The bill
A resolution recognizing January 2025 as "National Mentoring Month".
SRES. 55, 119th Congress.
Sponsored by
Sen. Whitehouse, Sheldon [D-RI]
ID: W000802
Follow the money
The bill
SRES. 55, 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 Health and Human Services" section, p. 512-514 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Submitted in the Senate, considered, and agreed to without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent. (consideration: CR S599-600; text: CR S598-599)
February 3, 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!
Oh joy, another meaningless resolution from the esteemed members of Congress. SRES 55 is a masterclass in legislative theater, designed to make politicians look good while accomplishing nothing.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The main purpose of this resolution is to declare January 2025 as "National Mentoring Month." Wow, what a bold move. I'm sure the fate of the nation depends on it. The objectives are to raise awareness about mentoring, recruit new mentors, and encourage institutions to integrate quality mentoring into their policies.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** There aren't any. This is a resolution, not a bill, so it doesn't actually change anything. It's just a feel-good statement that allows politicians to pat themselves on the back for "doing something" about mentoring.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties are the politicians who sponsored this resolution and their constituents, who will no doubt be impressed by their leaders' commitment to... declaring months. The stakeholders are the various organizations and interest groups that will use this resolution as a PR opportunity to promote their own mentoring programs.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** Zero. Zilch. Nada. This resolution won't change anything about the state of mentoring in America. It's a shallow attempt to appear concerned about an issue without actually doing anything meaningful. The "mentoring gap" will still exist, and young people will still lack access to quality mentors.
But hey, at least we'll have a month-long celebration of mentoring! I'm sure that'll make all the difference in the lives of those 1 in 3 young people growing up without a mentor. It's not like they need actual support or resources; just a symbolic gesture will suffice.
In medical terms, this resolution is like prescribing a placebo to a patient with a terminal illness. It might make them feel better for a little while, but it won't actually cure anything. And in the world of politics, that's all that matters – appearances over actual results.
So, let's give a round of applause to our esteemed politicians for this meaningless resolution. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to know that their efforts have been reduced to nothing more than a footnote in the annals of legislative history.
Sen. Whitehouse, Sheldon [D-RI]
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: M001190
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ID: B001230
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ID: B001277
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ID: D000622
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ID: D000563
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Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 59 nodes and 35 connections (55 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $125,060
Showing top 14 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 bill promotes mentoring for youth development, which tangentially supports family well-being goals in the Project 2025 HHS section, but it does not address marriage, fatherhood, or HMRE/HMRF program funding and policies."
— 480 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Utilize HMRE funding or grants to provide state-level high school education resources and curriculum on healthy marriages, sexual risk avoidance, and healthy relationships. Early interventions and prevention are much more cost-effective than are efforts to reach people already in broken relationships. l Allow child welfare funding to be used for marriage and relationship education. Congress should adopt the following recommendation from a report issued by members of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee: Children are far more likely to experience abuse when they are raised outside of their married-parent family. Title II of the Child Abuse Preven- tion and Treatment Act provides grants to communities for the purpose of preventing child abuse and neglect, and one of the stated purposes for which the grants can be used is for efforts to increase family stability. However, Congress could change the law to make it clear that Title II funding can be used for healthy marriage and relationship education. Funding provided under Title IV-B of the Social Security Act—which provides grants to states for foster care and adoption services—can also be used for promoting healthy marriage. States should consider using some of their Title IV-B funding for providing healthy marriage and relationship education for families at risk of having their children placed in foster care.65 l Provide educational information on healthy marriage and relationships at Title X family planning clinics. HHS should require clinics it funds under Title X (family planning) to provide information to customers about the importance of marriage to family and personal well-being and refer them to available federal, state, and nonprofit marriage resources. l Ensure proper assessments with enough time to assess HMRE programs. Although some widely available assessments of HMRE programs report poor outcomes, many of these assessments either utilized a poor methodology or tried to measure program success prematurely. Recent assessments have shown increasing effectiveness and positive community- level marital outcomes.66 The HMRE program should receive a fair and realistic assessment. Additionally, the positive role of faith-based programs should be protected — 481 — Department of Health and Human Services and prioritized so that these programs do not receive undue scrutiny or pressure to conform to nonreligious definitions of marriage and family as put forward by the recently enacted Respect for Marriage Act.67 l Protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations that maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family. Social science reports that assess the objective outcomes for children raised in homes aside from a heterosexual, intact marriage are clear: All other family forms involve higher levels of instability (the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages); financial stress or poverty; or poorer behavioral, psychological, or educational outcomes. For the sake of child well-being, programs should affirm that children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father. Despite recent congressional bills like the Respect for Marriage Act that redefine marriage to be the union between any two individuals, HMRE program grants should be available to faith- based recipients who affirm that marriage is between not just any two adults, but one man and one unrelated woman. Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) Program. This program is located within the ACF Office of Family Assistance. Its goal, like that of the HMRE program, is to provide marriage and parenting guidance for low-in- come fathers. This includes fatherhood and marriage training, curriculum, and subsequent research. l Implement a pro-fatherhood messaging campaign. With nearly 41 percent of children born without a married father in the home (and nearly 69 percent among black Americans), the fatherhood problem is clear. Similar to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2022 fatherhood bill, HMRF funds should be used to support national messaging campaigns that affirm the role fathers play in the lives of their children, that recognize the financial hardships the fathers themselves face, and that seek to provide relationship education to fathers who were raised without a father in the home. l Fund effective HMRF state programs. Grant allocations should protect and prioritize faith-based programs that incorporate local churches and mentorship programs or increase social capital through multilayered community support (including, for example, job training and social events). Programs should affirm and teach fathers based on a biological and
AI Analysis:
"Both the bill and the Project 2025 excerpt concern education, but the bill focuses on mentoring and youth development while the policy section addresses student loan reform, accountability, and teacher union charters, resulting only in tangential thematic overlap."
— 341 — Department of Education market prices and signals to influence educational borrowing, introducing consumer-driven accountability into higher education. Pell grants should retain their current voucher-like structure. If Congress is unwilling to reform federal student aid, then the next Adminis- tration should consider the following reforms: l Switch to fair-value accounting from FCRA accounting, and l Consolidate all federal loan programs into one new program that 1. Utilizes income-driven repayment, 2. Includes no interest rate subsidies or loan forgiveness, 3. Includes annual and aggregate limits on borrowing, and 4. Requires “skin in the game” from colleges to help hold them accountable for loan repayment. The Biden Administration has mercilessly pillaged the student loan portfolio for crass political purposes without regard to the needs of current taxpayers or future students. This must never happen again. l As detailed in Section III, the next Administration should work with Congress to spin off federal student aid into a new government corporation with professional governance and management. NEW POLICY PRIORITIES FOR 2025 AND BEYOND New Legislation That Should Be Prioritized For nearly 250 years, Congress has incorporated public and private institutions, including banks, the District of Columbia’s city government, and other organiza- tions that federal officials deem to be conducting operations in the public interest. Such charters offer a certain status to organizations, often viewed as a “seal of approval” according to one Congressional Research Service report, which can help these organizations in their fundraising and other advocacy efforts. When the nation’s largest teacher association, the National Education Associ- ation (NEA), cites its federal charter, it lends the NEA a level of significance and suggests an effectiveness that is not supported by evidence. In fact, the NEA and the nation’s other large teacher union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT),
AI Analysis:
"SRES 55 promotes civilian youth mentoring and educational outcomes, while the Project 2025 Defense section focuses on exportability, FMS process reform, defense industrial base collaboration, and military recruiting/retention reforms; the only tangential connection is the potential of mentoring to support youth interest in military service."
— 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 — 102 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 1. Immediately fund more contracting capacity in all services to decrease the contracting timeline and improve the delivery of defense articles to our global partners. 2. Rationalize and speed arms sales decision-making to preclude our enemies from exploiting bureaucratic slothfulness and allow us to manage the development of indigenous defense industrial bases. DOD PERSONNEL The men and women of America’s armed forces are the most critical component of our national defense strategy, but in recent years, they have been overextended, undervalued, and insufficiently resourced. Their families help them to carry the burden of service, but the assistance they receive is disproportionately less than the sacrifices they make. Young civilians who would thrive in a military environ- ment are disenfranchised when educators and influencers discourage them from learning about military service and preparing for the honor of wearing Ameri- ca’s uniform. The United States military is an extraordinary institution, staffed by exceptional people who have defended our nation and changed the course of history, but the Biden Administration, through word and deed, has treated the armed forces as just another place to work. We must restore our military to a place of honor and respect and recruit and retain the individuals who will meet the rigorous standards of excellence that are required for membership in the world’s greatest fighting force. Needed Reforms l Rescue recruiting and retention. Recruiting was the worst in 2022 that it has been in two generations and is expected to be even worse in 2023. Some of the problems are self-inflicted and ongoing. The recruiting problem is not service-specific: It affects the entire Joint Force. 1. Appoint a Special Assistant to the President who will maintain liaison with Congress, DOD, and all other interested parties on the issue of recruiting and retention. 2. Improve recruiting by suspending the use of the recently introduced MHS Genesis system that uses private medical records of potential recruits at Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS), creating unnecessary delays and unwarranted rejections.11 3. Improve military recruiters’ access to secondary schools and require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
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.