From Air Force Times:
“How would Project 2025 impact
troops and veterans?”
Banning transgender troops from
service, revoking the VA’s ability to provide abortion-related care and
slashing the number of general officers in the ranks are just a few of the
policy proposals laid out in a political playbook for what the next Republican
administration could look like.
Known as Project 2025, the plan
organized by the conservative think thank The Heritage Foundation would make
sizable changes to the lives of service members and veterans if implemented. The
lengthy guidebook that seeks to reform several facets of the federal government
has taken the spotlight in the 2024 presidential race. While Republican nominee
and former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025,
Democrats have called the agenda a “dangerous blueprint” for what his second
term could look like. Project 2025 was authored by many officials who served in
the first Trump administration. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump said
in July on Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some
of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are
absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I
have nothing to do with them.” He doubled down on that message just days later,
and did so again in a campaign speech delivered following an attempted
assassination against him. But Democrats are not ready to let him off the hook
yet. Vice President Kamala Harris, who received an endorsement from President
Joe Biden to serve as the next commander-in-chief after he dropped out from the
presidential election this past weekend, warned in a social media video that
Trump and his team intend to implement Project 2025.
What exactly is Project 2025? The
Project 2025 initiative includes a roughly 900-page policy agenda, a personnel
database for those who could serve in the next Republican administration, a
training for those individuals called the “Presidential Administration Academy”
and also plans for a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of
office.
The effort includes
recommendations by former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, and has
been led by other former Trump administration officials including Paul Dans,
former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, and Spencer Chretien,
former special assistant to the president and associate director of
presidential personnel.
Policy recommendations stretch
across the executive branch, from the White House to the Department of Justice
to independent regulatory agencies, each broadly seeking to reduce the size and
scope of the federal government. “Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned,
vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to
deconstruct the Administrative State,” a prelude to the handbook states. The
“administrative state” refers to executive branch agencies exercising the power
to create, enforce and adjudicate their own rules. Those who oppose such a
setup, primarily Republicans, argue that unelected officials should not have
such powers.
How would Project 2025 impact
troops? The policy chapter on remaking the Department of Defense includes
reducing the number of generals and reinstituting policies barring transgender
individuals from serving in the military.
Some of the suggested
personnel changes Miller put forth fall in line with conservative culture war
arguments, including:
Reinstating service members to
active duty who were separated for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine,
restoring their rank and providing them back pay.
Abolishing diversity, equity and
inclusion offices and staffs.
Reversing a policy that lets DOD
cover travel costs for troops seeking reproductive care, including abortion
services.
Eliminating “Marxist
indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs,” which the text does
not provide examples of.
Other prescriptions include:
Suspending the use of the
recently introduced Military Health System Genesis, where military applicants
are medically examined before they can sign up.
Requiring completion of the Armed
Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the military entrance examination, by all
students in schools that receive federal funding.
Increasing the Army force
structure by 50,000.
Aligning the Marine Corps’ combat
arms rank structure with the Army’s.
Maintaining between 28 and 31
larger amphibious warships as opposed to the what is specified in current Navy
shipbuilding plans.
Increasing F-35A procurement to
60–80 per year.
Providing necessary support to
Department of Homeland Security border protection operations.
Improving base housing and
considering the military family “holistically” when considering
change-of-station moves.
Separately, in a chapter
dedicated to revisions to the Department of Homeland Security, it was suggested
that the Coast Guard, which currently operates under DHS during peacetime, be
transferred out to another department.
Ken Cuccinelli, a former DHS
official from the Trump administration, who wrote that section of the
guidebook, said the maritime service should instead be moved to the Department
of Justice when not at war, or alternatively to DOD for all purposes.
Changes that Tucker advocated
for include:
Rescinding all departmental
clinical policy directives related to abortion services and gender reassignment
surgeries.
Reviewing in-person work options.
Tucker cited that, specifically for VA staff in the nation’s capital, the
remote work policy is “undermining the cohesiveness and competencies of some
staff functions and diluting general organizational accountability and
responsiveness.”
Requiring Veterans Health
Administration facilities to increase the number of patients seen each day to
equal the number seen by DOD medical facilities: approximately 19 patients per
provider per day. Currently, Tucker said, VA facilities may be seeing as few as
six patients per provider per day.
Not everyone however agreed with
taking that approach. “VHA healthcare providers need to spend more time with
veterans during their appointments to effectively address their complex health
needs,” Russell Lemle and Jasper Craven, from the Veterans Healthcare Policy
Institute, wrote in a Task & Purpose op-ed. “By demanding that VHA
facilities match the patient volume at DOD facilities, Project 2025 risks
shortchanging veterans and compromising the quality of care they receive by
treating them as if they are in the prime of their youth,” they added.
Other recommendations from
Tucker included:
Embracing the expansion of
Community Based Outpatient Clinics without “investing further in obsolete and
unaffordable VA health care campuses.”
Revising disability rating awards
for future claimants while “preserving them fully or partially for existing
claimants.”
Establishing a veterans “bill of
rights” so vets and VA staff know exactly what benefits veterans are entitled
to receive.
Transferring all career Senior
Executive Service individuals out of specific positions on the first day to
“ensure political control of the VA.”
Michael Embrich, a former member
of the Advisory Committee on the Readjustment of Veterans, shared in an op-ed
for GovExec that following Project 2025′s plans to reshape the government
workforce “would disproportionately affect veterans, many of whom rely on these
positions not only for employment but also for a sense of purpose and
community.”
The Trump campaign did not
respond to an email request for comment.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.