Many of the conservative hardline policies being tossed around in the presidential campaign are frightening, and represent no less than the gravest threat in generations to Black and Latinx people, the poor, immigrants, children and seniors. These malicious ideas cannot be ignored as idle chatter.
New York City faces a unique danger because so many of the proposals would assault the fragile social and economic balance that makes our city the vibrant unofficial capital of the world. These ideas are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions.
The most talked-about buffet of bad ideas is Project 2025, a sprawling, 920-page Republican policy playbook authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Every page offers detailed proposals on how to repeal gains by the poor and people of color in every arena, from education and infrastructure to health care and LGBTQ issues.
Make no mistake, the whole point is to change American life in a way that erodes 1960s-era policies that have nourished economic opportunities for Black and Latinx Americans, as well as to kill diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that have flowered since the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
Its main proposals would destabilize New York City by demolishing the foundations of the national immigration system, including the detention and deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants. And that is just the start.
It targets the poor by imposing strict limits on Medicaid and federal housing assistance; dismantles the Department of Education; guts public transit maintenance grants, thereby increasing commuter bus and rail costs; revises the tax code so millions of low-income and middle-class families would face higher taxes; and outlaws public worker labor unions.
Imagine the chaos of federal immigration agents – or even the U.S. military – rounding up people in the five boroughs and holding them in internment camps, let’s say, on Roosevelt Island. Unthinkable, but not beyond possibility if you believe what’s under discussion in the presidential campaign.
It is hard to determine precisely how many undocumented people live in the United States, though statistical and demographic methods and the Pew Research Center estimate that about 10.5 million undocumented immigrants live in the country. Of that, around 500,000 are believed to live in the five boroughs, according to the NYC Comptroller.
Aside from the crackdown on immigration, new restrictions on Medicaid would cause immeasurable harm. Currently, 4.1 million New York City residents are enrolled in Medicaid, state figures show. Project 2025 calls for spending caps, time limits, and lifetime benefit limits, which would almost certainly prevent New Yorkers from getting the health care they need.
Separately, there are 361,000 residents in New York Housing Authority and Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) developments, which are managed by private developers. Project 2025 calls for “maximum term limits” on people receiving federal housing benefits, potentially throwing families into homelessness amid a local housing affordability crisis. It also proposes denying U.S. citizens federal housing subsidies if they live with anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.
Calls to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, one of the pillars of our way of life, would do away with Title 1 funding that supports academic programs for low-income students. That means no Head Start and student nutrition programs, and an untold number of teaching positions would face the budget ax.
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) bus and train system cannot function without federal money. That is even more true since the halt of congestion pricing. Project 2025 proposes eliminating the MTA’s most important grant source, the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program. Just this summer, the new Gateway rail tunnels under the Hudson River between Penn Station and New Jersey received $6.9 billion in CIG grants.
Arguably the most nefarious Project 2025 proposal calls for revising the nation’s tax brackets, which are designed to help lower-income Americans pay a smaller share of their wages in federal taxes compared with middle- or high-income workers.
Project 2025 argues that the current tax system is too complicated and expensive. To remedy those problems, it proposes just two regressive tax rates: a 15 percent flat tax for people earning up to about $168,000, and a 30 percent income tax for people earning above that, according to analysis of the proposal. Net result: higher out-of-pocket tax bills for the working poor and low-income families, and lower taxes for the wealthy.
This is a lot to process. The fire hose of depressing ideas is overwhelming, and should be downright terrifying. It is nothing less than an assault on our beloved city and our neighbors.
We all owe it to ourselves, our families and our fellow New Yorkers to learn as much as we can about Project 2025 and to vote in November.
David R. Jones, Esq., is President and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years, and a member of the MTA Board. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.