I’ve been hearing a lot about Project 2025 lately, and finally decided I should learn something about it in case it means something for On Pasture readers. The 900-page document produced by the Heritage Foundation and it’s partners is a dense read. I’ve read those parts that I thought might be helpful to you, and since it’s hard to translate into plain English, I also looked for resources that might make it easier to understand.

The best of the resources I found is a site called 25and.me created by a collaboration between rajat paharia (Ask Steve) and Gemini (Google). All you have to do to learn more is click on the “I care about…” button and choose from the topics listed to find out about proposed policies and the effect they would have. I thought you’d be most interested in what it means for farmers and for for your taxes, so I included the site’s information on those topics below. If there are other topics you’re interested in, do head over to the site and explore.

If you’d like to read more about Project 2025, you can click on any of the links provided by 25and.me below. The entire document will download and you’ll be able to scan through it at your convenience.

From 25and.me

Farmers

Project 2025 will...

• …attempt to eliminate farm subsidies like the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program and the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program. This means that farmers will no longer get money from the government to help them when prices for the crops they grow go down or when they do not harvest as much as they expected. [296]
• …stop paying farmers twice for price and revenue losses during the same year. This means that farmers will get less money from the government to help them when prices for the crops they grow go down or when they do not harvest as much as they expected. [297]
• …reduce how much the government pays to help farmers buy crop insurance. This means that farmers will have to pay more to buy crop insurance to protect themselves against bad weather or low prices. [297]
• …eliminate the Conservation Reserve Program. This means that farmers will no longer get paid to not farm some of their land. [304]
• …repeal the federal sugar program. This means that sugar farmers will no longer be protected from competition from foreign sugar growers. [296]
• …oppose “climate-smart” agricultural practices. This would mean that the U.S. would not support efforts to reduce agriculture’s contribution to climate change, potentially leading to increased greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector. [293]
• …cap and then phase down the H-2A visa program: This could lead to higher labor costs for farmers, which would make it more difficult for some farmers to stay in business, especially those who operate on thin margins. This could also lead to labor shortages, reduced food production, and higher food prices for consumers. [611]

Taxes

Project 2025 will…

• …move from the current 7 income tax brackets ranging from 10%-37% to a two bracket system with flat rates of 15% and 30% (with 30% starting around the Social Security wage base of $168,100) and eliminate most deductions, credits and exclusions. Millions of low- and middle-class households would likely face significantly higher taxes. [696] He estimated that a middle-class family with two children and an annual income of $100,000 would pay $2,600 in additional federal income tax if they faced a 15% flat tax on their income due to the loss of the 10% and 12% tax brackets. If the Child Tax Credit were also eliminated, they would pay an additional $6,600 compared with today’s tax system, Duke said.By comparison, a married couple with two children and earnings of $5 million a year would enjoy a $325,000 tax cut, he estimated.”That 15% bracket is a very big deal in terms of raising taxes on middle-class families,” Duke said. [link to CBS News article]
  

  I looked a little deeper into this topic and found that someone making $46,000 would see a 450% increase in their taxes.
  Why?
  The current system provides tax reductions for people in lower tax brackets so that their effective tax rate is 3.3%.
  Under the flat tax proposal their tax rate would increase to 15%.

• …reduce the corporate tax rate even further to 18%. Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, which meant companies paid $240 billion less in taxes from 2018 to 2021 than they would have paid. This further reduction would lead to even higher corporate profits and even lower government revenue to pay for services for the American people, while also increasing the deficit. [696]
• …reduce the capital gains rate from 20% to 15%. This would disproportionately benefit the wealthy and lead to a loss of government revenue. [696]
• …consider the introduction of a consumption tax, such as a national sales tax. This means that everything you buy will have an additional tax on it. [698]
• …tax employers on workplace benefits that exceed $12,000 per worker annually. This would lead to employers cutting back on these benefits and workers paying more taxes, and would be damaging for millions of families who rely on one working adult’s employer-provided health insurance to cover dependents, such as children. [697] If this tax was enacted, we estimate that just based on health insurance benefits in 2022 alone: (1) More than 15 million workers would have seen their benefits taxed. (2) Their taxes would have risen by more than $12 billion if employers shifted away from benefits to other forms of taxable compensation. [link]

Why does this matter?

The Heritage Foundation has put out these “Mandates for Leadership” every election cycle since 1980 and it turns out they have been very influential. Republican Presidents have typically implemented about 60% of the proposals found in the documents. President Trump implemented two-thirds of Project 2016’s recommendations [link]. The Foundation has also successfully placed it’s own employees in Administration positions to ensure it’s policies are implemented. They went a step further with Project 2025, putting togehter a personnel database and recruiting for the future administration, and developing a training academy for those applying for positions.

Given their influence, it seems appropriate for us all to know a little bit more about their plans and how their policies might affect us. I hope this is helpful to you next time you hear Project 2025 in the news.

Thanks for reading!

Kathy

P.S. Need a giggle after all that serious stuff? Here you go:

Terrifying a Cab Driver