Dear editor,
Project 2025 is a political initiative to reshape the federal government and consolidate executive power in favor of right-wing policies. The plan was published in 2023 by The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank. (please read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025).
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said in the opening moments of his September debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “That’s out there. I haven’t read it.” The president, his spokesman Harrison Fields said, “had nothing to do with Project 2025.”
On Trump’s actions so far, Paul Dans, who oversaw Project 2025 at Heritage Foundation: “This is exactly the work we set out to do”. Russel Vought, author of Project 2025, now director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, said “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.”
About Elon Musk: Amount Musk donated to Trump’s election campaign cannot be known but is thought to be several hundred million dollars.
Trump, in a recent executive order that he signed with Musk, said agency leaders “shall promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force. Musk’s operation became more powerful with another executive order by Trump, directing federal agencies to develop new systems for distributing and justifying payments so they can be monitored by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Consider just one federal agency among many: Social Security Administration. Advocates say long wait times for services have plagued the agency for years, and its current staffing is already at about a 50-year low. But SSA announced that it aims to cut some 7,000 jobs to align with DOGE. Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan: “Once you do this damage, it’s going to be incredibly hard to rebuild the capacity of these organizations. It’s not like you can turn the switch back on and everything is going to be the way it was before.”
Most citizens don’t think how federal activities help their health and welfare, but when they are gone, then they will know.
Should Trump fire Musk? About Musk, Trump said: “He’s doing a great job”.
Taxes: Trump has presented tax reduction plan in alignment with Project 2025. This has been analyzed by bipartisan group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: “Depending on the details of these proposals, our rough estimate is that a package of this nature would: reduce revenue by $5.0 trillion to $11.2 trillion over 10 years, by 1.3 to 3.0 percent of Gross Domestic Product, and boost debt to between 132 and 149 percent of GDP by 2035, if not offset. Such a package could also lead to significant income shifting (away from wealthy) and tax avoidance, weaken the Medicare and possibly Social Security trust funds, dramatically boost interest costs, and increase the risk of debt spiral.” However, raising debt could be lessened by radically slashing federal expenditures (as above).
-Henry Tideman, Oregon
