend the power against attacks from Congress. — 46 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise It should be noted that each of OMB’s primary functions, along with other executive and statutory roles, is carried out with the help of many essential OMB support offices. The two most important offices for moving OMB at the will of a Director are the Budget Review Division (BRD) and the Office of General Counsel (OGC). The Director should have a direct and effective relationship with the head of the BRD (considered the top career official within OMB) and transmit most instructions through that office because the rest of the agency is institution- ally inclined toward its direction and responds accordingly. The BRD inevitably will translate the directions from policy officials to the career staff, and at every stage, it is obviously vital that the Director ensure that this translation is an accurate one. In addition, many key considerations involved in enacting a President’s agenda hinge on existing legal authorities. The Director must ensure the appointment of a General Counsel who is respected yet creative and fearless in his or her abil- ity to challenge legal precedents that serve to protect the status quo. This is vital within OMB not only with respect to the adequate development of policy options for the President’s review, but also with respect to agencies that attempt to protect their own institutional interests and foreclose certain avenues based on the mere assertion (and not proof) that the law disallows it or that, conversely, attempt to disregard the clear statutory commands of Congress. In general, the Director should empower a strong Deputy Director with author- ity over the Deputy for Management, the PADs, and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to work diligently to break down barriers within OMB and not allow turf disputes or a lack of visibility to undermine the agency’s prin- cipal budget, management, and regulatory functions. OMB should work toward a “One OMB” position on behalf of the President and represent that view during the various policymaking processes. Budget. The United States today faces an untenable fiscal situation and owes $31 trillion on a debt that is steadily increasing. The OMB Director should present a fiscal goal to the President early in the budget development process to address the federal government’s fiscal irresponsibility. This goal would help to align the months-long process of developing the actual proposals for inclusion in the budget. Though some mistakenly regard it as a mere paper-pushing exercise, the Pres- ident’s budget is in fact a powerful mechanism for setting and enforcing public policy at federal agencies. The budget team includes six Resource Management Offices that, together with the BRD and other components, help the Director of OMB to develop and execute detailed agency spending plans that bear on every major aspect of policy formation and execution at federal agencies. Through initial priority-setting and ongoing supervision of agency spending, OMB’s budget team plays a key role in executing policy across the executive branch, including at many agencies wrongly regarded as “independent.”
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
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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