The bill
A resolution recognizing the 80th anniversary of the amphibious landing on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during World War II and the raisings of the flag of the United States on Mount Suribachi.
SRES. 53, 119th Congress.
Sponsored by
Sen. Young, Todd [R-IN]
ID: Y000064
Follow the money
The bill
SRES. 53, 119th Congress.
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. 149-151 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Resolution agreed to in Senate without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent. (consideration: CR S1037; text: 2/4/2025 CR S597-598)
February 18, 2025
📍 Current Status
Next: The full Senate will vote on whether to pass the bill.
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 meaningless resolution from our esteemed leaders in Congress. Because, you know, what the country really needs is a symbolic gesture to commemorate a historical event that's been commemorated ad nauseam already.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The main purpose of this resolution is to stroke the egos of politicians and veterans' groups by recognizing the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. It's a feel-good exercise in patriotism, designed to make everyone involved look good without actually accomplishing anything meaningful.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** There are no key provisions or changes to existing law here. This is a resolution, not a bill, so it doesn't have the power to change any laws or policies. It's just a bunch of empty words strung together to sound impressive.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties and stakeholders in this farce are:
* Politicians who get to grandstand about their patriotism * Veterans' groups who will use this as an excuse to beg for more funding and attention * Historians who will roll their eyes at the simplistic, inaccurate portrayal of historical events * Taxpayers who will foot the bill for the commemorative events and ceremonies
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The potential impact of this resolution is zero. It won't change any policies, improve anyone's life, or make a dent in the national debt. But hey, it'll give politicians something to tweet about, so that's a win, right?
In medical terms, this resolution is like a placebo – it looks and sounds impressive, but it doesn't actually do anything to treat the underlying disease of government incompetence and inefficiency.
Diagnosis: Terminal case of Congressional grandstanding, with symptoms including:
* Excessive use of patriotic buzzwords * Complete lack of substance or meaningful action * Overemphasis on symbolic gestures over actual policy changes * Inflated sense of self-importance among politicians
Prognosis: Poor. This resolution will be forgotten in a week, and the country will continue to suffer from the same underlying diseases that plague our government.
Sen. Young, Todd [R-IN]
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.
ID: W000805
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ID: B001277
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ID: S001198
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ID: C001088
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ID: B001236
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ID: C001113
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ID: C001096
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ID: G000574
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ID: C001098
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ID: K000384
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10
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 66 nodes and 35 connections (48 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $243,900
Showing top 20 donors by contribution amount
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 resolution commemorates the historic amphibious landing at Iwo Jima, which touches on amphibious warfare themes present in Project 2025's focus on amphibious shipbuilding and Force Design 2030, but it does not implement any defense policy changes or incentives."
— 117 — Department of Defense 2. Create better incentives to retain talented junior NCOs, especially in infantry and other critical military occupational specialties. 3. Reduce unnecessary deployments to increase dwell time in order to enable more robust primary military education. l Align Navy amphibious shipbuilding with Force Design 2030. The U.S. Navy has struggled for decades to maintain an amphibious fleet that could support USMC war plans around large-scale amphibious operations. In addition, amphibious shipbuilding has often had to compete against other priorities within a constrained budget and limited shipbuilding capacity. 1. Develop and produce light amphibious warships (LAWs) to support more distributed amphibious operations, especially in the Pacific.34 2. Maintain between 28 and 31 larger amphibious warships as opposed to the 25 specified in current Navy shipbuilding plans and the 38 specified before 2020.35 U.S. SPACE FORCE U.S. space forces conduct global space operations to sustain and enhance air, land, and sea effectiveness, lethality, and superiority by providing secure broad- band global communications (precision position, navigation, and timing accuracy); attack warning and threat tracking and targeting capability (real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance information); and their assured continuity of operations both by defending U.S. assets and by conducting offensive operations that are capable of imposing unacceptable losses on adversaries that might seek to attack them. The U.S. Space Force (USSF) was established to assure continuous global and theater combat support from space, to deter attacks against U.S. space assets, and to prevail in space should deterrence fail. The USSF posture was conceived as a balance of offensive and defensive deterrent capabilities designed for maximum effectiveness. Needed Reforms l Reverse the Biden Administration’s defensive posture. The Biden Administration has eliminated almost all offensive deterrence capabilities and instead will rely solely on defensive capabilities of disaggregation, maneuver, and reconstitution—the most costly, the slowest, and ultimately the most fragile architecture selection. — 118 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 1. Reestablish offensive capabilities to guarantee a favorable balance of forces, efficiently manage the full deterrence spectrum, and seriously complicate enemy calculations of a successful first strike against U.S. space assets. 2. Restore architectural balance in U.S. space forces, both offensive and defensive, to restore deterrence dominance efficiently and quickly. 3. Rapidly expand space control capability, to include cis-lunar space (the region beginning at geosynchronous altitude and encompassing the moon), to provide early warning of an enemy attack. 4. Seek arms control and “rules of the road” understandings only when they are unambiguously in the interests of the U.S. and its allies, and prohibit their unilateral implementation. l Reduce overclassification. The USSF must move beyond the Cold War– era culture of secrecy and overclassification that surrounded military space to facilitate greater coordination and synchronization of efforts across the government and commercial sectors. Declassify appropriate information about terrestrial and on-orbit space capabilities that threaten the U.S. space constellation, as well as those being pursued by our competitors, to secure the principled right to counter them offensively. l Implement policies suited to a mature USSF. No longer a “newborn,” the USSF has entered its fourth year of existence, and the lessons learned can be incorporated across all facets of the force to increase its effectiveness. 1. Restructure from the current “unity of effort” structure to “unity of command.” 2. Lead the U.S. government’s development of a clear and unambiguous declaratory policy that the United States will operate at will in space and enforce these operations with capabilities that ensure effective deterrence and the ability to impose our will if necessary. 3. End the current study phase of concept development and issue necessary guidance for the development and fielding of offensive capabilities.
AI Analysis:
"SRES 53 is a purely ceremonial resolution honoring a historic battle and contains no policy changes, while the Project 2025 DoD section outlines concrete reforms for Army budget, modernization, readiness, and culture. The only connection is a general reference to military service and heritage, making the alignment weak."
— 108 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise U.S. ARMY The U.S. Army’s mission is “[t]o deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars by pro- viding ready, prompt and sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full spectrum of conflict as part of the joint force.”24 Today, however, the Army cannot execute its land dominance mission.25 The U.S. Army is at an inflection point that is marked by more than a decade of steadily eroding budgets and diluted buying power, an appreciable degradation in readiness and training capacity, a near crisis in the recruiting and retention of critical personnel, and a bevy of aging weapons systems that no longer provide a qualitative edge over peer and near-peer com- petitors but will not be replaced in the near term. All of these challenges are set against the backdrop of a complex and dynamic global geopolitical environment that is exemplified and exacerbated by the triumph of our adversaries in Afghanistan after a 20-year struggle there as well as recent Russian outrages in the Ukraine and China’s bellicosity both on its borders and in surrounding disputed regions. In spite of these ever-increasing operational pulls, our Army is consistently being asked to do more with fewer resources. The status quo is further marked by a pervasive politically driven top-down focus on progressive social policies that emphasize matters like so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion and climate change, often to the detriment of the Army’s core warfighting mission. Needed Reforms l Rebuild the Army. The total Army budget has decreased by roughly 11 percent since 2018, perilously affecting the service’s readiness and ability to train and to procure new personnel and equipment. Declining budgets and decreased buying power have forced the Army to lower training standards and opportunities to train, propose reductions in end strength, slash military construction programs to historically low levels, and scale back essential modernization programs. 1. Increase the Army budget to remain the world’s preeminent land power. 2. Accelerate the development and procurement of the six current Army modernization priorities (long-range precision fires, the Next- Generation Combat Vehicle, Future Vertical Lift, the Army network, air and missile defense, and soldier lethality) to replace worn out and outdated combat systems and ensure ground combat dominance. 3. Increase funding to improve Army training and operational readiness. 4. Increase the Army force structure by 50,000 to handle two major regional contingencies simultaneously. — 109 — Department of Defense 5. Reform recruiting efforts. The Army missed its 2022 recruitment goal by 25 percent, or 15,000 soldiers. l Focus on deployability and sustained operations. The U.S. Army’s very lethal ground force capability is irrelevant if it cannot quickly deploy to locations for employment in decisive operations to secure our global security interests. Additionally, Army logisticians provide the ground transportation (of both personnel and equipment); fuel, food, and water; munitions (bombs and bullets); medical supplies and services; and veterinary services (food safety) that are critical to sustainment of the other services. 1. Immediately increase the production and stockpiling of critical munitions and repair parts. 2. Prioritize expeditionary logistics in all force design and operational planning to guarantee entry into a contested theater of war. 3. Increase the level of Joint Force training, synchronization, and coordination focused on logistics. 4. Prepare to deploy forces from degraded U.S.-based transportation infrastructure that is compromised by opposing forces. l Transform Army culture and training. The Army can no longer serve as the nation’s social testing ground. A rebuilt Army that is focused again on its core warfighting mission and empowered it with the tools, resources, and authorities it needs to accomplish that mission must be the next Administration’s highest defense priority. 1. Stop using the Army as a test bed for social evolution. Misusing the Army in this way detracts from its core purpose while doing little to reshape the American social structure. The Army no longer reflects national demographics to the degree that it did before 1974 when the draft was eliminated. 2. Demand accountability in senior leaders to reverse the decline in public support for military service. 3. Reestablish the experiential base for the planning, execution, and leadership of Army formations in large-scale operations. Currently,
AI Analysis:
"The bill is a purely ceremonial resolution honoring the Battle of Iwo Jima and does not enact or direct any defense policy, while Project 2025 focuses on modernizing Air Force and Marine Corps capabilities; the only connection is a shared theme of amphibious operations and Marine Corps heritage."
— 114 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 3. Increase the Air Force budget by 5 percent annually (after adjusting for inflation) to reverse the decline in size, age, and readiness and facilitate the transition to a more modern, lethal, and survivable force. l Reduce near-term and mid-term risk. Increasing the Air Force’s acquisition of next-generation capabilities that either are or soon will be in production will increase the ability of the United States to deter or defeat near-term to mid-term threats. 1. Increase F-35A procurement to 60–80 per year. 2. Build the capacity for a B-21 production rate of 15–18 aircraft per year along with applicable elements of the B-21 long-range strike family of systems. 3. Increase Air Force airlift and aerial refueling capacity to support agile combat employment operations that generate combat sorties from a highly dispersed posture in both Europe and the Pacific. 4. Develop and buy larger quantities of advanced mid-range weapons (50 nm to 200 nm) that are sized to maximize targets per sortie for stealth aircraft flying in contested environments against target sets that could exceed 100,000 aimpoints. 5. Accelerate the development and production of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile to reduce the risk inherent in an aging Minuteman III force in light of China’s nuclear modernization breakout. 6. Increase the number of EC-37B electronic warfare aircraft from 10 to 20 in order to achieve a minimum capacity to engage growing threats from China across the electromagnetic spectrum. l Invest in future Air Force programs and efforts. Increasingly capable adversaries require new capabilities to enable victory against those adversaries. 1. Attain an operationally optimized advanced battle management system as the Air Force element of the DOD Joint All Domain Command and Control enterprise. 2. Produce the next-generation air dominance system of systems (air moving target indication, other sensors, communications, command and control, weapons, and uninhabited aerial vehicles). — 115 — Department of Defense 3. Achieve moving target engagement capability and capacity against sea, surface, and ground mobile targets at the scale necessary to meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy. 4. Build resilient basing, sustainment, and communications for survivability in a contested environment. 5. Establish a vigorous and sufficiently funded electromagnetic spectrum operations recovery plan to make up for more than 20 years of neglect of this mission area. U.S. MARINE CORPS The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) is the maritime land force of the Department of Defense and Department of the Navy. It serves a critical role as an expedition- ary amphibious force that can project power from sea to shore and beyond while performing other specialized missions like securing America’s diplomatic out- posts abroad. Between the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the conclusion of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in August 2022, the Marine Corps engaged in extended operations ashore as directed by the Secretary of Defense, leaving it with little opportunity or ability to train for and execute the naval and amphibious operations for which it is uniquely suited and directed by law. This lengthy diver- gence from its primary mission led to deep concern that the Corps had become a “second land army,” prompting senior Marine Corps leaders to push for the service to return to the sea. In addition, the USMC spent nearly two decades fighting coun- terinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and developed capabilities that were specifically geared to those fights but have limited utility in scenarios involving evenly matched and advanced enemies or amphibious operations that are neces- sary for the projection of naval power. As a result, Marine Corps Commandant General David H. Berger developed and began to implement Force Design 2030,31 a plan that, if completed, would be the most radical transformation of the Marine Corps since World War II. The suc- cessful implementation of this force redesign, coupled with reforms in the Marine Corps’ personnel system and the Navy’s amphibious shipbuilding plans, will be critical to ensuring the Corps’ future combat effectiveness. Needed Reforms l Divest systems to implement the Force Design 2030 transformation.32 Divesting equipment that is less relevant to distributed, low-signature operations in a contested maritime environment will make funds available for modernization.
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.