Graphic misleads on Project 2025 Veterans Affairs budget proposals
- Published on July 26, 2024 at 21:00
- 5 min read
- By Natalie WADE, AFP USA
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"Project 2025 Veterans Cuts. Y'all better wake up," says a July 3, 2024 Facebook post sharing a graphic outlining several large cuts to benefits such as retirement, disability and medical care.
Similar posts sharing the graphic circulated elsewhere on Facebook and X.
Project 2025 is a blueprint for reshaping the federal government should a Republican win the presidential election this fall. An 887-page book titled "Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise" outlines its goals (archived here).
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the initiative (archived here), although it tracks closely with the policies he and his closest advisers say they want to pursue. Multiple news outlets have also reported many of his allies and former administration members have ties to Project 2025.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden endorsed for the Democratic nomination after he dropped out of the race, have attacked Trump over the proposal (archived here and here).
However, claims that the graphic shared online shows Project 2025's proposed budget cuts to the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are misleading.
Although the initiative proposes changes that could affect veterans, neither the graphic nor the figures it shows appear in the book. When asked about the claim, a spokesperson pointed AFP to its website which says: "Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership makes no cuts to any veteran benefits" (archived here).
The Heritage Foundation proposed the cuts independently.
The conservative nonprofit published the figures on a webpage that proposes numerous cuts to the VA for the 2023-2032 fiscal years (archived here).
What Project 2025 says
Brooks Tucker, former chief of staff for the VA during the Trump administration, outlines Project 2025's plan for the agency in chapter 20 (archived here).
The initiative proposes speeding up the review process for disability ratings and looking to the private sector for technological solutions to improve administration of benefits. But the plan also calls for the next administration to revise disability rating award eligibility.
The VA Schedule for Rating Disabilities (VASRD) the collection of federal regulations used "to evaluate the severity of disabilities and assign disability ratings" (archived here and here).
Project 2025 says: "The VA's Schedule for Rating Disabilities (VASRD) has assigned disability ratings to a growing number of health conditions over time; some are tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service."
It also calls on the government to "target significant cost savings from revising disability rating awards for future claimants while preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants." Such action could see service members receive fewer benefits, but it does not specify a set dollar figure it would expect to cut from the administration's budget.
The chapter also advocates for rescinding clinical policies related to abortion services and gender reassignment surgeries, more privatized healthcare, reviewing in-person work options, and requiring the Veterans Health Administration to increase the number of patients seen each day.
Other Project 2025 proposals for different federal agencies could also affect members of the military.
Christopher Miller, who served as acting defense secretary in the final months of the Trump administration, recommends in chapter four reducing the number of generals and reversing policies that allow transgender people to serve in the military (archived here).
Michael Embrich, a former member of the secretary of veterans affairs' Advisory Committee on the Readjustment of Veterans, argues the book's proposed workforce reductions in agencies such as the FBI and Justice Department would disproportionately affect veterans, who make up roughly 30 percent of federal employees (archived here and here).
"Project 2025 is essentially advocating for a skeletal government, unable to perform its fundamental functions. All the while leaving civil service veterans holding the bag," he says in a July 9, 2024 column for the media outlet Government Executive (archived here).
AFP contacted the Heritage Foundation for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.
More of AFP's reporting on misinformation about Project 2025 is available here.
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