Unity through Service Act of 2025
Download PDFSponsored by
Sen. Reed, Jack [D-RI]
ID: R000122
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Invalid Date
Introduced
đź“Ť Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
Committee Review
Floor Action
Passed Senate
House Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
đź“š 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 masterpiece of bureaucratic doublespeak, courtesy of the Unity through Service Act of 2025. Let me dissect this bloated carcass for you.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The bill's stated purpose is to promote and strengthen opportunities for military service, national service, and public service. How noble. In reality, it's a vehicle for politicians to grandstand about patriotism while lining the pockets of their defense contractor buddies.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill establishes an Interagency Council on Service, comprising representatives from various federal agencies, to advise the President on promoting service and civic responsibility. Because what we really need is another layer of bureaucratic red tape. The council will also develop recruitment strategies, coordinate with non-federal entities, and produce a quadrennial "Service Strategy" report.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** This bill affects everyone who's ever considered serving their country or community. But let's be real, the primary beneficiaries are defense contractors, government agencies, and politicians seeking to boost their patriotic credentials.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The impact will be negligible, except for the increased waste of taxpayer dollars on bureaucratic overhead and marketing campaigns. This bill is a Band-Aid solution to the real problems facing our country: lack of civic engagement, inadequate education, and a dearth of meaningful opportunities for young people.
Diagnosis: This bill suffers from a severe case of "Patriotism-itis," a disease characterized by an excessive reliance on empty rhetoric and a complete disregard for actual policy substance. The symptoms include:
* A bloated bureaucracy that will only serve to further entrench the interests of defense contractors and government agencies. * A misguided focus on recruitment strategies rather than addressing the root causes of declining civic engagement. * A complete lack of accountability, as the council's recommendations will likely be ignored or watered down by politicians more interested in scoring points than actual reform.
Treatment: A healthy dose of skepticism, a strong stomach for bureaucratic nonsense, and a willingness to call out the politicians and lobbyists who are driving this train wreck. Unfortunately, these symptoms are unlikely to be cured anytime soon, as they are deeply ingrained in our system.
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Sen. Reed, Jack [D-RI]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No organization contributions found
No committee contributions found
Donor Network - Sen. Reed, Jack [D-RI]
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 18 nodes and 20 connections
Total contributions: $56,400
Top Donors - Sen. Reed, Jack [D-RI]
Showing top 17 donors by contribution amount
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
— 270 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise As development agencies, USAID and DFC must do a better job of aligning their respective activities and closely integrate both structurally and operation- ally. The easiest way to foster this alignment is to “dual hat” the role of DFC’s chief development officer so that he or she serves simultaneously in both institu- tions. Like all U.S. federal bodies, DFC should be restored to its original intent of deploying its commercial risk-reducing financial services instead of its current misuse as another global vehicle to promote economy-killing climate programs, meet irrelevant diversity objectives, and overfocus on low-impact or misguided gender-based activities. Branding. A deeply embedded culture within the foreign aid bureaucracy views public recognition of U.S. assistance as secondary to a larger philanthropic mission and is embarrassed by the American flag. Citing vaguely defined secu- rity concerns, USAID’s implementers—U.N. agencies, international NGOs, and contractors—often fail to credit the American people for the billions of dollars in assistance they provide the rest of the world even as they engage in self-promoting public relations to raise other donor funds. This approach has negative foreign policy implications as China relentlessly promotes its own self-serving efforts to gain influence and resources. Worst of all, malign actors sometimes appropriate credit for unbranded U.S. assistance: Houthi terrorists, for example, claim to pro- vide for the people under their occupation with anonymous U.S. humanitarian aid. The United States is in a struggle for influence with China, Russia, and other competitors, and American generosity must not go unacknowledged. The next conservative Administration should build on the Trump Administration’s brand- ing policy, which revamped ADS Chapter 320, to force the aid bureaucracy to fully credit the American people for the aid they are providing. The Senior Advisor for Brand Management in the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs (LPA) (dis- cussed infra) should be a political appointee who is responsible for maximizing the visibility of U.S. assistance by enforcing branding policy on every grant, coopera- tive agreement, and contract. The LPA should liaise with counterparts at the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to ensure local media pickup of these activities. OTHER OFFICES AND BUREAUS Office of Administrator. The next conservative Administration should leave in place the current structure of two presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Deputy Administrators, one for Policy and one for Management. The Deputy Administrators and the Chief of Staff must be individuals with extensive previous service in the executive branch, ideally at foreign-affairs agencies, and be fluent in the language and practice of federal procurement. Bureau for Foreign Assistance. As noted above, the next conservative Administration should name the USAID Administrator as Director of Foreign Assistance (F) at the Department of State with the rank of Deputy Secretary. It — 271 — Agency for International Development should reorient the bulk of F staff from focusing on the formulation of the annual President’s budget proposal to the execution of already appropriated resources. This should include eliminating the duplicative Mission and Bureau Resource Requests; speeding up the availability of appropriations by delivering to Congress within 60 days the report required by Section 653(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA); and fast-tracking the approval of Congressional Notifications (CNs) and other pre-obligation requirements. Management Bureau. As indicated previously, the next conservative Admin- istration should name a political appointee as USAID’s Senior Procurement Executive and Director of the agency’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance (M/ OAA). Political appointees with the appropriate credentials (including warrants) should be placed within M/OAA, and the agency should exercise its authority to engage qualified experts from other federal departments and agencies and outside of government (if they are free of conflicts of interest) on the Technical Commit- tees that review applications for USAID’s contract and grant competitions. The Administration should change the designation of USAID’s Competition Advocate to an individual favorable to innovative types of contracts that can reduce the aid oligopoly’s grip on the agency. Office of Human Capital and Talent Management. As soon as possible after Inauguration Day, the next conservative Administration should name a political appointee as USAID’s Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) and Director of the Office of Human Capital and Talent Management. USAID’s White House Liaison must be an individual with substantial experience with federal personnel sys- tems. The White House Office of Presidential Personnel should allow the USAID Administrator to explore with counterparts at the Office of Personnel Management whether the agency could hire personnel under both the Administratively Deter- mined authority and Schedule C of the Excepted Service of the Federal Civil Service. USAID should be one of the agencies to pilot-test a reinstated Executive Order 13957,16 which created a Schedule F within the Excepted Service, and should aggres- sively recruit and place candidates into term-limited positions under Schedule A of the Excepted Service (especially veterans). The new CHCO should examine how the existing members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) at USAID should be reworked throughout the agency and should institute an SES Mobility Program to encourage the regular rotation of senior career leaders, including through details to other departments and agencies. Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning. The next conservative Admin- istration should shift the policy functions of the Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning (PPL) to the Office of Budget and Resource Management (BRM), located in the Office of the Administrator. It should rename BRM the Office of Budget, Policy, and Resource Management (BPRM) and staff the policy team with political appointees. The Administration should also move the responsibility for reviewing
Introduction
— 270 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise As development agencies, USAID and DFC must do a better job of aligning their respective activities and closely integrate both structurally and operation- ally. The easiest way to foster this alignment is to “dual hat” the role of DFC’s chief development officer so that he or she serves simultaneously in both institu- tions. Like all U.S. federal bodies, DFC should be restored to its original intent of deploying its commercial risk-reducing financial services instead of its current misuse as another global vehicle to promote economy-killing climate programs, meet irrelevant diversity objectives, and overfocus on low-impact or misguided gender-based activities. Branding. A deeply embedded culture within the foreign aid bureaucracy views public recognition of U.S. assistance as secondary to a larger philanthropic mission and is embarrassed by the American flag. Citing vaguely defined secu- rity concerns, USAID’s implementers—U.N. agencies, international NGOs, and contractors—often fail to credit the American people for the billions of dollars in assistance they provide the rest of the world even as they engage in self-promoting public relations to raise other donor funds. This approach has negative foreign policy implications as China relentlessly promotes its own self-serving efforts to gain influence and resources. Worst of all, malign actors sometimes appropriate credit for unbranded U.S. assistance: Houthi terrorists, for example, claim to pro- vide for the people under their occupation with anonymous U.S. humanitarian aid. The United States is in a struggle for influence with China, Russia, and other competitors, and American generosity must not go unacknowledged. The next conservative Administration should build on the Trump Administration’s brand- ing policy, which revamped ADS Chapter 320, to force the aid bureaucracy to fully credit the American people for the aid they are providing. The Senior Advisor for Brand Management in the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs (LPA) (dis- cussed infra) should be a political appointee who is responsible for maximizing the visibility of U.S. assistance by enforcing branding policy on every grant, coopera- tive agreement, and contract. The LPA should liaise with counterparts at the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to ensure local media pickup of these activities. OTHER OFFICES AND BUREAUS Office of Administrator. The next conservative Administration should leave in place the current structure of two presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Deputy Administrators, one for Policy and one for Management. The Deputy Administrators and the Chief of Staff must be individuals with extensive previous service in the executive branch, ideally at foreign-affairs agencies, and be fluent in the language and practice of federal procurement. Bureau for Foreign Assistance. As noted above, the next conservative Administration should name the USAID Administrator as Director of Foreign Assistance (F) at the Department of State with the rank of Deputy Secretary. It
Introduction
— 704 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Congress should make the Department of Defense (DOD) a CFIUS co-chair with the Department of Treasury. Making DOD an official CFIUS co-chair along with Treasury will establish a balanced committee process by elevating national security interests to an equal stature. The committee is currently imbalanced toward the interests of corporate America because Treasury is the sole chair of CFIUS and, in practice, runs a process that is not fully transparent and which biases it from the national security interests represented by DOD and the Intelligence Community (IC). For example, Treasury representatives will consult with the Commerce Depart- ment and the United States Trade Representative—which tend to favor permitting covered transactions to occur with little to no mitigation requirements—and these representatives will then obscure the results and purposes of such sidebar meet- ings from DOD and IC representatives. This hampers DOD, IC, and sometimes even State Department representatives from full participation in the process or from advocating national security interests as well as they should. Greenfield Investments. Congress should close the loophole on greenfield investments and require CFIUS review of investments in U.S.-based greenfield assets by Chinese-controlled entities to assess any potential harm to U.S. national and economic security. In the 2018 Foreign Risk and Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA),51 one important category of foreign transactions left out of the bill was greenfield investments, particularly by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Greenfield investments by Chinese SOEs pose a unique threat, and they should be met with the highest scrutiny by all levels of government. Greenfield investments result in the control of newly built facilities in the U.S., and they were not addressed in FIRRMA primarily because governors and state governments embrace them. That is understandable; they typically bring the promise of creating American jobs. However, the goal of such Chinese SOEs is to siphon assets, technological innovation, and influence away from U.S. businesses in order to expand the global presence of the Chinese Communist Party. While the Chinese government keeps its domestic markets largely insulated from foreign influence, it regularly invests in the U.S. and other countries under the “green- field” model. Firms fully owned by China’s Communist regime are increasingly buying land, building factories, and taking advantage of state and local tax breaks on American soil. Treasury should examine creating a school of financial warfare jointly with DOD. If the U.S. is to rely on financial weapons, tools, and strategies to prosecute international defensive and offensive objectives, it must create a specially trained group of experts dedicated to the study, training, testing, and preparedness of these deterrents. Recent experience has demonstrated that the U.S. cannot depend on the rapid development and deployment of untested, academically developed finan- cial actions, stratagems, and weapons on an ad hoc basis. — 705 — Department of the Treasury Treasury must also seriously evaluate U.S. foreign direct investment in China. Particular focus should be paid to investments in CCP or other state-owned enter- prises, investments that result in technology transfers from the U.S. to China, investments that enhance China’s military capacity, and investments that pose risks to critical U.S. supply chains by sourcing critical components or feedstocks in China. An enhanced reporting system is warranted, and greater legal authority and restrictions are appropriate. IMPROVED FINANCIAL REGULATION One of the priorities of the incoming Administration should be to restructure the outdated and cumbersome financial regulatory system in order to promote financial innovation, improve regulator efficiency, reduce regulatory costs, close regulatory gaps, eliminate regulatory arbitrage, provide clear statutory authority, consolidate regulatory agencies or reduce the size of government, and increase transparency. Merging Functions. The new Administration should establish a more stream- lined bank and supervision by supporting legislation to merge the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Federal Reserve’s non-monetary supervisory and regulatory functions. U.S. banking law remains stuck in the 1930s regarding which functions finan- cial companies should perform. It was never a good idea either to restrict banks to taking deposits and making loans or to prevent investment banks from taking deposits. Doing so makes markets less stable. All financial intermediaries function by pooling the financial resources of those who want to save and funneling them to others that are willing and able to pay for additional funds. This underlying principle should guide U.S. financial laws. Policymakers should create new charters for financial firms that eliminate activ- ity restrictions and reduce regulations in return for straightforward higher equity or risk-retention standards. Ultimately, these charters would replace government regulation with competition and market discipline, thereby lowering the risk of future financial crises and improving the ability of individuals to create wealth. Dodd–Frank Revisions. Congress should repeal Title I, Title II, and Title VIII of the Dodd–Frank Act.52 Title I of Dodd–Frank created the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a kind of super-regulator tasked with identifying so-called systemically important financial institutions and singling them out for especially stringent regulation. The problem, of course, is that this process effectively iden- tifies those firms regulators believe are “too big to fail.”53 Title VIII of Dodd–Frank gives the FSOC similarly broad special-designation authority for specialized financial companies known as financial market utilities.54 Title II of Dodd–Frank established the controversial provision known as orderly
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.