Total Force Family Education Act
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Rep. Vindman, Eugene Simon [D-VA-7]
ID: V000138
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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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 legislative theater, brought to you by the esteemed members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The Total Force Family Education Act (HR 5987) claims to ensure "equitable access" to Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) schools for dependents of reserve component members performing active service. How noble. In reality, it's a thinly veiled attempt to curry favor with the military-industrial complex and their lobbying groups.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends Section 2164 of Title 10, United States Code, by adding a new subsection that grants eligibility for DODEA schools to dependents of reserve component members performing active service. Wow, what a bold move. It's not like this is just a minor tweak to existing law, designed to placate the Pentagon and its contractors.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects are affected: military families, DODEA schools, and the defense industry. But let's be real, the only stakeholders who truly matter are the politicians and lobbyists who will benefit from this bill. The rest are just pawns in their game of power and greed.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a classic case of "legislative lip service." It promises to address a perceived problem (inequitable access to education) while actually doing nothing to address the root causes. In reality, it will likely lead to:
* Increased costs for taxpayers, as the government expands its already bloated defense budget. * Further entrenchment of the military-industrial complex's grip on our politics and economy. * A negligible impact on the actual lives of military families, who will still face the same challenges and bureaucratic hurdles.
Diagnosis: This bill is suffering from a bad case of "Pentagon-itis" – a disease characterized by an excessive reliance on military spending and a complete disregard for fiscal responsibility. The symptoms include:
* A swollen defense budget that's more bloated than a politician's ego. * A lack of transparency and accountability, as the true beneficiaries of this bill (lobbyists and contractors) remain hidden behind a veil of bureaucratic jargon. * A complete failure to address the underlying issues affecting military families, such as inadequate healthcare, housing, and education.
Treatment: The only cure for this disease is a healthy dose of skepticism and a strong stomach. We need to call out these politicians and lobbyists for what they are – charlatans who prey on our fears and ignorance to further their own interests. It's time to put the "Total Force" behind some real reform, rather than just paying lip service to it.
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
No campaign finance data available for Rep. Vindman, Eugene Simon [D-VA-7]
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
— 104 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 5. Restrict the use of social media solely for purposes of recruitment and discipline any armed services personnel who use an official command channel to engage with civilian critics on social media. 6. Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel. 7. Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended. l Value the military family. Military service requires extreme sacrifices by families. 1. Support legislation to increase wages and family allowances for active- duty enlisted personnel. No uniformed personnel should ever have to rely on social benefits like as food stamps or public housing assistance. 2. Improve base housing and consider the military family holistically when considering change-of-station moves. 3. Improve spouse employment opportunities and protections, including licensing reform,14 and expand childcare. 4. Audit all curricula and health policies in DOD schools for military families, remove all inappropriate materials, and reverse inappropriate policies. 5. Support legislation giving education savings account options to military families.15 l Reduce the number of generals. Rank creep is pervasive. The number of 0-6 to 0-9 officers is at an all-time high across the armed services (above World War II levels), and the actual battlefield experience of this officer corps is at an all-time low. The next President should limit the continued advancement of many of the existing cadre, many of whom have been advanced by prior Administrations for reasons other than their warfighting prowess.
Introduction
— 104 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 5. Restrict the use of social media solely for purposes of recruitment and discipline any armed services personnel who use an official command channel to engage with civilian critics on social media. 6. Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel. 7. Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended. l Value the military family. Military service requires extreme sacrifices by families. 1. Support legislation to increase wages and family allowances for active- duty enlisted personnel. No uniformed personnel should ever have to rely on social benefits like as food stamps or public housing assistance. 2. Improve base housing and consider the military family holistically when considering change-of-station moves. 3. Improve spouse employment opportunities and protections, including licensing reform,14 and expand childcare. 4. Audit all curricula and health policies in DOD schools for military families, remove all inappropriate materials, and reverse inappropriate policies. 5. Support legislation giving education savings account options to military families.15 l Reduce the number of generals. Rank creep is pervasive. The number of 0-6 to 0-9 officers is at an all-time high across the armed services (above World War II levels), and the actual battlefield experience of this officer corps is at an all-time low. The next President should limit the continued advancement of many of the existing cadre, many of whom have been advanced by prior Administrations for reasons other than their warfighting prowess. — 105 — Department of Defense DOD INTELLIGENCE Our national defense establishment must evolve to meet the rapid, pro- found, and dynamic change in the global landscape, but absent significant effort to evaluate and retool in critical areas—including our intelligence and security portfolios—America’s competitive advantage against rivals and adversaries is at serious risk. However, for any structural changes to succeed, the crisis in our Intel- ligence Community (IC)/Defense Intelligence Enterprise (DIE) leadership must be addressed.16 The DIE accounts for the bulk of the Intelligence Community’s personnel and a significant portion of its budget. Of the IC’s 17 elements, eight are within DOD,17 two are independent,18 and seven belong to various other departments and agencies.19 Overall, “[t]he DoD provides 86 percent of the personnel who conduct intelligence activities, both military and civilian.”20 The Defense Intelligence Enterprise must deliver accurate, unbiased, and timely insights consistently and with clarity, objectivity, and independence. If they continue on their current path, however, both the DIE and the Intelligence Com- munity writ large will continue to provide inaccurate and politicized intelligence assessments that mislead policymakers. Needed Reforms l Improve the intelligence process. Defense intelligence assets have been committed to the prosecution of operational campaigns since September 11, 2001, at the expense of our strategic objectives, and this has led to increased risk.21 Further, the DIE has evolved into a “customer-based” model with the DIE/IC trying to be supportive of policy direction at the expense of analytical integrity. The result has been a significant politicization of intelligence. 1. Establish unbiased intelligence reporting from DIE/IC senior leaders. As the leader of the DIE, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security should provide a top-line, dissenting, or clarifying view of DIE and IC assessments as needed. 2. Align collection and analysis with vital national interests (countering China and Russia). 3. Establish an effective global federated intelligence framework with allies and partners and our Combatant Commands. Avoid the temptation to neglect areas that appear less pertinent but that support a convergence of threats and the critical requirements to sustain those threats.
Introduction
— 348 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise materials, private school tuition, transportation and more—accounts modeled after the accounts in Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and seven other states. l Members of Congress should design the same account system for students in active-duty military families, including students attending schools that receive funding under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).18 Heritage Foundation research found that if even 10 percent of the students eli- gible for accounts under such a proposal transferred from an assigned school to an education savings account, the change for the sending district would be 0.1 percent of that school district’s K–12 budget. Even in heavily impacted districts (districts with a large number of students receiving Impact Aid), the budgetary effect would be less than 2 percent. Yet these children would then have the chance to receive a customized education that meets their unique needs. As with state ESA programs, families who are homeschooling are distinct in statute from families who use an ESA to customize an education at home. Furthermore, research from the Claremont Institute used documents pro- vided by a whistleblower demonstrating how educators at Department of Defense schools around the world are using radical gender theory and critical race theory in their lessons. This instructional material discards biology in favor of political indoctrination and applies critical race theory’s core tenets advocating for more racial discrimination. Such ideas are highly unpopular among parents, accord- ing to nationally representative surveys, and the course material attempts to indoctrinate students with radical ideas about race and the ambiguous concept of “gender.” Finally, schools on tribal lands and under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) are among the worst-performing public schools in the country. Research from Rep. Burgess Owens’ office reports that the graduation rate for BIE students is 53 percent, lower than the average for Native American students in public schools around the country, and nearly 30 percentage points lower than the national average for all students. In 2015, Arizona lawmakers expanded the state’s education savings account program to include children living on tribal lands, and by 2021, nearly 400 Native American children were using the accounts. l Federal officials should design a federal education savings account option for all children attending BIE schools. The next Administration should make the K–12 systems under federal juris- diction examples of quality learning opportunities and education freedom. — 349 — Department of Education Washington should convert some of the lowest-performing public school systems in the country into areas defined by choices, creating rigorous learning options for all children and from all backgrounds, income levels, and ethnicities. Expand Education Choice Through Portability of Existing Federal Funds Setting education policy on the right track long term would require sunsetting the U.S. Department of Education altogether. Doing so would not result in fewer resources and less assistance for children with special needs or from low-income families. Rather, closing the federal behemoth would better target existing taxpayer resources already set aside for these students by shifting oversight responsibilities to federal and state agencies that have more expertise in helping these populations. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the federal law gov- erning taxpayer spending on K–12 students with special needs. The law stipulates that students have a right to a “free and appropriate education,” and 95 percent of children with special needs attend assigned public schools. The education is not always appropriate, however: Special education is fraught with legal battles. Some argue that the education of children with special needs is the most litigated area of K–12 education. Thus, despite a nearly 50-year-old federal law that sees regular revision and reauthorization and approximately $13.5 billion per year in federal taxpayer spending, parents still struggle to establish intervention plans for their students with public school district officials regarding the physical and educational requirements for their children with special needs. State-level education options often exclusively serve children with special needs for these very reasons. Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina, to name a few states, all have education savings accounts or K–12 private school scholarship options for children with special needs. l Federal lawmakers should move IDEA oversight and implementation to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. l Officials should then consider revising IDEA to require that a child’s portion of the federal taxpayer spending under the law be made available to families so parents can choose how and where a child learns. l IDEA already allows families to choose a private school under certain conditions, but federal officials should update the law so that families can use their child’s IDEA spending for textbooks, education therapies, personal tutors, and other learning expenses, similar to the way in which parents use education savings accounts in states such as Arizona and Florida. These micro-education savings accounts
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.