Sep.12

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Dem 49

   

GOP 51

Project 2025 Would Change America Drastically

The Democrats produced a large prop book labeled "Project 2025" for their convention. They said it was terrible. Donald Trump claims not to know what is in it, which is odd since it's his former staffers who wrote most of it. That is, 78% of the authors worked in his administration and the rest might well work in another one, if he wins. Steven Rattner, a long-time Wall Street financier who understands big numbers and who structured the 2009 bailout that saved the American auto industry, has now read it carefully and written a guest essay in The New York Times that describes some of the major ways it would change the country. Here is a brief summary.

• Presidential power: This is a biggie. While Project 2025 would not technically repeal the Pendleton Act, which created the modern merit-based civil service, it would make the top 50,000 civil servants across the federal government political appointees, whose job would be to implement the president's wishes, the law and public interest be damned. It would effectively reintroduce the Spoils System perfected by Donald Trump's second favorite president, Andrew Jackson. The folks at the FDA who approve drugs would then approve only those drugs the president liked (for example, those made by companies that gave him a now-legal bribe). The EPA would only create regulations on polluting industries that didn't pay the requisite bribe to the president. The SBA would only give loans to small businesses the president approved, although the bribe for someone wanting a loan to start a pizzeria would be lower than that expected of a multinational drug company.
  
  
• Abortion: About 63% of all abortions now use mifepristone. Project 2025 would direct the FDA to rescind approval of the drug. This would make abortion much more difficult, even for people in blue states, because there aren't enough gynecological surgeons to handle the increased load.
  
  
• Energy: The Inflation Reduction Act was so named to please Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), whose vote was needed to pass it. It barely addresses inflation. Most of the money goes to fighting climate change by subsidizing the transition to renewable energy in many ways. Project 2025 calls for the repeal of the whole bill. And to make sure the private sector doesn't try to solve the problem on its own, Project 2025 also eliminates all grants for scientific research which might lead to technologies that could reduce climate change. Did the oil companies write this part of the plan? We have our suspicions.
  
  
• Taxes: Conservatives have long longed for a flat tax. Usually, the idea is that everyone pays 25% or so of his or her income in tax. Poor people pay the same rate as rich people. A flat tax would eliminate the current progressive rates and be a huge boon to rich people. Project 2025 argues for something slightly different, but is a move in that direction. There would be just two rates, in contrast to the seven rates now that go from 10% to 37%. The lower rate would be 15% for income below $168,600 and 30% above that. But there is a catch here. Income below $168,600 is subject to FICA contributions for Social Security and income above it is not. So the 15% rate would really be 22.7% except for self-employed persons, where it would be 30.3%. So a billionaire would pay a slightly lower rate than an Uber driver. All deductions, credits, exclusions and credits would be eliminated. For people making $75,000, their federal tax bill would triple, but for anyone making $182,000 or more, their marginal rate would go down. In short, poor and middle-income people would be taxed to support a tax cut for rich people.
  
  
• Medicaid: Medicaid pays for health care for poor people. About 74 million Americans get Medicaid. There is no lifetime limit. As long as you are below a certain cutoff, you can be on Medicaid. Project 2025 argues for a lifetime limit, after which, you would be booted off the program and have no health coverage. This would not be popular. 90% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans have a favorable view of Medicaid.
  
  
• Head Start: Republicans don't like Head Start, which provides day care and education to poor children before they start kindergarten. Studies show that without it, poor kids start kindergarten with a disadvantage they never recover from. Project 2025 would eliminate the entire program. It would provide funding for some parents (called mothers) to stay at home and take care of their kids there. This would probably cost as much as Head Start but have other bad effects—for example, eliminating the income taxes the newly stay-at-home mothers previously paid. In effect, it is a rebellion against socialized education. The next step would be eliminating free kindergarten, and why not eventually all free public education? But you have to start somewhere. Ironically, Head Start is far more widely used in rural areas (called Trump country) than in urban areas.
  
  
• Student loans: Project 2025 eliminates nearly all loan-forgiveness programs. In it, only people below the federal poverty line would get forgiveness. But the plan argues that ideally, Congress should eliminate all loan forgiveness and require everyone to pay back their full loan, with interest, just as with a mortgage or car loan.
  
  
• Education: Title I provides educational grants to high-poverty areas. Project 2025 would phase it out. States could take over if they want to and have the money for it. It would eliminate 5.6% of all teachers' jobs nationally and as much as 12% in rural states like Louisiana. Again, it would be the Trump voters who get hit the hardest.
  

These are only some of the "highlights." The Project 2025 plan runs 900 pages and every page is crammed with ideas that would reshape the government in thousands of ways, all of them carefully designed to benefit conservatives and, especially, rich conservatives. (V)