The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.
Amy Fried is a retired political science professor at the University of Maine. Her views are her own and do not represent those of any group with which she is affiliated.
As President Joe Biden’s reelection hopes keep getting brighter, Donald Trump and his allies have backed wide-ranging plans that would reshape what our government does and how it does it.
Once again, there’s a proposal from the House’s Republican Study Committee — 167 pages long this time. The RSC speaks for most House Republicans and again advocates cutting Social Security by forcing seniors to wait longer for the benefits they paid for.
But there’s also a massive missive, coming in at 920 pages, from the Heritage Foundation called “Mandate for Leadership.” It’s detailed and sweeping, with overt hostility to rights, research and programs for health, education and the environment. They want the report to shape what the federal government does, assuming a Republican wins the presidency. It’s also likely to influence state policymakers.
When it comes to funding the federal government, Heritage supports decreasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations and shifting the burden to others. The personal deduction would disappear, especially raising taxes on low-income people. There’d be two income tax rates, with the top marginal one, 30 percent, to “begin at or near the Social Security wage base,” meaning that multi-millionaires would pay the same top rate as someone making $161,000. Add to that a consumption tax, which hits working-class and middle-class people far more than the rich.
The Heritage Foundation’s plan weaves in a culture-war emphasis that includes but goes way beyond opposition to legal abortion. The group wants to end medication abortion and disallow employer health insurance from covering abortion. It’s clear pregnant women are not a priority since Heritage wants the federal government to stop requiring hospitals to perform “abortions necessary to stabilize the woman’s health.”
Instead of ensuring access to the most effective forms of birth control, the Heritage Foundation wants more messaging about using “fertility awareness” to prevent pregnancy. One goal is promoting “stable and flourishing married families,” but, because the group opposes “LGBTQ+ equity,” only straight couples’ marriages are deemed worthy. Although the Supreme Court decided employers can’t fire people for being gay or transgender, Heritage recommends the U.S. Labor Department restrict this ruling’s application.
Children would be harmed by the proposals to eliminate Head Start, to not allow states to provide free school lunch to all; and to make it easier for teenagers to take “inherently dangerous jobs.”
Seniors would be harmed by repealing health policies in the Inflation Reduction Act, like those limiting insulin copays to $35 a month and lowering how much seniors pay for prescription drugs each year.
This summer we experienced damaging climate-change related events, from punishing heat in Arizona to deadly wildfires in Hawaii. Yet Heritage wants to do less and know less about our changing climate. They propose dismantling agencies funding research on energy and energy efficiency and call for no federal involvement in grid planning. This would put a brake on the rapid shift to clean energy that President Biden helped to create, and it would harm our health and planet.
To implement its plans, the Heritage Foundation wants to put executive power on steroids. Those working in the federal government must follow laws and regulations, but Heritage’s report proclaims “It is the president’s agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies.”
As the New York Times reported, “Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House” and now runs a far-right think tank and is advising Trump, stated, “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.” This includes removing the separation between the president and decisions by the Department of Justice.
Late in his presidency, Trump tried to transform civil service positions into political appointments, a move that would decrease expertise and make personnel answerable to him alone. He and Heritage want to do that, should he win, and Heritage has put together lists of potential appointees, much like the list of judicial nominees compiled by the Federalist Society used by Trump.
Because so much of this is so unpopular, Republican presidential candidates will probably not put this blueprint on their websites or talk about it on the campaign trail. However, it’s not just Trump who has linked himself to what the Heritage Foundation desires, and voters should be aware of its extreme plans.
