-
Project 2025 would strangle the IRS’ budget, helping wealthy tax cheats avoid paying their fair share, and increase the number of political appointees running the independent tax administration. Project 2025 notes that “the IRS has approximately 81,000 employees” but “only two are presidential appointments.” The authors recommend shifting several high-level administrative positions currently held by career IRS professionals into presidential appointments, which would effectively bring currently the nonpartisan tax administration under explicit political control. The authors voiced support for Congress reversing the additional funding provided to the IRS through the Inflation Reduction Act, which has allowed the IRS to start cracking down on tax evasion by higher-income individuals. They also call for further freezing the agency's funding at its current funding levels, which would likely reduce its effectiveness over the long term. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Tax Policy Center, 2/29/24; CNN, 6/17/24]
-
Project 2025 would remove the Federal Reserve’s “dual mandate,” abandoning the central bank’s focus on achieving full employment. After first outlining so-called “free banking” proposals to “effectively abolish” the central bank entirely, Project 2025’s authors propose eliminating the Federal Reserve’s “dual mandate” to maintain price stability and maximum employment through stable interest rate policy. The authors suggest that “a far less harmful alternative is to focus the Federal Reserve on protecting the dollar and restraining inflation” even if doing so would harm workers and the broader labor market. If this inflation-only approach had been in place during the most recent spike in inflation, the Fed might have pursued policies that would have driven the American economy into recession (a so-called “hard landing”) for the sake of slowing a temporary rise in consumer prices. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Federal Reserve, accessed 6/14/24; Brookings Institution, 9/14/23]
-
Project 2025 would increase student loan costs, privatize the college loan market, and block debt cancellation. Project 2025's authors fixate on reversing efforts implemented during the Obama and Biden administrations to rein in the student loan industry. The authors argue for phasing out income-driven repayment plans currently used by millions of Americans, which would raise monthly payments for student borrowers, and passing new legislation to end student loan forgiveness. Specifically, the authors call for ending all “time-based and occupation-based student loan forgiveness,” which they boast would save the government $370 billion – in other words, it would cost borrowers an additional $370 billion in payments on loans that could otherwise be forgiven. A new study from the Center for American Progress estimated that Project 2025's plans would increase average annual payments by about $2,700 to $4,000, imperiling millions of borrowers with the threat of defaulting on potentially unsustainable monthly payments. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Center for American Progress, 6/24/24]
-
Project 2025 would chill labor unions' abilities to engage in political activity. Project 2025 suggests that the National Labor Relations Board change its enforcement priorities regarding what it describes as unions using “members' resources on left-wing culture-war issues.” The authors encourage allowing employees to accuse union leadership of violating their “duty of fair representation” by having “political conflicts of interest” if the union engages in political activity that the employee disagrees with. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; National Labor Relations Board, accessed 7/8/24]
-
Project 2025 would make it easier for employers to classify workers as “independent contractors.” The authors recommended reinstating policies governing the classification of independent contractors that the NLRB implemented during the Trump administration. Those Trump-era NLRB regulations were amended in 2023, expanding workplace and labor organizing protections to previously exempt American workers. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; The National Law Review, 6/19/23; National Labor Relations Board, 6/13/23]
-
Project 2025 would reduce base overtime pay for workers. The authors recommend changing overtime protections to remove nonwage compensatory and other workplace benefits from calculations of their “regular” pay rate, which forms the basis for overtime formulations. If that change is enacted, every worker currently given overtime protections could be subject to a slight reduction in the value of their overtime pay, which the authors claim will encourage employers to provide nonwage benefits but would effectively just amount to a pay cut. The authors also propose other changes to the way overtime is calculated and enforced, which could result in reduced compensation for workers. Overtime protections have long been a focus of right-wing media campaigns to reduce protections afforded to American workers. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023, Media Matters, 7/9/24]
-
Project 2025 proposes capping and phasing out visa programs for migrant workers. Project 2025’s authors propose capping and eventually eliminating the H-2A and H-2B temporary work visa programs, which are available for seasonal agricultural and nonagricultural workers, respectively. Even the Project 2025 authors admit that these proposals could threaten many businesses that rely on migrant workers and could result in higher prices for consumers. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
-
Project 2025 recommends institutionalizing the “Judeo-Christian tradition” of the Sabbath. Under the guise of creating a “communal day of rest,” Project 2025 includes a policy proposal amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to require paying workers who currently receive overtime protections “time and a half for hours worked on the Sabbath,” which it said “would default to Sunday.” Ostensibly a policy that increases wages, the proposal is specifically meant to disincentivize employers from providing services on Sundays as an explicitly religious overture. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
-
Project 2025 would remove workplace safety standards preventing teenagers from taking jobs in hazardous fields. The authors contend that “some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs” and suggest that rules forbidding children from working in hazardous fields result “in worker shortages in dangerous fields” and discourage “otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job.” The authors suggest amending labor laws so that so-called “young adults” who receive “parental consent and proper training” can “work in more dangerous occupations.” [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
-
Project 2025 wants the federal government to explain away the gender pay gap. In a chapter dedicated to reforming the Department of Labor, the author accuses DOL's Women's Bureau of producing “politicized research ... that puts predetermined conclusions ahead of empirical study” and then suggests that the agency be reformed to “understand the true causes of earnings gaps between men and women.” In March 2023, the Women's Bureau published new research demonstrating that the median working woman in America makes 84 cents for every dollar paid to a man, a persistent pay disparity that the right-wing has spent years excusing or denying. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Department of Labor, March 2023; Media Matters, 5/21/19, 5/19/17, 4/12/16, 4/14/15]
-
Project 2025 proposes massive income tax cuts for the rich and tax increases on some lower- and middle-income earners. Project 2025 proposes that Republicans pass new legislation reforming the tax code to adopt “a simple two-rate individual tax system of 15 percent and 30 percent that eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions.” The authors propose implementing the 30% rate for those who earn around $168,600 or more (based on the Social Security “wage base limit”), meaning that individual filers earning between $168,600 and $191,950 (who currently pay a 24% tax rate) would see a tax increase, while anyone currently earning $191,950 or more would get a tax cut — down to 30% — from their current rates of 32% to 37%. Meanwhile, those earning $47,149 or less, who currently pay between 10% and 12%, would see an increase in their taxes. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; IRS.gov, 11/9/23, 2/13/24]
-
Project 2025 also proposes changes to capital gains taxes that would increase tax rates on lower-income earners and cut tax rates for higher-incomes. The authors proposed taxing “capital gains and qualified dividends ... at 15 percent,” instead of the current system. Like their proposed income tax reforms, this proposal would raise effective tax rates at the lower end of the capital gains structure, where some earners currently pay 0%, while reducing the tax share at the top, where individuals earning more than approximately $500,000 pay a 20% capital gains rate. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; IRS.gov, 1/30/24]
-
Project 2025 would decimate what remains of the financial regulations implemented in the wake of the Great Recession. The authors argue for repealing regulations implemented after the Great Recession to prevent another financial crisis similar to the one seen from 2007 to 2009. In particular, the authors recommend repealing major provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act directed at identifying and regulating risky financial institutions, overseeing risk-prone financial products, and managing the collapse of institutions. The authors specifically target the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency that has long faced right-wing scorn and which has been a thorn in the side of lending institutions that were previously free to prey on American consumers. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; The American Prospect, 5/17/24; Congressional Research Service, 10/18/23; Media Matters, 1/11/17]
