The 2025 Presidential Transition Project (Project 2025) is a “comprehensive policy guide for the next conservative U.S. president”, which “pulls from the expertise of hundreds of political appointees, policy scholars, and conservative leaders across the conservative movement.”
The Project is being organized by The Heritage Foundation and builds off Heritage’s longstanding “Mandate for Leadership,” which has been highly influential with Republican presidential administrations since the Reagan era. It is the effort of a broad coalition of some of the most far-right conservative organizations in the country who have come together to ensure that, if former President Donald J. Trump is re-elected in November, his administration will have the policy proposals and recommended personnel at its fingertips to begin re-shaping our nation in their image from ‘day one’.
Recently, former President Trump has attempted to distance himself from the policy recommendations promoted by Project 2025, claiming he “knows nothing” about the Project and has “nothing to do with them”, though he “wishes them luck”. If nothing else, Trump is an astute politician and fully understands just how politically toxic many of the proposals are with Americans outside the conservative movement. It is completely in character for him to distance himself from their most radical proposals until after the election, at which point he will be unaccountable politically and free to advance any policy he chooses.
This effort to disavow the Heritage-led Project is contradicted by Trump himself. In 2022, he appeared at a Heritage-sponsored luncheon where he praised his hosts and said: “This is a great group and they are going to lay the groundwork in detailed plans for exactly what our movement will do, what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America and that’s coming, that’s coming”. The “detailed plans” he referred to became the policy recommendations in Project 2025.
It is also impossible to ignore the multitude of connections between the architects of Project 2025 and “Trump World”. According to extensive research conducted by CNN, six of his former Cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page playbook for a second Trump term. Four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved, along with several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown. And about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff.
In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, the CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch. Dozens more who staffed Trump’s government hold positions with conservative groups advising Project 2025, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and longtime adviser Stephen Miller. These groups also include several lawyers deeply involved in Trump’s attempts to remain in power, such as his impeachment attorney Jay Sekulow and two of the legal architects of his failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman.
Overall, CNN found nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House – from day-to-day foot soldiers in Washington to the highest levels of his government. The number is likely higher because many individuals’ online résumés were not available. In addition to people who worked directly for Trump, others who participated in Project 2025 were appointed by the former president to independent positions. For instance, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr authored an entire chapter of proposed changes to his agency, and Lisa Correnti, an anti-abortion advocate Trump appointed as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, is among the contributors.
In addition, the New Republic reports that the Republican Party’s platform —adopted from a proposed platform crafted by Trump’s campaign — has clear ties to Project 2025. Russ Vought, the Republican National Committee (RNC) platform committee’s policy chair, and Ed Martin, RNC deputy policy director, were installed in their RNC roles in coordination with the Trump campaign. Vought, Trump’s last Director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote a chapter of Project 2025, and both men are on Project 2025’s advisory board, according to ABC News. The Heritage Foundation was a major sponsor of the Republican National Convention, as it has been in previous years.
If any doubt remains about the likelihood of a next Trump administration implementing the proposals in the Project 2025 manifesto, Heritage itself takes credit for many of the policies enacted during the first Trump administration, stating: “Most recently, the Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s “Mandate” for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.” The group was also intimately involved with Trump’s transition to the White House in 2016. Beginning that August, top Heritage officials — including Ed Meese, Ed Feulner, Bill Walton and Kay Coles James — became key players in identifying personnel to fill out the administration. The Trump administration’s ability to implement this far-right conservative ‘wish list’ was, at least in part, impeded by a Congress which was not entirely co-opted by the former President during his first administration. Today’s Congress is far less likely to resist any Trump initiatives, as Republican Congressional leaders have virtually ceded their own responsibility for governing and dedicated themselves toward advancing the Trump agenda. If both House and Senate are controlled by Republicans in the next Congress, the agenda far-right conservatives have dreamed of for decades could proceed unimpeded, especially in the face of a Supreme Court packed with Trump appointees.
Social Security
One area where the Project 2025 document itself is silent, is describing any specific proposals to reform Social Security. One can assume that, at least some Republican political operatives have learned the dangers of “saying the quiet part out loud” where Social Security is concerned as the few Republican proposals that have been made public are extremely unpopular with the American public. To help insulate themselves from public opposition to these extreme policies, many Republicans now advocate for various forms of “fiscal commissions”, which would be designed to avoid raising new revenue for Social Security, and whose recommended cuts to Social Security benefits would be fast-tracked through Congress before the American people could be fully educated on the consequences of their sweeping changes.
One example of specific proposals was legislation introduced by former Representative Sam Johnson (R-TX) in December 2016 named “The Social Security Reform Act”. Representative Johnson proposed a laundry-list of changes to Social Security that would have cut benefits far more deeply than the benefit reductions that would result from simply allowing the Trust Funds to become insolvent.
These devastating cuts included:
- raising the retirement age (which would have cut average lifetime benefits by about 20 percent for all new retirees),
- reducing Social Security’s annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) by basing it on the chained Consumer Price Index and cutting it entirely for some higher income retirees (making it even more challenging for seniors on fixed incomes to keep up with inflation in health care, especially the ever-escalating cost of prescription drugs), and
- cutting benefits for spouses and children, among many benefit cuts.
Although that specific bill did not become law, many of its devastating proposals continue to be promoted by conservatives both on and off Capitol Hill. The House Republican Study Committee (RSC) includes 100 percent of House Republican leadership and 80 percent of House Republican members. It has been the most visible of the coalitions of elected officials who have publicly promoted many of the same proposals from the Johnson bill over multiple Congresses. For example, in order to cut Social Security by $1.5 trillion (and Medicare by $1 trillion) over the next decade, budgets proposed by the RSC would have:
- raised the Social Security retirement age,
- cut the Social Security COLA (including a suggestion that automatic COLAs should be replaced with ad hoc adjustments that would leave seniors, the disabled, survivors, and their families, once more, dependent on the ability and willingness of future Congresses and Presidents to increase benefits to help keep up with inflation),
- flattened Social Security benefits so they are no longer linked to earnings,
- eliminated of some benefits for widows and orphans, and
- flattened and privatized the disability program.
The Heritage Foundation and many of the other groups who designed Project 2025 have promoted these and similar policies for many years. Further demonstrating the interconnectedness between their proposals and some Republican Congressional leaders, the lead witness at a recent hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Social Security was Rachel Greszler, a prominent Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation who publicly promotes raising the Social Security retirement age indefinitely, saying: “policymakers should gradually increase the normal retirement age from 67 to 69 or 70 — moving the age up by one or two months per year — and index it to life expectancy.” Enactment of such a policy would leave many Americans victims of the notion that they have little choice but to: “Work until you die”.
Social Security Administration
The activities of the Social Security Administration (SSA) are at the heart of the management of the Social Security program. SSA has approximately 500 million interactions with the public each year through field office visits, call centers, and other engagements. While they have exceptional employees dedicated to serving millions of people, SSA is serving 50 percent more customers with less staff than they had in 1995. Since FY 2010, Social Security’s customer service budget has declined in inflation-adjusted terms by 17 percent and its staffing by 16 percent, while at the same time the number of SSA’s beneficiaries has grown by 22 percent. Despite the best efforts of SSA’s dedicated and conscientious employees, this funding shortfall has resulted in longer wait times at field offices, while delays on SSA’s toll-free telephone number and disability adjudication have only grown. And a side effect of SSA’s diminished performance has lowered employee morale as demonstrated by the agency’s bottom ranking in “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” by the Partnership for Public Service.
While increased appropriations by a friendly administration, coupled with Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley’s hard charging management, could improve the agency’s performance and employee morale, Project 2025 only threatens to do the opposite. Project 2025 proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal career employees who have worked under Republican and Democratic Administrations as “Schedule F” employees, taking away their civil service protections and leaving their jobs and livelihoods at the mercy of ideologically-driven political appointees.
As a result, a Trump Administration could replace career federal workers with political appointees in unprecedented numbers, through a selection process in which ideology would be valued and expertise of the agencies’ mission would not. Career employees with years of technical expertise and a deep understanding of Social Security’s importance to American families could easily be replaced by employees committed to the ideology espoused by organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, which, as mentioned above, has long advocate for shrinking and privatizing earned benefit programs such as Social Security. Coupled with Project 2025’s intention of gutting union rights and cutting federal employee salary and retirement benefits, morale at SSA would only decline further and any remaining workers dedicated to advancing Social Security’s mission would find themselves in a distinct and impotent minority. Since Project 2025’s vision for the federal civil service would be applied government-wide, other agencies key to older Americans, like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Administration for Community Living, could suffer the same fate.
Medicare and Medicaid
While Project 2025 is mostly opaque on what Republicans would do to Social Security, the paper is transparent on plans for Medicare and Medicaid.
First, they would accelerate the privatization of Medicare by making private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans the default option for individuals enrolling in Medicare. Like much of Project 2025, this proposal is more about ideology and giving a windfall to private industry rather than helping people and making good policy.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, per enrollee spending by private insurers grew by 61.6 percent from 2008 to 2022 (15 years) — much faster than both Medicare and Medicaid spending growth per enrollee (40.8 percent and 21.7 percent, respectively).
In fact, since MA plans cost taxpayers more than traditional Medicare, overpayments to the private option have been a shortcoming since the plans were first created in 2003. That’s why the Affordable Care Act (ACA) gradually curtailed overpayments and tried to restore legitimate competition, saving $156 billion over 10 years. The ACA made great strides in reducing plan overpayment to MA plans relative to traditional Medicare for a similarly situated individuals from 114 percent – prior to passage of the ACA – down to 104 percent in 2022. However, MA plans continue to draw down larger reimbursements than they should receive by using inappropriate diagnostic coding for enrollees’ medical conditions – also known as “upcoding”.
The unfairness of overpayments to MA plans is that all Medicare beneficiaries pay for them, including seniors and people with disabilities in traditional Medicare. That’s because the additional cost of MA plans is included in the standard monthly Part B premium. In other words, people in the traditional Medicare program are forced to pay higher premiums for MA benefits they do not receive. And overpayments to MA plans drain reserves held in the Medicare Part A Hospital Fund, pushing it faster towards insolvency.
But MA plan abuses are not limited to overpayments. Recently, the Biden Administration issued rules to help stop MAs from denying prior authorizations for Medicare covered services and rein in abusive marketing practices by MA plans – as well as further steps to combat upcoding and reduce overpayments.
In addition, Project 2025 does nothing to discourage the current practice of Medicare Advantage private plans limiting provider choice to beneficiaries compared to traditional Medicare. That’s why if an MA enrollee needs to see a physician outside of their plan network – like a doctor at the MD Anderson Cancer Center or the Mayo Clinic – they are often forced to move from their MA plan to traditional Medicare. When less healthy MA enrollees move to traditional Medicare, the cost of the latter goes up since sicker patients with chronic conditions are more expensive to treat. This trend could easily lead to a “death spiral” for traditional Medicare – long a goal of conservatives – as costs in the traditional program continue to skyrocket and the beneficiary pool is left with only the sickest patients.
What’s more, switching from an MA plan to traditional Medicare to access a wider choice of providers can be costly to beneficiaries attempting to make the transition. These beneficiaries might not be able to get a supplemental “Medigap” plan that covers their Medicare deductibles and cost-sharing requirements and offers protection against catastrophic costs. That’s because Medigap plans are only required to enroll individuals despite their pre-existing conditions during a one-time, 6-month open enrollment period that begins when they first enroll in Medicare Part B. But most individuals only become aware of the limits in their MA plan after they become sick and discover the doctors best suited to treat them are not part of their plan’s network. This typically occurs long after the first open enrollment period ends. At that point, Medigap plans can deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition. Only Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New York require either continuous or annual “guaranteed issue” protections for Medigap for all beneficiaries in traditional Medicare ages 65 and older, regardless of medical history.
Moreover, Project 2025 neglects to mention that the “one-size-fits-all” nature of making MA the default option is unworkable for seniors and people with disabilities if they live in a rural area. The remoteness and scarcity of physicians and hospitals in rural areas is only made worse when their MA plan has a limited provider network.
A second major provision in Project 2025 would repeal the drug pricing reform provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, most notably the authority given to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry for the prices of certain medications. The proposal would end drug negotiation because the authors claim it would “limit access to medications and reduce patient access to new medication”. This is a dubious claim made by the pharmaceutical industry which has been repeatedly refuted by their overwhelming profitability and how they spend the billions of dollars they gouge from taxpayers and consumers.
- According to BioPharma Drive, in 2020, “the median gross profit margin among the 35 drugmakers studied was 77 percent, easily more than double the 29 percent median calculated across 357 other companies in the S&P 500.
- In 2021, the House Committee on Oversight reported that the largest pharmaceutical companies spent more on stock buybacks and investor dividends than on research and development (R&D). According to the report, between 2016 and 2020, the top 14 drug companies spent $577 billion on stock buybacks and dividends, $56 billion more than on R&D, with annual executive compensation growing by 14 percent over that period. “Some companies paid their CEOs tens of millions of dollars as they raised prices on drugs relied on by millions of Americans,” the report says.
- And in 2021, an America’s Health Insurance Plans study found that “of the 10 drug manufacturers examined, 7 of them spent more on selling and marketing expenses than they did on research and development. For this group of 10 companies alone, selling and marketing expenses exceeded R&D spending by $36 billion, or 37 percent.”
Finally, Project 2025 would slash federal Medicaid payments to states by using block grants or per capita caps. Under a block grant or per capita cap system, states would have to find additional funding if federal funds did not keep up with their Medicaid population’s needs. States could address their funding shortfall by scaling back nursing home quality, service and safety protections, endangering the lives of vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities, and by reducing or eliminating home and community-based services.
Conclusion
Many organizations, including the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, provide recommendations to incoming administrations outlining policy priorities they believe should be enacted. Some of these recommendations are adopted by new administrations and Congresses and others are left on the sidelines. The web of interconnected people and organizations tying Project 2025 to a potential repeat administration led by former President Trump, along with the previous success of policies promoted by the Heritage Foundation, make it clear the policy changes contained in the Project 2025 documents are more likely than most to become the blueprint for a Trump post-election Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid agenda.
This is especially likely considering statements about Social Security former President Trump has himself made in prior years. In 2000, in the book he co-wrote called The America We Deserve in which the former President listed and detailed a set of policy proposals he intended to implement should he become President, he called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”, and proposed raising the retirement age to 70 and privatizing the program.
In his first administration, every budget he submitted would have slashed Social Security payments to disabled Americans by billions of dollars. He also temporarily reduced payroll taxes and pledged to make permanent cuts to the payroll tax in a second term. The payroll tax, or FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) payments by both workers and their employers are the primary source of funding for the Social Security program and provide the linkage with contributions that make the program an earned benefit. Earlier this year, in an interview where he was asked about cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the former President stated: “there’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting”.
His running mate for Vice President, Republican Senator J.D. Vance representing Ohio, also has a checkered history on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Long before he ran for Senate, he called for trillions of dollars to be cut from “entitlements” though since his campaign for the Senate in 2022, he has professed to oppose benefit cuts. Senator Vance also has strong ties to the Heritage Foundation, having received a 93 percent rating on the organization’s legislative scorecard for the current Congress – which is 30 points higher than the average Senator.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are our nation’s most popular programs, with strong support that crosses generations and political lines. They are the lifeblood of our workers and their families, providing security against the loss of income due to retirement, disability or death and have ensured their health security. The ultra-right conservative organizations behind Project 2025 have promoted dismantling Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for decades, and will inevitably push to achieve their goals in the coming years. The American people must not allow themselves to become complacent about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid’s future, rather we must continue advocating to preserve and expand these critical programs for today’s beneficiaries and future generations.
Government Relations and Policy – July 2024
Sources:
Project 2025:
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
https://live-project2025.pantheonsite.io/about/advisory-board/
Heritage Foundation:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112734594514167050
Video:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1811402883604050216
Press:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html
https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-ex-trump-contributors-republicans-election-1922933
https://newrepublic.com/post/183621/project-2025-biden-republican-agenda-trump
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/donald-trump-map-social-security-medicare-rcna143475
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/27/politics/trump-desantis-social-security-ponzi-scheme/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/08/08/trump-payroll-tax-cut/
Policy Papers NCPSSM and CBPP:
https://www.ncpssm.org/documents/social-security-policy-papers/social-security-reform-act-of-2016/