The 8 ways Project 2025 will devastate your life: NY Times
A new analysis of the controversial policy platform former President Donald Trump denies supporting, despite contributions from more than 100 of his former staffers, revealed Monday eight significant ways its implementation could upend Americans' lives.
The Heritage Foundation policy plan Project 2025 was subjected to a brutal takedown from New York Times contributor Steven Rattner, a former counselor to the Treasury secretary under former President Barack Obama, who argued it would devastate all but the very rich.
"Expect far more radical actions from a second Trump presidency," Rattner warned his readers. "Project 2025’s proposals could alter American life."
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According to Rattner and researchers from the Center for American Progress, here's how.
1. Taxes would triple for low-income Americans
Project 2025 proposes to simplify tax brackets into two groups, 15 percent and 30 percent, while eliminating deductions and credits, Rattner wrote.
Their plan would raise taxes for U.S. families earning less than $170,000 a year and nearly triple them for a family earning $75,000.
Meanwhile, the affluent would get tax cuts.
2. Nearly 20 million Americans would lose healthcare coverage
Project 2025 would impose a lifetime cap on Medicaid, the low-income healthcare provider, rendering it inaccessible to about 19 million people, or 5 percent of the country’s population, Rattner's analysis found. The odds are one in 20.
3. Preschoolers would take a hit
Project 2025 would eliminate Head Start and giving the money to parents, according to Rattner. He notes the federal preschool program is mostly used in rural counties, where voters are predicted to vote for Trump.
4. 180,000 less jobs for teachers
Project 2025 would phase out $18 billion in federal funding allocated to education aid program Title I. According to the Center for American Progress, the move would decimate 180,000 teacher positions, nearly 6 percent of the teacher workforce of roughly 3.2 million public school teachers.
5. Student loan payments would 'balloon'
Project 2025 have existing borrowers repay the loans on their existing terms, eliminating loan forgiveness, Rattner wrote. Monthly payments for those who never earned a college degree would nearly quadruple, from $78 to $308 and college graduates would pay nearly three times as much as they pay now.
6. Airport and road conditions would deteriorate
Project 2025 seeks to repeal the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which pumps hundreds of billions of federal dollars into state infrastructure projects.
7. No more abortion pills for women
Project 2025 calls on the Food and Drug Administration to ban mifepristone, which now accounts for 63 percent of all abortions in the U.S., according to Rattner.
8. But more power for Trump
Project 2025 wants to reinstate Trump's repealed policy that reclassified 50,000 civil servants as political appointees, Rattner noted.
"This may sound like inside baseball, but it is a critically important issue," he concluded. "A huge increase in the number of political appointees (there are currently only about 4,000) would substantially increase the reach of presidential power."