Donald Trump can deny knowledge of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” all he likes but the fact that 16 of the 39 named authors of the 920 page document are former members of his administration should tell you something. Some of the more well known members of the group are Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD who was Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Peter Navarro whom Trump appointed to the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and Ken Cuccinelli who served Trump as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. It’s hard to imagine that with that many of his former appointees involved in a project he wouldn’t know something about it.
The reason “Project 2025”; officially titled “Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise”, is important for every American to be aware of is that it is a plan for how the next Republican administration can gut our federal institutions and remake this nation into a authoritarian state.
In 1883 the Pendleton Civil Service Act was adopted, requiring government jobs to be awarded to individuals based upon merit and not political affiliation. The Pendleton Act also made it illegal to fire government workers solely for political reasons. Trump already tried to overturn the protections of this act in his first term but waited too long to implement it. “Project 2025” offers a plan far more thorough, going deeper into all federal agency structures to replace scientists, accountants, and other subject matter experts with people whose sole qualification for the job is loyalty to Trump.
President Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Act in 1970 and it has been improved upon over the decades such that we now have cleaner air and water than we did a century ago leading to healthier lives for all. The author of the “Project 2025” section on the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that Trump’s hand waving reclassification of High-Level nuclear waste to Low-Level is a great way to complete cleanup of various retired nuclear facilities and sites. This attitude toward safe disposal of nuclear waste carries over into all forms of hazardous waste site cleanup. Reclassification doesn’t magically render hazardous materials less hazardous it just allows inadequately processed dangerous materials to continue to threaten the health and well-being of anyone who ends up living or working near the site or the disposal location in the future.
“Project 2025” proposes abandoning efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change, including by repealing regulations that curb emissions, downsizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and abolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They want to abolish NOAA because the agency provides much of the data that enables scientists to track climate change and its effects.
“Project 2025” seeks to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and recommends simplifying individual income taxes to just two brackets, 15% and 30%, thus creating a nearly flat tax on wage income beyond the standard deduction. It aims to reduce the corporate tax rate to 18%, while suggesting setting taxes on capital gains and dividends at 15%. After these changes are implemented, it recommends that a three-fifths vote threshold be required to pass legislation that increases individual or corporate income tax, making it virtually impossible to ever change tax rates again. The Congressional Budget Office has reported that extending the 2017 tax cuts would increase the deficit by $4 trillion by 2028. You'll notice that Republicans only complain about the budget deficit when Democrats are in office even though it is Republicans who increase it the most.
There is much more that you should make yourself aware of.
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