Project 2025: The poors are the problem

Social safety nets are gone in the Heritage Foundation's America

Project 2025 is the 920-page presidential transition playbook produced and published by the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. The goal: implementing a decades-long plan of stripping away every remaining facet of the New Deal and incorporating a Christian nationalist government in America, in which total power goes to the president. A Republican loss in November won’t stop this project, as these conservative goals have been in motion for decades. I’ll be writing about Project 2025 in the coming months as the stakes are too high to ignore, as it has the potential to impact every facet of American life.

This is Part 2 of a two-part series on Project 2025’s plans to gut the Department of Agriculture. Read Part 1 here.

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Darren Baskt wants to reform farm subsidies, which is actually something I agree with. Meat is too cheap. The government favors factory farming, which is why industrial-grade meat costs so little. This skews our understanding of the real costs of agriculture.

Subsidies also negatively impact the diversity of our diet. Six subsidized crops—corn, cotton, peanuts, rice, soybeans, and wheat—are the main culprits of mono cropping, which also destroys soil fertility. Bakst claims too few companies receive the lion’s share of subsidization. He wants to repeal the two main forms of subsidies that farmers can apply for when they experience shortfalls (falling below the production of 86% of the expected revenue of crops). 

Does Bakst offer common-sense solutions to these problems? Of course not. He spends a few pages on wonky policy issues, but a close reading produces expectable results. In short: food stamps bad. 

To have genuine reform and proper consideration of the issues, agricultural programs should be considered in separate legislation distinct from food stamps and the nutrition part of the farm bill, and reauthorization of such programs should be fixed on different timelines to ensure this separation.

So what’s his solution? 

Move the USDA food and nutrition programs to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The HHS chapter in Project 2025 was written by anti-abortion, anti-trans activist, Roger Severino. Bakst wants to move these programs there, yet head over to the HHS to discover that Severino thinks we overspend on the poors, so we need to make it harder to get food stamps. This “send it to another agency so they can kill it” ethos is common in the Project 2025 playbook.

Before punting SNAP over to the HHS as well, Bakst frames “low-income” in quotes, as if the poors are lying about their circumstances. He notes that more people enrolled in food stamps under Biden than Trump without considering the economic reasons why that might be happening.

Bootstraps are invoked: Americans just need to work harder, and to ensure that, we need to make it harder for them to get assistance. Welfare queens all over again.

Bakst is also mad that 50% of baby formula is purchased through welfare programs in America, and is worried that that contract only goes through one company. Suddenly, monopolies bad! While more options for struggling families is a good idea, the language around “competitive bidding” is a secondary concern to just making sure babies get fed.

Except in the Heritage Foundation’s America.

The bullies are back

Next up, Bakst wants to Return to the Original Purpose of School Meals.

Federal meal programs for K–12 students were created to provide food to children from low-income families while at school. Today, however, federal school meals increasingly resemble entitlement programs that have strayed far from their original objective and represent an example of the ever-expanding federal footprint in local school operations.

Bakst cites Heritage research about middle and even upper class students receiving free meals at schools via the Community Eligibility Program: if 40% of students in a school are financially eligible to receive free meals, all students receive them.

This is a great idea. Students in need of free meals are often bullied by those who don’t. If two out of every five students in a district or school need a meal, even the playing field. What are tax dollars good for if we can’t use them to feed children?

This entire document is a pro-life screed where conservative “leaders” pretend to care about children. Prove it: provide free meals nationwide. Fund it by raising corporate taxes. If you’re going to pretend to care about the young, make it policy. Or stop pretending.

But: course not. Bakst specifically demeans such ideas. 

Federal school meals should be focused on children in need, and any efforts to expand student eligibility for federal school meals to include all K–12 students should be soundly rejected. Such expansion would allow an inefficient, wasteful program to grow, magnifying the amount of wasted taxpayer resources.

Taxpayers only matter when it comes to issues they want passed, not what makes sense for society.