Oversight Democrats Contrast Biden-Harris Administration Policy Wins Against Donald Trump’s Dystopian Project 2025 Blueprint

Washington, D.C. (September 20, 2024)—Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, led Committee Democrats in rebuking MAGA’s Project 2025, the extremist policy blueprint for a second Trump Administration, after Chairman Comer invited four witnesses with ties to Project 2025 to testify before the Committee.  Committee Democrats contrasted the historic successes of the Biden-Harris Administration in investing in America’s future against the failed policies of Donald Trump’s Administration and Project 2025’s extremist agenda for America.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has restored America’s place as a global leader and led an economic recovery that is the envy of the rest of the world.  Project 2025 wants to reverse all the progress we’ve made, strip Americans of basic fundamental rights and freedoms that we’ve had for decades, and create a federal workforce loyal only to Donald Trump and not to the Constitution of the United States,” said Ranking Member Raskin in his opening remarks.  
  
The hearing included testimony from Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward;  Brendan Carr, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission;  Meaghan Mobbs, Director, Center for American Safety and Security at the Independent Women’s Forum;  Mandy Gunasekara, Former Chief of Staff, U.S.  Environmental Protection Agency; and Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies.

Committee Democrats made clear: Project 2025 is a MAGA Manifesto to take over our government and strip Americans’ personal freedoms.

• Rep. Melanie Stansbury pointed out that every witness the Majority invited had some connection to Project 2025, saying, “I think it’s very clear this hearing is actually about Project 2025.” 
   
• Rep. Rashida Tlaib pointed out how Project 2025 would take aim at workers’ pay checks including overtime pay protections. Asked about the impact of these policies, Ms. Perryman said:  “We know it would be devastating, and that’s not the only thing that’s in Project 2025 that’s devastating to working Americans who need to be paid for their work.  It also would seek to revise the threshold by which you qualify for overtime.”
   
• Rep. Ayanna Pressley highlighted that Project 2025 just the first step.  She said:  “We would be ignoring a critical component of Project 2025 if we did not address the fact that its creators have been secretly peddling a 180-day playbook that contains executive orders and emergency actions to roll out in the first hours of a second Trump presidency.  Instead of sharing this plan with the public—an indictment of your dangerous policy plans in and of itself—those behind Project 2025 claim it is too controversial to release.”

Committee Democrats explained that Donald Trump seeks to fill his Administration with individuals loyal to him over the Constitution in order to implement his extreme agenda.

• Ranking Member Jamie Raskin explained how Donald Trump hopes to replace expert career civil servants with partisan loyalists to fast-track Project 2025’s radical agenda, emphasizing that the Project 2025 gameplan is “a program that depends on sending in an army of Trump’s sycophants and loyalists to replace 50,000 professional civil servants,” thereby “subordinating the people’s government to big corporations.”  Project 2025 amounts to “a plan to upend democratic government as we know it” by “politicizing the federal workforce and gutting the professional civil service, weaponizing the Department of Justice against political rivals and the people,” and “seizing political control of independent agencies like the Federal Reserve Board and the FCC.”  
   
• When asked by Rep. Ro Khanna if she supported Project 2025’s proposal to reinstate Schedule F, which would lead to the firing of 50,000 expert civil servants, Ms. Gunasekara reaffirmed her support for the proposal and said she thought even more civil servants “should be gone.”
   
• Rep. Summer Lee pointed out that:  “The people who are actually keeping things afloat are not my colleagues, thank God, and it’s not even the President.  It’s our federal workforce [...] the hardworking career professionals across our agencies that work to improve our air quality and our water quality” and “ensure that our medications are safe to take, that Social Security checks get to folks on time and that our veterans can live with dignity and comfort after their service.”  Rep. Lee further stressed:  “There’s a reason why these people are career professionals. There’s a reason why they’re not partisan shields.  They have the right experience and knowledge to properly do their jobs.  Yet, Trump and the Republican Project 2025—whoever wrote it, whoever endorses it, it exists—wants to get rid of these workers and replace them with people whose only qualification is their loyalty and their financial support to Donald Trump.”

Committee Democrats explained how the Biden-Harris Administration has restored America’s global leadership and invested in workers, families, and communities across the country.

• Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton explained how the Biden-Harris Administration has brought new jobs to communities all over America, saying, “In total, the Biden-Harris Administration’s leadership has led to more than 775,000 new manufacturing jobs while 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost under the Trump Administration.”  Congresswoman Norton added:  “Another highlight of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, and do not just take my word for it—we know Republican governors think so too.  I have a packet of press releases and statements from 12 Republican governors, including the governors of Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia, celebrating the money they will receive through this program to connect rural communities in their states to high-speed internet.”
   
• Rep. Stephen Lynch reminded the Committee that the Biden-Harris Administration backed a bipartisan deal to bring much-needed resources to the border, but House Republicans tanked it at Donald Trump’s demand:  “Earlier this year, a group of Republican and Democratic senators announced that they had worked out, with the Biden-Harris Administration, a deal to negotiate and develop a bipartisan national security agreement.  Importantly, this agreement proposed the most comprehensive border security reforms in nearly 30 years, including $20 billion to add more than 5,000 Customs and Border Protection personnel at the border.  Unfortunately, former President Trump felt differently.  As reported by various Republican members of Congress, he sought to kill the bipartisan border deal to keep the issue alive purely for his own political gain.”  
   
• Rep. Shontel Brown emphasized that the Biden-Harris Administration brought the largest investment in infrastructure in a generation with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law:  “Thanks to this historic legislation, bridges, roads, and public transportation systems are receiving the repair, renovation, and renewal they have desperately needed.” She said the investments are deeply felt in her district:  “Every time I go back to my district, I hear praise for cleaner buses and electric vehicle stations, Metro Parks’ expansion on the East Side, potholes being filled and new bridges and highways cutting down commute times.  Very real acts which benefit people every single day.”