Project 2025 (details here), a brainwave of the rightwing Heritage Foundation (profiled here), is a blueprint for sweeping changes to the federal government.
Raw Story, a progressive news website, says it would “plunder” veterans benefits (read story here).
The original source material (here) says, “The next Administration” (meaning Trump) “should … target significant cost savings from revising disability rating awards for future claimants while preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants.”
That gobbledygook means making it harder for veterans to qualify for disability benefits and re-rating existing disability claims, in order to cut VA spending. In addition, some veterans would lose access to VA health care altogether. Raw Story put numbers on it: $266.6 billion less for veterans between 2025 and 2032.
Project 2025 also proposes to privatize Tricare, the health care system for families of active military personnel, claiming it would save $60 billion. Conservatives are fond of privatizing everything from schools to prisons, but there’s no evidence it saves money. How can it, when private companies have to be compensated for the same costs, plus paid a profit? It also targets housing allowances paid to military families for cuts, Raw Story says.
Republicans have long wanted to cut federal spending, but have been purposefully vague about what they would cut. Well, now we have a set of specifics. Of course, they’re not just targeting veterans; it’s no secret they also want to cut Social Security and Medicare (see story here).
But there’s much more to their plans than dismantling federal functions, cutting social programs, privatizing education, or enacting a nationwide abortion ban; they want to impose their religion and concept of “family” on the entire country, which they see as a cure for social ills like crime and drug use. Tangentially, they also want to scrap climate initiatives and maximize oil and gas production — and, you guessed it, enact more tax cuts for the rich.