Project 2025 Part III: Hurting Seniors, Veterans, and Everyone Else

Republicans have tried to repeal FDR’s New Deal for over 90 years, and they think that now is the time to privatize Social Security, replace Medicare with for-profit Medicare Advantage, and eliminate benefits earned by the veterans who keep our country safe.

Despite Donald Trump’s claim that he has nothing to do with the project, that he’s “never read it,” “knows nothing about it,” “hasn’t heard of the people behind it,” the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership was sponsored, written, and promoted by more than 240 people who were involved with, or part of, his administration—including six cabinet secretaries, former chief of staff Mark Meadows, top adviser Stephen Miller, and several lawyers who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump knows nothing about a lot of things, but he knows ALL about Project 2025!

Many newspapers, journals, and think tank reports have focused on different aspects of Project 2025. In the words of Rolling Stone magazine, its “… goals include disbanding federal agencies, privatizing others, and expanding presidential control over the executive branch. These proposals align closely with Trump’s official campaign plan, Agenda 47, which was recently adopted as the Republican Party’s national platform.”

Thus Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025 are a dishonest attempt to do damage control in his campaign to regain the presidency.

Social Security

For nearly 40 years it has been a Republican dream to place Social Security funds in the hands of Wall Street investors. In an echo of previous doom-saying, Project 2025 ideologues insist that because not enough money is coming into the system, SS funds will run out in 15 or 20 years.

The rational solution, given the growth in population and national wealth, is to increase the money coming into the fund. However, rather than require the wealthiest to pay more, Republicans plan to cut benefits to current and future recipients, privatize the program, and allow banks and investment firms to skim lots off the top. Their goal also includes cutting benefits in two ways: by minimizing increases for inflation, and by raising the retirement age.

Cut Benefits for 257 Million Americans

Recently the House Republican Study Committee released its 2025 budget proposal, which largely echoes Project 2025’s goal of raising the Social Security retirement age for people currently 59 and under “by three months per year beginning in 2026, until it reaches 69.” This means that beginning in 2033, everyone born after 1971—three-quarters of all Americans—will have to work longer for less income. This change would cut Social Security benefits for 257 million people.

In addition to breaking Social Security’s promise, fulfilled since 1935, the RSC budget replaces Medicare—in place since 1965—with for-profit “Medicare Advantage” plans, weakens (or eliminates) the Affordable Care Act, and slashes food assistance for children while lavishing the ultra-rich with massive new tax cuts. No longer could people retire with dignity under this plan. Many, if not most, of our senior citizens would have to work until the day they die.

In its section Reforming Federal Retirement Benefits, Project 2025 authors complain that “career civil servants enjoy retirement benefits that are nearly unheard of in the private sector. Federal employees retire earlier (normally at age 55 after 30 years), enjoy richer pension annuities, and receive automatic cost-of-living adjustments based on the areas in which they retire.

“Defined-benefit federal pensions are fully indexed for inflation—a practice that is extremely rare in the private sector. A federal employee with a preretirement income of $25,000 under the older of the two federal retirement plans will receive at least $200,000 more over a 20-year period than will private-sector workers with the same preretirement salary under historic inflation levels.”

Since the early 1980s, private business has eliminated defined-benefit retirement from 99% of all American workers, replacing them with self-managed 401-Ks and IRAs. That $10,000 per year means that a federal retiree whose income was $25,000—less than one-third of the 2023 national median household income of $80,610—will be poverty-stricken throughout retirement, and private-sector workers will be even worse off! And the Project 2025 authors want to lower their income even more!

Healthcare on the Chopping Block

Other benefits that will be cut under Project 2025 policies include Supplemental Security Income (disability) and survivors’ benefits for families of breadwinners who have died. Also, per the Center for Budget Policy Priorities, “the RSC budget calls for $4.5 trillion in cuts over ten years in Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace coverage, cutting these health coverage funds by more than half.

“The House Budget plan, meanwhile, calls for $2.2 trillion in cuts to health coverage”—apparently all from Medicaid. This would cut funding by 40% in 2034. Nearly 74 million people receive health coverage through Medicaid, so “cuts of this magnitude would result in millions losing access to comprehensive coverage.”

Unionized Public Employees

Project 2025 plans to eliminate the right of all federal, state, or local public-sector employees to unionize. Roman Ulman, president of Arizona American Association of State, County, and Municipal Employees Retiree Chapter 97, said a second Trump term would be disastrous for retirement security and for the country as a whole.

“Project 2025 would eliminate traditional Medicare, stop the federal government from negotiating drug prices, and would no longer penalize Big Pharma for raising drug prices more than the rate of inflation,” Ulman said during a press conference this past July. “It would allow cuts to health care coverage to those seniors who need it most, by allowing states to eliminate or reduce Medicaid coverage for nursing home care.”

It would also undo all of the Biden-Harris administration’s economically beneficial legislation, Ulman said. “Retirees are seeing their costs go down because the Inflation Reduction Act is allowing the federal government to negotiate prices in Medicare with Big Pharma for the first time and capped retirees’ prescription drug out-of-pocket costs at $2,000.” Project 2025 would repeal the IRA in its entirety.

The goal of Project 2025 is clear: to set the United States on a backward course for decades to come—just as the end of Reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws, restrictive covenants in housing, federally endorsed redlining, and the Reagan counterrevolution of the 1980s have done in the past.

Veterans Health Care

For veterans, the aim is not to improve care but to cut the VA budget and “outsource” care to private, for-profit care providers. Every major veteran’s service organization opposes such outsourcing, along with 2025’s continuation of Trump’s first-term purging of VA employees.

The plan would “hold low performers at the VA accountable,” but there’s no indication of the criteria to be used. Under Trump more than 2,600 VA employees were fired, almost all of them housekeepers, food service workers, nurse assistants, and aides. None of them was a “low performer,” but all were essential support staff. Ridding VA facilities of such essential workers allowed the administration to claim that services were “terrible,” creating a self-fulfilling excuse to outsource them.

Project 2025 would go farther: it would replace experienced, dedicated, public-sector physicians with retired doctors from the private sector working under lucrative contracts. The authors also envision giving the undersecretary responsible for VA care a five-year renewable term, so that a 2028 Trump appointee could continue overseeing the cost-cutting and “efficiency” goals long after Trump left office.

Disability Limitations

Also, Project 2025 would limit the number and types of medical conditions that veterans could claim to qualify for disability. As the Center for American Progress (CAP) points out, “Many veterans who are eligible for a disability rating but who haven’t made a claim could be denied, and those who are currently receiving benefits could have them slashed. Further, the authors want the VA to automate claims; that change would increase the number of denials of claims, just as private insurance companies use algorithms to deny coverage through automation.

Many veterans under 65 (about 10% of all service members) receive Medicaid rather than VA coverage. “2025” would put a cap on Medicaid reimbursements to states, regardless of a state’s actual spending, and give states the power to deny coverage for essential services like long-term care and home care.

Another proposal would require VA hospitals to “increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DoD medical facilities.” Forcing increases in numbers this way, without providing any additional funds for staffing, would overwhelm facilities—many of which are already understaffed and overworked—and diminish the quality of care for veterans. In the view of Project 2025’s authors, that’s a benefit: again, it would “prove” that VA care is not good enough for veterans, and justify outsourcing it to the private sector (at much higher cost).

Other Veterans’ Programs

Additionally, 2025 proposes ending a program called Housing First, which was started in 2008 to curb homelessness among veterans. Under that program, 81,400 veterans currently receive support for rental housing, and Congress has appropriated funds to support another 35,000 beneficiaries. The program also helps veterans with drug treatment and mental health care services. Eliminating Housing First would throw tens of thousands of veterans on the street, increasing homelessness and the frequency of drug abuse and mental health issues, while reducing resources to combat the problems.

Harming Our Military Brethren

Several Project 2025 goals would disproportionately harm veterans in the name of saving money—but in fact are designed to protect corrupt businesses from repercussions for victimizing the women and men who have served their country.

First, the mandate would altogether abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which since 2011 has played a critical role in helping citizens avoid being ripped off by private-sector financial scams that are so rampant in the internet age. The Bureau reports that active service members and veterans have submitted more than 400,000 complaints relating to possible violations of consumer protections or military financial rules.

“The CFPB’s enforcement actions in 42 cases involving harm to servicemembers and veterans has delivered $183 million in redress to victims,” the agency states. Eliminating this essential agency would leave veterans helpless to recover from financial fraud or scams.

Slashing Veterans’ Jobs

The Trump-aligned policy statement also calls for reducing federal jobs by 50% the first year and 75% in four years. It would eliminate entire agencies—the Department of Education and Homeland Security—and privatize others, like the Transportation Security Administration.

How does this impact veterans? Nearly 30%—approximately three in ten—of all federal employees are veterans. Under the 2025 plan, of the 1 million or so federal employees, 750,000 people would be thrown out of work, including 225,000 veterans who, having served their nation in the military, have continued serving their fellow Americans in the civilian workforce. Worse, many of the veterans employed by the federal government are partially disabled from their service, and they perform essential jobs in the FBI, the Department of Justice, and agencies targeted for complete elimination.

Job Losses, Government Collapse, and an Autocratic Coup

During his previous term, Donald Trump oversaw a loss of almost 3 million jobs (compared to an increase of 15 million so far in the Biden-Harris Administration). By following Project 2025’s goals, Trump would begin a new term by immediately eliminating half a million jobs, with another 1.5 million in 2026-2028. The resulting increases in unemployment, homelessness, addiction, and a wide-ranging loss of expertise in the government, would cripple our nation’s ability to function effectively and productively for the American people.

And that is one of the central goals of Project 2025: to deliberately make the federal government incapable of serving the people, and then to call for a “strong man” leader, along with oligarchs and corporations and the military (and militarized police forces) to “fix” the problem that they themselves caused.

One of the most troubling aspects of Project 2025 is its clear hostility towards LGBTQ and transgender individuals, including veterans. Trump’s administration has consistently targeted these communities, raising serious questions about his genuine support for all veterans.

The project proposes eliminating federal protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, and enforcing a “biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.” On education, it seeks to bar public education employees from using a name or pronoun different from what is listed on a student’s birth certificate without parental permission, directly impacting transgender youth and their families.