Editorial: Project 2025, for real

Donald Trump is trying to run away from Project 2025, a legislative blueprint for the next administration drafted by the Heritage Foundation that collects in one place conservative thinking since the 1950s. Trump this week disavowed Project 2025 because, among other things, it would dismantle Social Security and Medicare. We should all know by now that Trump is an inveterate liar, and we should remember that Charles Koch, Grover Norquist, et al, are playing the long game articulated by the Heritage Foundation.

It is worth bearing in mind what Project 2025 contemplates for agriculture. It would eliminate crop subsidies and cut taxpayer support for crop insurance. Nutrition programs would be divorced from agriculture and would be substantially reduced. The Conservation Reserve Program would end. Executive authority over the Commodity Credit Corp. (which was used to bail out soybean growers during the Trump trade war with China) would be curtailed. Those are just some of the highlights.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., pooh-poohed those suggestions, saying they would be rejected by his caucus. In fact, his caucus is trying to suffocate nutrition programs and decouple them from the farm bill. It has long been the goal of the agribusiness to eliminate subsidies and conservation programs that maintained a diverse production system. “Freedom to farm” has been the mantra since the days of Ezra Taft Benson in the Eisenhower Administration and the policy since the Reagan Administration.

Chairman Thompson also said he would produce a bipartisan farm bill last year. So beware the hollow remarks. The Heritage Foundation just wrote down what Republicans have been thinking since the Korean War: consolidate agricultural production, and reduce food assistance upon which rural areas are most dependent.

Trump and Thompson will do what Koch tells them to do. They understand who signs the checks. As Project 2025 bombs with the public, Trump can step away from it. Thompson can say, “Oh, that stuff can’t really happen.” Liberals didn’t think the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. Who thought we would let the Chinese own half of Iowa’s hogherd?

If Trump is elected, the right’s dream of an end to the New Deal’s farm subsidies and crop insurance can come true at long last. The House Republicans wanted to put off passing a new five-year farm bill before the election because they thought Trump would be in charge, with some radical running the USDA.

Iowa depends on the farm bill, and rural residents depend on nutrition programs. Farmers have had some pretty good years under the socialist Biden Administration, and those New Deal programs have kept them off the poor farm these many decades. Still, we love to complain about creeping socialism and the strangling web of regulations. Iowa probably will go for Trump because he has fooled us. He will support whatever he is told to support, if he is elected. The Koch Network, the Farm Bureau, the agribusiness lobby and the Heritage Foundation will get what they want, whether you call it Project 2025 or not. This work has been going on for generations. It’s payoff time.

Trump told this to a group of conservatives: “Get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”

Fortunately for us, God has pity on fools.

The spirit moved President Biden to step aside and let Vice President Kamala Harris pick up the torch. She promptly raised $200 million in a week, and put up a solid polling lead in crucial swing state Michigan. Harris should be fine in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania, too. It appears that voters in those key swing states, at least, will protect Iowa from foolish Iowans. If Trump wins, you can kiss your crop insurance goodbye, beautiful Christians. Believe it.