Supporting the designation of November 15, 2025, as "America Recycles Day" to raise awareness of, and promote a national discussion about, recycling, and advance the circular economy.
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Rep. Stevens, Haley M. [D-MI-11]
ID: S001215
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Bill Summary
Another meaningless resolution from the esteemed members of Congress, because what's more pressing than designating a day to "raise awareness" about recycling? I'm sure this will be the turning point in our nation's struggle against waste and environmental degradation.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The main purpose of HRES 885 is to pat itself on the back for being environmentally conscious while doing absolutely nothing concrete. Its objectives are to:
* Designate November 15, 2025, as "America Recycles Day" (yawn) * Promote a national discussion about recycling (because we haven't had enough of those already) * Advance the circular economy (whatever that means)
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** There are no key provisions or changes to existing law. This is a resolution, not a bill. It's a feel-good exercise in legislative futility.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties and stakeholders include:
* The American recycling sector (which will likely receive some token funding or tax breaks) * State, municipal, and Tribal governments (who will be expected to participate in this farce) * Nonprofit organizations (who will use this as an excuse to beg for more donations) * Private sector partners (who will pretend to care about the environment while continuing to pollute) * Communities and individuals (who will be guilt-tripped into recycling more)
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The potential impact of HRES 885 is zero. Zilch. Nada. It's a symbolic gesture, a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. The implications are that our elected officials are more interested in grandstanding than actual governance.
Diagnosis: This resolution suffers from a severe case of "Legislative Theater-itis," a disease characterized by empty rhetoric, meaningless gestures, and a complete lack of substance. Symptoms include excessive use of buzzwords like "circular economy" and "sustainability," as well as a tendency to confuse awareness-raising with actual policy change.
Treatment: A healthy dose of skepticism and ridicule should be administered immediately. Voters should demand more from their representatives than empty resolutions and symbolic gestures. Anything less is just enabling the disease.
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Rep. Stevens, Haley M. [D-MI-11]
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
— 432 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Expand and fully stand up the Office of Mountains, Deserts and Plains to support innovative approaches to the cleaning up of abandoned mines. l Develop and execute a 10-year cleanup plan to address lead at all existing cleanup sites that includes benchmarks and milestones that allow for congressional and public oversight of the schedule. RCRA. To streamline waste management, the following changes are needed in the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR): l Create an RCRA post-closure care permit that is tailored only to post- closure obligations. l Modify regulations that impede resource efficiency, recycling, and reuse by providing clearly that these materials are not waste. This can be done by promulgating a rule that provides an alternative pathway to hazardous waste regulation to allow the transport of material to legitimate recyclers or back to manufacturers to support the recycling and reuse of material. l Change the electronic manifest (e-manifest) regulations to a 100 percent electronic system and eliminate all paper manifests and manual filing and data input. This system should operate from a range of common handheld devices and could be expanded to accommodate solid waste and materials for reuse and recycling. l Reassign regulation and enforcement of air emission standards under the authority of RCRA Section 300437 to OAR and revise and modernize the regulations to comport and integrate with CAA rules. Risk Management Program. If a new Risk Management Program (RMP) rule is finalized by the Biden Administration, it should be revised to reflect the amend- ments finalized in 2019 to protect sensitive information. Personnel The following organizational changes could create resource efficiencies to focus on the highest-value opportunities: l Eliminate or consolidate the regional laboratories and allow OLEM to use EPA, other government, or private labs based on expertise and cost. — 433 — Environmental Protection Agency l Consolidate non-core functions (communications, economists, congressional relations, etc.) into one OLEM suboffice to allow the subject- matter offices to focus on the execution of field work. l Eliminate the Office of Emergency Management and reassign its functions. 1. Move the emergency management function (currently OEM) into Homeland Security under the Administrator’s office. 2. Incorporate removal authority (currently OEM) into OSRTI. 3. Retain the oversight and enforcement of the RMP program within OLEM. 4. Drop “Emergency Management” from OLEM’s name. Budget While the overall goal is certainly to reduce government scope and spending, OLEM’s programs present the best opportunity to use taxpayer dollars to execute EPA’s core mission of cleaning up contamination. OFFICE OF CHEMICAL SAFETY AND POLLUTION PREVENTION (OCSPP) OCSPP primarily oversees the regulation of new and existing chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)38 and the regulation of pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)39 and Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA).40 These activities are managed in two separate offices within OCSPP: the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT, chemicals) and Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP, pesticides). OCSPP is constantly pressured to ban the use of certain chemicals, typically based on fear as a result of mischaracterized or incomplete science. Needed Reforms and New Policy in OPPT (Chemicals) l Ensure that decision-making is risk-based rather than defaulting to precautionary, hazard-based approaches like the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). l Focus the scope of chemical evaluations on pathways of exposure that are not covered by other program offices and other environmental statutes, and eliminate scope creep to ensure that evaluations can be completed in a timely manner consistent with the statutory requirements.
Introduction
— 396 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Increase the use of commercial waste disposal. Using commercial disposal would reduce capital costs (~ $2 billion) for new disposal sites to accelerate cleanup and reduce local post-cleanup environmental liability at multiple sites. l Revisit the Hanford cleanup’s regulatory framework. Hanford poses significant political and legal challenges with the State of Washington, and DOE will have to work with Congress to make progress in accelerating cleanup at that site. DOE and EPA need to work more closely to coordinate their responses to claims made under the TPA and work more aggressively for changes, including congressional action if necessary, to achieve workable cleanup goals. l Establish more direct leadership and accountability to the Deputy Secretary consistent with Government Accountability Office recommendations.91 l Change Environmental Management’s culture to promote innovation and completion. Budget Environmental Management received slightly less than $7.6 billion in FY 2021, and its budget request for FY 2023 is approximately $8.06 billion.92 The additional funding necessary to accelerate closure of the program will need to be considered as part of a broader government-wide discussion about yearly appropriations. OFFICE OF CIVILIAN RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT (OCRWM) (CURRENTLY OFFICE OF SPENT FUEL AND WASTE DISPOSITION) Mission/Overview The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 conferred the responsibility for commercial nuclear waste disposal on the federal government,93 and in 2002, Congress designated a single repository located at Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the national repository site. The act also established the Office of Civilian Radio- active Waste Management (OCRWM).94 The Obama Administration shut down OCRWM in 2010. The Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition, which is headed by a non-confirmed Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Nuclear Energy, is currently responsible for the management of nuclear waste, and interim disposal is taking place on various sites. Providing a plan for the proper disposal of civilian nuclear waste is essential to the promotion of nuclear power in the United States. — 397 — Department of Energy and Related Commissions Needed Reforms l Work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as it reviews DOE’s permit application for Yucca Mountain. According to both the scientific community and global experience, deep geologic storage is critical to any plan for the proper disposal of more than 75 years of defense waste and 80,000 tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel.95 Yucca Mountain remains a viable option for waste management, and DOE should recommit to working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as it reviews DOE’s permit application for a repository. Finishing the review does not mean that Yucca Mountain will be completed and operational; it merely presents all the information for the State of Nevada, Congress, the nuclear industry, and the Administration to use as the basis for informed decisions. l Reform the licensing process. The reactor licensing process is inadequate. Fixing nuclear waste management will require wholesale reform that realigns responsibilities, resets incentives, and introduces market forces without creating chaos within the current nuclear industry that has been built around the current system. l Produce concrete outcomes from consent-based siting. Beginning in the Obama Administration and resurrected during the Biden Administration, consent-based siting for a civilian waste nuclear repository has been a way to delay any politically painful decisions about siting a permanent civilian nuclear waste facility. In 2022, DOE announced $16 million to support local communities in consent-based siting.96 The next Administration should use the consent-based-siting process to identify and build temporary or permanent sites for a civilian waste nuclear repository (or repositories). New Policies l Restart Yucca Mountain licensing. DOE should restart the Yucca Mountain licensing process. Any continuation of interim storage facilities should be made part of an integrated waste management system that includes geologic storage. Further, building on the consent-based siting process already underway, DOE should find a second repository site. l Fix the policy and cost drivers that are preventing nuclear storage. The federal government continues to hold $46 billion97 in the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF),98 funded by utilities and their ratepayers for permanent disposal of nuclear waste. However, no such storage exists, and spent nuclear fuel remains on site at most nuclear plants. Meanwhile, Congress uses those funds to finance unrelated spending. Moreover, DOE’s
Introduction
— 419 — Environmental Protection Agency disasters in decades, including the Flint, Michigan, water crisis in 20144 and the Gold King Mine spill in 2015.5 Beyond creating such immediate and tangible harm in various communities, an EPA led by activism and a disregard for the law has generated uncertainty in the regulated community, vendetta-driven6 enforcement, weighted analytics, increased costs, and diminished trust in final agency actions. Although the U.S. environmental story is very positive, there has been a return to fear-based rhetoric within the agency, especially as it pertains to the perceived threat of climate change. Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs. In effect, the Biden EPA has once again presented a false choice to the American people: that they have to choose between a healthy environment and a strong, growing economy. Historical Role and Purpose. For many decades, rapid industrial activity with an unorganized approach to environmental standards significantly degraded the country’s environment. Particle pollution in the form of a thick, fog-like haze that at times was laced with harmful metals was a frequent occurrence across the country.7 More than 40 percent of communities failed to meet basic water quality standards, and in 1969, the Cuyahoga River infamously caught fire after sparks from a passing train ignited debris in the water, which was filled with heavy indus- trial waste.8 EPA was established on December 2, 1970, following a call by President Rich- ard Nixon to “rationally and systematically” organize existing piecemeal efforts to clean up and protect the environment.9 Under Reorganization Plan No. 3, the EPA was to initiate a “coordinated attack on the pollutants which debase the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land that grows our food.”10 Numerous authorities were consolidated and given to the EPA including research, monitor- ing, standard-setting, and enforcement activities. The mission to protect public health and the environment was born, and the first Administrator was sworn in on December 4, 1970. Congress followed suit with the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA)11 and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972.12 The subsequent Clean Air Act Amendments of 199013 played a significant role in the expansion of EPA’s responsi- bilities and legal authority with the agency then being tasked with the development of new regulatory mechanisms that included, among other things, cap-and-trade programs for the control of sulfur dioxide and technological standards for nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, a vastly expanded hazardous air pollutant program, a federal operating permit program, and new regulations gov- erning phaseout of the production of ozone-depleting substances in conjunction with U.S. ratification of the Montreal Protocol in 1988.14
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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.