The bill
EQUALS Act of 2025
HR. 5750, 119th Congress — read as touching Labor Unions.
Sponsored by
Rep. Gill, Brandon [R-TX-26]
ID: G000603
Follow the money
The bill
HR. 5750, 119th Congress — read as touching Labor Unions.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
22 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy" section, p. 106-108 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 524.
April 8, 2026
📍 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 masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the intellectually bankrupt denizens of Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The EQUALS Act of 2025 is a laughable attempt to reform the civil service system by extending probationary periods for new hires. Because, you know, the problem with government inefficiency is clearly the fault of those pesky new employees who haven't been sufficiently indoctrinated into the bureaucratic machine.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill modifies title 5 of the United States Code to establish a 2-year probationary period for most new hires in the competitive service, with some exceptions for preference eligibles (i.e., veterans) who get a 1-year pass. Agencies will be required to evaluate employees during this period and certify that their continued employment is in the public interest. Oh, and there are some tweaks to the rules regarding formal training and licensing requirements. Yawn.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects: federal employees, agencies, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). But let's be real, the only stakeholders who truly matter are the politicians and bureaucrats who get to wield more power over the careers of their underlings.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a symptom of a deeper disease – the chronic inability of Congress to address the root causes of government inefficiency. By extending probationary periods, they're essentially creating a system where new employees are forced to walk on eggshells, fearful of being terminated at any moment. This will only exacerbate the existing problems of low morale, high turnover rates, and a lack of accountability among agency leaders.
But hey, who needs effective governance when you can just blame the newbies for all your problems? The real motivation behind this bill is to give politicians and bureaucrats more control over the workforce, allowing them to reward their cronies and punish their enemies. It's a classic case of "reform" that only serves to entrench the status quo.
In conclusion, the EQUALS Act of 2025 is a farcical attempt at reform, driven by a toxic mix of bureaucratic self-interest, political grandstanding, and a fundamental disregard for the well-being of federal employees. It's a legislative placebo, designed to make politicians look like they're doing something about government inefficiency without actually addressing the underlying issues. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have better things to do than watch this train wreck unfold.
Rep. Gill, Brandon [R-TX-26]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
This bill has 4 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
ID: C001108
Top Contributors
10
ID: C001115
Top Contributors
10
ID: M001212
Top Contributors
10
ID: H001101
Top Contributors
10
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 57 nodes and 34 connections (53 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $185,630
Showing top 21 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 1 harmed.
Section 2 extends probationary periods for positions in the competitive service, which may lead to increased job insecurity and reduced union bargaining power, as seen in subsection (c)(1)(A) and (d)(1)(C)
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 EQUALS Act's focus on extended probationary periods, mandatory fitness evaluations, and certification based on performance and public interest directly supports Project 2025's emphasis on rigorous performance appraisal, timely corrective actions, and using probation periods to assess employee merit."
— 73 — Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy that would change regularly to depress cheating. President Donald Trump’s OPM planned to implement such changes but was delayed because of legal concerns over possible disparate impact. Courts have agreed to review the consent decree if the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures setting the technical requirements for sound exams are reformed. A government that is unable to select employees based on KSA-like test qualifications cannot work, and the OPM must move forward on this very basic personnel management obligation. The Centrality of Performance Appraisal. In the meantime, the OPM must manage the workforce it has. Before they can reward or discipline federal employees, managers must first identify who their top performers are and who is performing less than adequately. In fact, as Ludwig von Mises proved in his classic Bureaucracy,14 unlike the profit-and-loss evaluation tool used in the private sector, government performance measurement depends totally on a functioning appraisal system. If they cannot be identified in the first place within a functioning appraisal system, it is impossible to reward good performance or correct poor performance. The problem is that the collegial atmosphere of a bureaucracy in a multifaceted appraisal system that is open to appeals makes this a very challenging ideal to implement successfully. The GAO reported more recently that overly high and widely spread perfor- mance ratings were again plaguing the government, with more than 99 percent of employees rated fully successful or above by their managers, a mere 0.3 percent rated as minimally successful, and 0.1 percent actually rated unacceptable.15 Why? It is human nature that no one appreciates being told that he or she is less than outstanding in every way. Informing subordinates in a closely knit bureaucracy that they are not performing well is difficult. Rating compatriots is even consid- ered rude and unprofessional. Moreover, managers can be and often are accused of racial or sexual discrimination for a poor rating, and this discourages honesty. In 2018, President Trump issued Executive Order 1383916 requiring agen- cies to reduce the time for employees to improve performance before corrective action could be taken; to initiate disciplinary actions against poorly performing employees more expeditiously; to reiterate that agencies are obligated to make employees improve; to reduce the time for employees to respond to allegations of poor performance; to mandate that agencies remind supervisors of expiring employee probationary periods; to prohibit agencies from entering into settlement agreements that modify an employee’s personnel record; and to reevaluate proce- dures for agencies to discipline supervisors who retaliate against whistleblowers. Unfortunately, the order was overturned by the Biden Administration,17 so it will need to be reintroduced in 2025. The fact remains that meaningfully evaluating employees’ performance is a critical part of a manager’s job. In the Reagan appraisal process, managers were evaluated on how they themselves rated their subordinates. This is critical to — 74 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise responsibility and improved management. It is essential that political executives build policy goals directly into employee appraisals both for mission success and for employees to know what is expected. Indistinguishable from their coworkers on paper, hard-working federal employees often go unrewarded for their efforts and are often the system’s greatest critics. Federal workers who are performing inadequately get neither the benefit of an honest appraisal nor clear guidance on how to improve. Political executives should take an active role in supervising per- formance appraisals of career staff, not unduly delegate this responsibility to senior career managers, and be willing to reward and support good performers. Merit Pay. Performance appraisal means little to daily operations if it is not tied directly to real consequences for success as well as failure. According to a survey of major U.S. private companies—which, unlike the federal government, also have a profit-and-loss evaluation—90 percent use a system of merit pay for performance based on some type of appraisal system. Despite early efforts to institute merit pay throughout the federal government, however, compensation is still based primarily on seniority rather than merit. Merit pay for executives and managers was part of the Carter reforms and was implemented early in the Reagan presidency. Beginning in the summer of 1982, the Reagan OPM entered 18 months of negotiations with House and Senate staff on extending merit pay to the entire workforce. Long and detailed talks between the OPM and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress ensued, and a final agreement was reached in 1983 that supposedly ensured the passage of legislation creating a new Performance Management and Recognition System (PMRS) for all, (not just management) GS-13 through GS-15 employees. Meanwhile, the OPM issued regulations to expand the role of performance related to pay throughout the entire workforce, but congressional allies of the employee unions, led by Representative Steny Hoyer (D) of government employee– rich Maryland, stoutly resisted this extension of pay-for-performance and, with strong union support, used the congressional appropriations process to block OPM administrative pay reforms. Bonuses for SES career employees survived, but per- formance appraisals became so high and widely distributed that there was little relationship between performance and remuneration. Ever since the original merit pay system for federal managers (GM-13 through GM-15 grade levels, just below the SES) was allowed to expire in September 1993, little to nothing has been done either to reinstate the federal merit pay program for managers or to distribute performance rating evaluations for the SES, much less to extend the program to the remainder of the workforce. A reform-friendly President and Congress might just provide the opportunity to create a more comprehensive performance plan; in the meantime, however, political executives should use exist- ing pay and especially fiscal awards strategically to reward good performance to the degree allowed by law.
AI Analysis:
"The EQUALS Act extends probationary periods and ties continued employment to performance, conduct, and public interest certification, directly addressing Project 2025's goal of increasing accountability and linking merit to retention in the civil service."
— 71 — Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy progressives have sought a system that could effectively select, train, reward, and guard from partisan influence the neutral scientific experts they believe are required to staff the national government and run the administrative state. Their U.S. system was initiated by the Pendleton Act of 188310 and institutionalized by the 1930s New Deal to set principles and practices that were meant to ensure that expert merit rather than partisan favors or personal favoritism ruled within the federal bureaucracy. Yet, as public frustration with the civil service has grown, generating calls to “drain the swamp,” it has become clear that their project has had serious unintended consequences. The civil service was devised to replace the amateurism and presumed corrup- tion of the old spoils system, wherein government jobs rewarded loyal partisans who might or might not have professional backgrounds. Although the system appeared to be sufficient for the nation’s first century, progressive intellectuals and activists demanded a more professionalized, scientific, and politically neutral Administration. Progressives designed a merit system to promote expertise and shield bureaucrats from partisan political pressure, but it soon began to insulate civil servants from accountability. The modern merit system increasingly made it almost impossible to fire all but the most incompetent civil servants. Complying with arcane rules regarding recruiting, rating, hiring, and firing simply replaced the goal of cultivating competence and expertise. In the 1970s, Georgia Democratic Governor Jimmy Carter, then a political unknown, ran for President supporting New Deal programs and their Great Soci- ety expansion but opposing the way they were being administered. The policies were not actually reducing poverty, increasing prosperity, or improving the envi- ronment, he argued, and to make them work required fundamental bureaucratic reform. He correctly charged that almost all government employees were rated as “successful,” all received the same pay regardless of performance, and even the worst were impossible to fire—and he won the presidency. President Carter fulfilled his campaign promise by hiring Syracuse University Dean Alan Campbell, who served first as Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Com- mission and then as Director of the OPM and helped him devise and pass the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA)11 to reset the basic structure of today’s bureau- cracy. A new performance appraisal system was devised with a five rather than three distribution of rating categories and individual goals more related to agency missions and more related to employee promotion for all. Pay and benefits were based directly on improved performance appraisals (including sizable bonuses) for mid-level managers and senior executives. But time ran out on President Carter before the act could be fully executed, so it was left to President Ronald Reagan and his new OPM and agency leadership to implement. Overall, the new law seemed to work for a few years under Reagan, but the Carter– Reagan reforms were dissipated within a decade. Today, employee evaluation is back — 72 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise to pre-reform levels with almost all rated successful or above, frustrating any rela- tion between pay and performance. An “outstanding” rating should be required for Senior Executive Service (SES) chiefs to win big bonuses, but a few years ago, when it was disclosed that the Veterans Administration executives who encouraged false reporting of waiting lists for hospital admission were rated outstanding, the Senior Executive Association justified it, telling Congress that only outstanding performers would be promoted to the SES in the first place and that precise ratings were unnec- essary.12 The Government Accountability Office (GAO), however, has reported that pay raises, within-grade pay increases, and locality pay for regular employees and executives have become automatic rather than based on performance—as a result of most employees being rated at similar appraisal levels.13 OPM: Merit Hiring in a Merit System. It should not be impossible even for a large national government to hire good people through merit selection. The government did so for years, but it has proven difficult in recent times to select personnel based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) as the law dictates. Yet for the past 34 years, the U.S. civil service has been unable to distinguish con- sistently between strong and unqualified applicants for employment. As the Carter presidency was winding down, the U.S. Department of Justice and top lawyers at the OPM contrived with plaintiffs to end civil service IQ exam- inations because of concern about their possible impact on minorities. The OPM had used the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE) gen- eral intelligence exam to select college graduates for top agency employment, but Carter Administration officials—probably without the President’s informed con- currence—abolished the PACE through a legal consent court decree capitulating to demands by civil rights petitioners who contended that it was discriminatory. The judicial decree was to last only five years but still controls federal hiring and is applied to all KSA tests even today. General ability tests like the PACE have been used successfully to assess the use- fulness and cost-effectiveness of broad intellectual qualities across many separate occupations. Courts have ruled that even without evidence of overt, intentional discrimination, such results might suggest discrimination. This doctrine of dispa- rate impact could be ended legislatively or at least narrowed through the regulatory process by a future Administration. In any event, the federal government has been denied the use of a rigorous entry examination for three decades, relying instead on self-evaluations that have forced managers to resort to subterfuge such as preselecting friends or associates that they believe are competent to obtain qual- ified employees. In 2015, President Barack Obama’s OPM began to introduce an improved merit examination called USAHire, which it had been testing quietly since 2012 in a few agencies for a dozen job descriptions. The tests had multiple-choice questions with only one correct answer. Some questions even required essay replies: questions
AI Analysis:
"The EQUALS Act of 2025 aligns strongly with Project 2025's focus on improving federal workforce performance through extended probationary periods, performance-based evaluations, and ensuring employment advances the public interest—directly supporting the goal of enhancing accountability and effectiveness in central personnel management."
— 73 — Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy that would change regularly to depress cheating. President Donald Trump’s OPM planned to implement such changes but was delayed because of legal concerns over possible disparate impact. Courts have agreed to review the consent decree if the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures setting the technical requirements for sound exams are reformed. A government that is unable to select employees based on KSA-like test qualifications cannot work, and the OPM must move forward on this very basic personnel management obligation. The Centrality of Performance Appraisal. In the meantime, the OPM must manage the workforce it has. Before they can reward or discipline federal employees, managers must first identify who their top performers are and who is performing less than adequately. In fact, as Ludwig von Mises proved in his classic Bureaucracy,14 unlike the profit-and-loss evaluation tool used in the private sector, government performance measurement depends totally on a functioning appraisal system. If they cannot be identified in the first place within a functioning appraisal system, it is impossible to reward good performance or correct poor performance. The problem is that the collegial atmosphere of a bureaucracy in a multifaceted appraisal system that is open to appeals makes this a very challenging ideal to implement successfully. The GAO reported more recently that overly high and widely spread perfor- mance ratings were again plaguing the government, with more than 99 percent of employees rated fully successful or above by their managers, a mere 0.3 percent rated as minimally successful, and 0.1 percent actually rated unacceptable.15 Why? It is human nature that no one appreciates being told that he or she is less than outstanding in every way. Informing subordinates in a closely knit bureaucracy that they are not performing well is difficult. Rating compatriots is even consid- ered rude and unprofessional. Moreover, managers can be and often are accused of racial or sexual discrimination for a poor rating, and this discourages honesty. In 2018, President Trump issued Executive Order 1383916 requiring agen- cies to reduce the time for employees to improve performance before corrective action could be taken; to initiate disciplinary actions against poorly performing employees more expeditiously; to reiterate that agencies are obligated to make employees improve; to reduce the time for employees to respond to allegations of poor performance; to mandate that agencies remind supervisors of expiring employee probationary periods; to prohibit agencies from entering into settlement agreements that modify an employee’s personnel record; and to reevaluate proce- dures for agencies to discipline supervisors who retaliate against whistleblowers. Unfortunately, the order was overturned by the Biden Administration,17 so it will need to be reintroduced in 2025. The fact remains that meaningfully evaluating employees’ performance is a critical part of a manager’s job. In the Reagan appraisal process, managers were evaluated on how they themselves rated their subordinates. This is critical to
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.