When Donald Trump takes the debate stage on Tuesday, he will doubtless again try to disavow Project 2025, the radically conservative blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation for the next Republican administration.
We shouldn’t let him.
Seventy-eight percent of the contributors to the effort were members of his last administration and many of them are likely appointees to his next team if he’s re-elected. As the old Washington saying goes, “personnel is policy.”
The group of authors includes Russell Vought, who headed the Office of Management and Budget; Chris Miller, one of Mr. Trump’s acting defense secretaries; Ken Cucinelli, Mr. Trump’s deputy secretary of homeland security; and Peter Navarro, a longtime Trump adviser who was closely involved in the ex-president’s attempt to overturn the election.
We’ve seen this movie before. In 2016, ahead of Mr. Trump’s first term, the Heritage Foundation released the seventh edition of its “Mandate for Leadership.” One year into his presidency, Mr. Trump had embraced 64 percent of its policy recommendations, ranging from leaving the Paris climate accord to raising military spending to increasing drilling offshore and on federal lands.
Based on Mr. Trump’s campaign utterances and Project 2025′s proposals, expect far more radical actions from a second Trump presidency. Relying on analysis by the Center for American Progress and others, below are eight examples of how Project 2025′s proposals could alter American life.
Raise income taxes on those earning Less
Project 2025 proposes to “simplify” the tax code by collapsing the complex system into two tax brackets — 15 percent and 30 percent — while eliminating most deductions, credits and exclusions. Sound good? The plan would also raise taxes for American families making under $170,000 a year — nearly tripling them for a family earning $75,000 — while cutting them substantially for those with higher incomes.
Oh, and remember when Mr. Trump slashed corporate taxes to 21 percent from 35 percent? Project 2025 wants to reduce the rate even further, plus shrink the already low rate on capital gains enjoyed by the wealthy.
Cap Medicaid
Project 2025 would slash Medicaid by imposing a lifetime cap on the length of time Americans can be enrolled in the program. The consequence could be the loss of Medicaid eligibility for as many as 20 percent of Americans currently enrolled. And for those who remain eligible, work requirements would be imposed.
The impact varies but would be greatest in some states that will be closely fought over in this November’s presidential election. For example, in Wisconsin, 41 percent of enrollees could lose their coverage.
This measure isn’t likely to be popular: 90 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Medicaid.
Eliminate Head Start
Project 2025 doesn’t believe in group child care. It proposes eliminating Head Start and giving the money to parents, either so a parent can afford to stay home with a child or pay for “familial, in-home child care.”
Given the cost efficiency of group child care, it’s very hard to see how decreeing that it’s every family for itself would be preferable to Head Start.
This may also be another case of bad political judgment. Head Start is highly utilized, particularly in rural counties, which ironically generally have higher shares of Trump voters.
Phase out Title I
Project 2025 would phase out the $18 billion currently allocated to Title I, a key source of education aid, and return funding responsibility to the states. That makes it yet another policy change that would hit red states harder, because Title I provides public funding for high-poverty public and charter schools (and red states house disproportionately more of these schools).
The Center for American Progress estimates that this move could cost the nation 5.6 percent of all teachers’ jobs and as much as 12 percent of those jobs in Louisiana.
End student loan forgiveness
Project 2025 would abandon President Biden’s effort to reduce the burden of student debt on young Americans; existing borrowers would have to repay the loans per their existing terms. For new loans, any loan forgiveness would be eliminated; borrowers would retire loans by paying 10 percent of income above the poverty line.
That would raise monthly payments for those who never earned a college degree to $308 from $78. Bachelor’s degree graduates would have to pay nearly three times as much as they pay now.
Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act
The conservative manifesto seeks to repeal large parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, which despite its name is principally aimed at facilitating a shift toward renewable energy. The legislation, which provides tax credits to stimulate conversion from fossil fuels, has been substantially more successful than its backers anticipated.
Also on the chopping block: the government’s power to negotiate drug price reductions, which has already lowered the cost of insulin and other much-used pharmaceuticals.
Project 2025 also wants to repeal the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which, after years of wrangling, is finally having an impact on our crumbling roads, aging airports and so much more.
Ban the abortion pill
Notwithstanding a Supreme Court decision last spring, Project 2025 wants the Food and Drug Administration to ban the drug mifepristone, which blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy development. Since its approval (and that of a companion drug) in 2000, use of the medication has soared and now accounts for 63 percent of all abortions. Meanwhile, the number of surgical abortions has dropped from more than 1.5 million yearly in the 1980s to fewer than 400,000 in 2023.
Bolster President Trump’s power
Mr. Trump has long argued that the “deep state” — by which he means the federal bureaucracy — stymied many of his policy initiatives. In 2020, he tried to address this real or imagined concern by reclassifying an estimated 50,000 civil servants as political appointees. President Biden repealed Mr. Trump’s executive order. Now Project 2025 wants it reinstated.
This may sound like inside baseball, but it is a critically important issue, as a huge increase in the number of political appointees (there are currently only about 4,000) would substantially increase the reach of presidential power.
(Additional research by Kasey Chatterji-Len.)
Steven Rattner is a contributing New York Times Opinion writer and the chairman and chief executive of Willett Advisors. He was a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
