Former President Trump’s attempt to distance himself from a Washington think tank’s plan to reshape the federal government could be undermined by his association with the authors of the manifesto’s tax policy section.
Stephen Moore and William L. Walton both served as advisers to Trump during his 2016 presidential run and subsequent administration before coauthoring a Project 2025 chapter about the Treasury Department. The Heritage Foundation, a group that wants to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, eliminate all corporate deductions, and lower tax rates, coordinated creation of the document containing administrative and policy suggestions for a theoretical Republican-controlled White House and Congress.
Moore was a key Republican adviser in drafting the TCJA, which lowered the corporate tax rate and income taxes for a large swath of taxpayers. Walton, a venture capitalist with ties to a number of Republican organizations, led the Trump presidential transition team’s planning for Treasury and the IRS.
In the Project 2025 handbook, Moore and Walton, along with third author David R. Burton and other contributors, call for, among other things:
further lowering of the corporate tax rate to 18 percent;
introduction of a two-rate individual income tax system (at 15 percent and 30 percent); and
full repeal of all tax provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Project 2025 also calls for rescinding extra funding for the IRS provided by the IRA and for reinstating a Trump-era executive order to expedite the process for firing IRS employees.
Trump has been adamant in recent weeks that he is not involved in the initiative.
“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” the Trump campaign said on July 31 after the resignation of Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign— it will not end well for you."
Austin Bramwell of Milbank LLP said a distinction needs to be drawn between certain sections of Project 2025 and the plan as a whole.
“It would be incorrect to say because Trump has explicitly condemned Project 2025, which is nearly 1,000 pages, he wouldn’t be friendly to the tax policy advisers and ultimately want to push some of the plan’s tax policy agenda,” Bramwell said.
Bramwell, who was a contributor to Project 2025’s chapter on Treasury, suggested Trump’s rejection may be directed more toward some of the more highly publicized aspects of the initiative. The plan calls for the Department of Education to be disbanded, the creation of a national database on abortions, and increased limits on legal immigration.
Bramwell said that if Trump is elected to a second term, of all the proposals put forth by Project 2025, he will probably find plenty of alignment on tax policy.
“If it ends up being a Trump administration, to state the obvious, a lot of what is in Project 2025 is surely going to be embraced,” Bramwell said. “But clearly Trump didn’t want to be associated with the entire effort from beginning to end.”
All three primary authors of the chapter on Treasury declined to be interviewed for this article.
A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation said that although Dans is stepping down, the organization will continue conducting policy work.