The bill
A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to Israel of certain defense articles and services.
SJRES. 26, 119th Congress — read as touching Defense Contractors.
Sponsored by
Sen. Sanders, Bernard [I-VT]
ID: S000033
Follow the money
The bill
SJRES. 26, 119th Congress — read as touching Defense Contractors.
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 "Department of Defense" section, p. 134-136 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Motion to discharge Senate Committee on Foreign Relations rejected by Yea-Nay Vote. 15 - 83. Record Vote Number: 166. (consideration: CR S2152-2158)
April 2, 2025
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.
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 brilliant example of congressional theater, courtesy of Senator Sanders and his merry band of self-righteous ideologues. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The main purpose of SJRES 26 is to grandstand on the world stage, pretending to care about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while actually doing nothing meaningful. The objective is to score cheap political points with the progressive base by "condemning" a proposed arms sale to Israel.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The resolution prohibits the sale of various defense articles and services to Israel, including bombs, guidance kits, and fuzes. Wow, what a bold move! Except it's not. This is just a symbolic gesture, as Congress can't actually block the sale without overriding a presidential veto. It's a Potemkin village of moral outrage.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects: Israel, the Palestinians, and the defense contractors who will still get paid regardless of this resolution's outcome. Oh, and let's not forget the voters who will be duped into thinking their representatives are actually doing something about the conflict.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** Zilch. Zero. Zip. This resolution is a placebo for the progressive masses, designed to make them feel like they're fighting for justice while accomplishing nothing. The arms sale will likely go through anyway, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue unabated. But hey, at least Senator Sanders can claim he "stood up" to Israel.
Diagnosis: This bill is a classic case of "Legislative Lip Service Syndrome" (LLSS), characterized by grandiose rhetoric, empty gestures, and a complete lack of actual policy substance. The underlying disease is a toxic mix of cowardice, opportunism, and ideological posturing.
Treatment: A healthy dose of skepticism, followed by a strong injection of reality-based politics. Unfortunately, this patient is unlikely to recover from its chronic case of LLSS.
Sen. Sanders, Bernard [I-VT]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No organization contributions found
No committee contributions found
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 33 nodes and 20 connections (47 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $73,657
Showing top 13 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 1 harmed.
The joint resolution prohibits a proposed foreign military sale to Israel of defense articles and services, including GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs, MK 82 bomb bodies, JDAM Guidance Kits, and related support equipment and services. This directly impacts defense contractors who would have supplied these items, imposing a clear cost by blocking the sale.
For each industry this bill affects, here's what the sponsor (Sen. Sanders, Bernard [I-VT])received from donors associated with that industry during the 2022–present cycles. Donations are not proof of intent — they are a record of who funds the people writing the law.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
AI Analysis:
"The bill aims to block a specific foreign military sale to Israel, while Project 2025 seeks to streamline and reduce congressional hurdles for FMS to accelerate arms transfers; both address foreign military sales but pursue opposing objectives."
— 101 — Department of Defense 1. Ensure that senior U.S. military leadership emphasizes exportability in the initial development of defense systems that are both available and interoperable with our partners and allies. 2. Create a funding mechanism to incentivize exportability in initial planning, which can be recouped after future FMS transactions. l End informal congressional notification. Informal congressional notification or “tiered review” is a hinderance to ensuring timely sales to our global partners. The tiered review process is not codified in law; it is merely a practice by which the Department of State provides a preview of prospective arms transfers before Congress is formally notified.9 1. End the tiered review process to eliminate at least 20 days from the FMS process. 2. Use the tiered review process only when unanimous congressional support is guaranteed in order to eliminate the “weaponization” by select Members of Congress that has prevented billions of dollars of arms sales from moving into formal congressional notification. l Minimize barriers to collaboration. The high cost of developing advanced defense platforms requires the United States to collaborate with key allies to minimize waste, complement strengths, and supplement our defense industrial base to create a system that is greater than that of the United States alone. 1. Enhance defense industrial base planning with partners to allow them to focus on niche areas where there are cost advantages for the United States. 2. Decrease International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to facilitate trade with such allies as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. 3. Create opportunities to improve the health of the defense supply chain with added opportunities for partners and allies to contribute. l Reform the FMS contracting process. The contracting timeline for the FMS process is shockingly slow. On average, the DOD contracting timeline takes approximately 18 months because of slow bureaucratic processes and chronic understaffing.10
AI Analysis:
"The bill focuses on blocking a specific foreign military sale to Israel, while the Project 2025 DoD section emphasizes nuclear deterrence, plutonium pit production, missile defense, and strategic arms control—there is minimal thematic overlap between the two."
— 125 — Department of Defense 1. Accelerate the effort to restore plutonium pit production, which is essential both for modern warhead programs and for recapitalizing the stockpile. 2. Continue to invest in rebuilding infrastructure, including facilities at the National Laboratories that support nuclear weapons development. 3. Restore readiness to test nuclear weapons at the Nevada National Security Site to ensure the ability of the U.S. to respond quickly to asymmetric technology surprises. l Correctly orient arms control. The U.S. should agree to arms control agreements only if they help to advance the interests of the U.S. and its allies. 1. Reject proposals for nuclear disarmament that are contrary to the goal of bolstering deterrence. 2. Pursue arms control as a way to secure the national security interests of the U.S. and its allies rather than as an end in itself. 3. Prepare to compete in order to secure U.S. interests should arms control efforts continue to fail. MISSILE DEFENSE Missile defense is a critical component of the U.S. national security architecture. It can help to deter attack by instilling doubt that an attack will work as intended, take adversary “cheap shots” off the table, and limit the perceived value of mis- siles as tools of coercion. It also allows space for diplomacy during a crisis and can protect U.S. and allied forces, critical assets, and populations if deterrence fails.41 Adversaries are relying increasingly on missiles to achieve their aims. l China and Russia, in addition to their vast and growing ballistic missile inventories, are deploying new hypersonic glide vehicles and investing in new ground-launched, air-launched, and sea-launched cruise missiles that uniquely challenge the United States in different domains. l North Korea has pursued an aggressive missile testing program and is becoming increasingly belligerent toward South Korea and Japan. l Iran continues to maintain a missile arsenal that is capable of striking U.S. and allied assets in the Middle East and Europe, and its rocket launches demonstrate that it either has or is developing the ability to build ICBMs.
AI Analysis:
"The bill focuses on blocking a specific foreign military sale to Israel, while Project 2025's DoD section emphasizes nuclear modernization, counterterrorism burden-sharing, and defense acquisition reform. There is minimal thematic overlap, as the bill does not address nuclear forces, allied burden-sharing, or acquisition process improvements."
— 95 — Department of Defense 1. Expand and modernize the U.S. nuclear force so that it has the size, sophistication, and tailoring to deter Russia and China simultaneously. 2. Develop a nuclear arsenal with the size, sophistication, and tailoring— including new capabilities at the theater level—to ensure that there is no circumstance in which America is exposed to serious nuclear coercion. l Increase allied counterterrorist burden-sharing. Transnational terrorism remains a threat to Americans even as we pivot toward Asia. 1. Sustain the military forces needed to deter, prevent, and combat terrorism, but at a sustainable cost in concert with other elements of national power and partner efforts. 2. Prioritize enhancing the capability of allies and partners to take the lead in combating terrorism in their regions. DOD ACQUISITION AND SUSTAINMENT (A&S) The DOD’s ability to acquire and field new and existing technologies is essential to the ability of America’s military personnel to fight and win our nation’s wars. To succeed in this endeavor, we must optimize the systems and personnel that the department uses, but the inflexible bureaucratic structure and risk-adverse culture that have developed over the decades make it difficult to provide the tools that warfighters need at the speed of relevance. The number one problem is the DOD budgeting process (instituted in 1961) that requires acquisition spending to be locked years in advance. Because tech- nologies change so rapidly and requirements can change overnight, this creates situations in which military personnel not only go to war with outdated technol- ogy, but also may be fighting with equipment that is less capable than that of their competitors. America owes its military many things, and the most important is the resources they need to survive on the battlefield and carry out the tasks we ask of them. Needed Reforms l Reform the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) process. 1. Enhance funding and authority for DOD mission-focused innovation organizations and away from program-specific stovepipes that, planned for and designed two or three years earlier, may no longer be — 96 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise relevant. This allows the acquisition community to focus on portfolio management and move money around more easily instead of being locked into inflexible, multiyear procurement cycles. 2. The President should examine the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform4 and develop a strategy for implementing those that the Administration considers to be in the best interests of the American people. The commission’s final report is due on September 1, 2023. 3. Develop legislation or other means of providing funding outside the traditional PPBE process for the prototyping and experimentation of emerging technologies that are deemed essential to modernization and future conflict. Consider creating a “fast track” for projects that satisfy the most pressing national security needs. 4. Require the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, and all service secretaries to conduct “Night Court” and use existing authorities to terminate outdated or underperforming programs so that money can be used for what works and will work. Require the Under Secretaries and service secretaries to brief the Secretary annually on the results. 5. Require the Office of the Secretary of Defense to research and report on the acquisition processes used by America’s adversaries to improve our understanding of how they are often able to innovate and field new technologies on a faster timeline. l Strengthen America’s defense industrial base. 1. Replenish and maintain U.S. stockpiles of ammunition and other equipment that have been depleted as a result of U.S. support to Ukraine. This will strengthen the defense industry supply chain and ensure that adequate inventory exists if it is needed for a future conflict. 2. Collaborate with industry to develop a prioritized list of reforms that the DOD and Congress can enact and implement to incentivize industry to help America’s military innovate and field needed capabilities.
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.
Childhood Diabetes Reduction Act of 2026
119/s/5026
A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to the Government of Israel of certain defense articles and services.
119/sjres/34
A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the proposed export of certain defense articles to Israel.
119/sjres/41