I have seen a lot of bad ideas. Sometimes they come along as stand-alones, other times in groups.
“Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership – The Conservative Promise” (full text online, here) exemplifies the latter.
The right-wing Heritage Foundation has jammed disastrous policy ideas into a 900-page document to set the agenda for what it hopes will be the incoming Trump administration. Even more disturbing, with the support and cooperation of a “broad coalition of conservative organizations,” the Heritage Foundation is collecting resumes with the goal “to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.” Trump has explicitly called for replacing apolitical government experts and career civil servants with political appointees chosen for their loyalty to him (e.g., partisan hacks).
I urge you to look at “Project 2025” for yourself. Skim the table of contents to see its scope, touching virtually every major government agency. Here are just three of its numerous bad ideas.
First, transportation. The mandate calls for the elimination of funding for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA, part of the Department of Transportation). The FTA provides funding to assist local transit agencies, such as Greater New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). In 2023 the MTA received over $2 billion to help maintain the system, especially rail and subways. Federal aid accounts for almost 20% of the MTA’s current four-year capital spending plan. The author refers to this as “throwing good money after bad.” (Chapter 19) The consequences would be severe. Without these funds, the MTA would have to defer maintenance, cut service or raise fares even further, something that none of us in Ridgefield want to see.
The second bad idea is to ban Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices. Every other advanced country negotiates prescription drug prices for its citizens, and they consequently pay considerably less than Americans do for the exact same drugs. The U.S. spends an enormous amount on health – 16% of GDP, and twice as much per capita as the average of the 12 richest countries. We do not get any better health outcomes for this largesse; in some areas our outcomes are worse.
After decades of trying, the Biden Administration succeeded in getting Congress to grant Medicare the authority to negotiate prices under the Inflation Reduction Act. This authority represents our nation’s best hope for getting the increasing cost of health care under control, which will be even more important as Baby Boomers age. Project 2025 calls for the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act and the elimination of price negotiations. (p. 465)
The third bad idea can be found in chapter 17, which focuses on the Department of Justice (DOJ). The author calls for DOJ to prosecute “Providers and Distributors of Abortion Pills that Use the Mail.” This “authority” derives from the notorious 150-year-old Comstock Act of 1873. Originally written to ban the mailing of items deemed “obscene,” it is being resurrected in the post-Dobbs era to target mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medical abortions. Remember that the recent Supreme Court decision on mifepristone did not address this issue; it merely ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. This issue is very much alive and will certainly come up if Trump is elected.
The GOP-Trump agenda will have serious negative outcomes for Ridgefield — for the trains we ride, the medicines we buy and the families we plan. The courts and the legal system will not
save us. The only way to avoid these depredations is for Democrats to win in November – every single race at every level.
More thoughts to come….Stay tuned.