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Republican policies hurt people. Project 2025 provides a blueprint – and an advance warning – of the many ways Republicans intend to hurt most people and the country.
Project 2025 goes way beyond the usual Republican agenda of outlawing abortion, destroying unions, eliminating all restraints on big business and cutting taxes – again – for the wealthy. This agenda will dismantle all the social, legal, economic and environmental progress of the last 150 years. Many of the rights, protections, expectations and freedoms we currently enjoy will be eviscerated or eliminated.
If Trump wins and Republicans gain control of Congress, they will implement much of Project 2025. For those voters who still can’t decide or “don’t like” either candidate, this article explores just a few of the absurdities being proposed by Project 2025.
Dismantling the National Weather Service
It is hard to believe that anyone would suggest ending the National Weather Service (NWS). This public service has been providing essential weather information, forecasts and warnings for 149 years. The U.S was the first nation in the world to have a dedicated weather monitoring service and it has served all of us well.
The NWS is dependable, essential to the economy, available to everyone and free. Many people, businesses, scientists and researchers depend on data collected by the NWS and its parent organization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These two agencies provide the most comprehensive weather monitoring systems in the world. Even the commercial cable and internet weather programs depend on the information collected by the NWS.
But according to Project 2025, NOAA and NWS should be “dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states...It should be broken up and downsized.” It should “focus on its data-gathering services,” and “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.” In other words privatize the activities that could be profitable for contractors.
Republicans also have ideological reasons to dismantle NOAA and the NWS. Project 2025 says, “Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry...”
For Republican climate deniers, if you don’t measure or study reality it doesn’t exist. So they want to kill the messenger.
Breaking up and downsizing the National Weather Service is simply a bad idea.
Cutting Disaster Relief
After Republicans weaken the early warning system for tornadoes, hurricanes, fires and floods they plan to cut disaster relief assistance. Project 2025 proposes to substantially reduce the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) budget and shift responsibility to states and local governments. It wants to eliminate preparedness grants to states and make it harder for states to qualify for federal assistance.
Project 2025 proposes replacing the National Flood Insurance Program with private insurance. But the program was created in 1968 because for-profit insurance companies stopped selling flood insurance!
Currently FEMA provides all flood insurance in the U.S. So how will the government “incentivise” companies to offer flood insurance? If this works at all, it will be a recipe for huge taxpayer subsidies to private insurance companies.
The largest disaster relief program is the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) disaster loan program. This provides low-interest loans to small business owners and households hit by natural disasters. Project 2025 wants to privatize this service as well. Again this looks like a scheme to make money from government subsidies.
Private insurance is not capable of responding to the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters. In disaster-prone areas (and all over the country) the cost of business and homeowner insurance is skyrocketing. From 2021 to 2023, the national average home insurance rates rose 20 percent. Florida has the highest average home owners insurance at $10,996 per year. Still many companies are refusing to provide coverage for frequent disasters. Private insurance is a non-solution.
Ironically many “red” states are the most likely to need – and to receive – government disaster assistance. But In America voting against your own best interests is a national pastime.
Facilitating the next financial disaster
Project 2025 advocates weakened oversight of financial markets. If enacted, this will result in more market instability, fraud and financial meltdowns. When the stock market crashes many people and business are hurt – even those not “playing the markets.”
Project 2025 plans to reverse market reforms put in place after the 2008 financial disaster. It calls for abolishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, limiting other regulatory agencies powers, and even restricting the Federal Reserve’s “lender-of-last-resort” function that is a key tool in preventing bank failures.
Project 2025 would weaken the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which insurers people’s bank deposits from bank failures. It does not specifically call for abolishing the FDIC; rather it advocates merging the FDIC with other bank regulatory agencies. In the past the Heritage Foundation (the authors of Project 2025) did advocate that “government-provided deposit insurance should be phased out fully.” People should be wary of their current proposals.
The FDIC program has protected American’s bank accounts since 1933. There is no reason to mess with this important and successful program. But the Republican’s anti-government, anti-regulation ideology overrides what is good for people.
Destroying Head Start
Project 2025 wants to end the Head Start Program. This is the ultimate proof that Republican policies hurt people. It is also a despicable attack on vulnerable, young children living in poverty. They should be ashamed.
Since 1965 Head Start has helped 40 million children overcome poverty by providing much needed early education, nutrition, social development, healthcare, childcare and parenting skills assistance to low-income children and families. The program has more than paid for itself by increasing educational attainment, reducing poverty, and lowering public assistance and criminal justice costs. The Head Start budget was a pittance in comparison to many other, less worthy, federal expenditures.
Eliminating Head Start is a extraordinarily short sighted and mean-spirited bad idea. It will dramatically increase child care costs for low income families making it harder for parents to work and get themselves out of poverty.
These examples are a small part of the Project 2025 agenda. But they illustrate how drastic the changes to our society will be if Republicans take control in November. The results of this election will significantly impact your life. It is critical to vote and vote for Kamala Harris and Democrats who care about you.
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