Fact check: Harris falsely claims Project 2025 blueprint calls for cutting Social Security

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) — In the first rally of her presidential campaign on Tuesday, presumptive Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris wrongly described parts of the conservative Project 2025 blueprint for a potential second Donald Trump presidency.

The 920-page Project 2025 blueprint was organized by The Heritage Foundation think tank and developed in significant part by people who served in Trump’s administration; Trump has publicly distanced himself from the initiative, calling unspecified Project 2025 ideas “seriously extreme.” Project 2025’s proposals for right-wing policies and a radical reshaping of the executive branch have become frequent targets of Democratic criticism.

At Harris’ Tuesday rally in Wisconsin, she criticized Trump and “his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” then said: “Can you believe they put that thing in writing? Read it. It’s 900 pages. But here’s the thing. When you read it, you will see Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and make working families foot the bill. They intend to end the Affordable Care Act. And take us back, then, to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with pre-existing conditions.”

Facts First: One of Harris’ claims about Project 2025 is false, while another is at least misleading. The Project 2025 document does not show that Trump intends to cut Social Security; the document barely discusses Social Security at all and does not propose cuts to the program. In addition, contrary to Harris’ suggestion, Project 2025 does not call to “end” the Affordable Care Act or eliminate its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. The document does criticize the Affordable Care Act, especially the law’s expansion of Medicaid, but makes clear it is advocating changes to the law rather than terminating the law entirely.

A Harris campaign official said the campaign has “made a deliberate decision to brand all of Trump’s policies” as “Project 2025,” since they believe “it has stuck with voters.” After the initial publication of this article, a Harris campaign spokesperson, Joseph Costello, added, “Project 2025 is a blueprint for many of the dangerous policies we know that a second Trump term would include, and it is indisputable that in his first term, Donald Trump repeatedly tried to cut Social Security and end the Affordable Care Act.”

Mary Vought, a spokesperson for Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation, said, “Harris should follow her own advice and read the book instead of promoting lies and misinformation.”

No Project 2025 call to cut Social Security

We won’t render a verdict on Harris’ claim about Project 2025 calling for cuts to Medicare, though Trump himself has vowed he will not cut even a cent from the health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities. The Project 2025 document proposes multiple significant changes to Medicare, and it’s not clear what their overall impact would be.

And there is a reasonable basis for Harris’ claim about Project 2025 wanting to give tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations. The project’s proposals to significantly restructure the tax code include a reduction in the corporate income tax rate and ideas that would disproportionately benefit high earners. Trump’s own proposal to extend the expiring provisions of his 2017 tax cut law also favors wealthy people.

But contrary to Harris’ claim that “when you read” the Project 2025 document “you will see” that Trump intends to cut Social Security, the lengthy document includes no call to cut Social Security. In fact, the document uses the words “Social Security” just 10 times, mostly in passing. Vought said the document calls for “no changes to Social Security.”

Harris could fairly have noted that Trump himself has expressed openness, both in decades past and earlier this year, to cutting Social Security. When he was asked in a March interview about how he would handle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, he said, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.” (He has since vowed not to cut “one penny” from Social Security or Medicare.)

But what Harris actually said is that the proof of a supposed Trump intention to cut Social Security in a second term is found in the Project 2025 document. It is not.

No Project 2025 call to end the Affordable Care Act

Harris at least suggested at the rally, though did not explicitly say, that the Project 2025 document includes a call to end the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. But that’s not correct, either.

The document criticizes the budget impact of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of the Medicaid health insurance program for lower-income people. It also explicitly calls for some changes to the Affordable Care Act – popularly known as Obamacare – or its implementation. Those suggested changes include removing restrictions on physician-owned and specialty hospitals, better enforcing a provision of the law related to how insurers must handle money related to abortion, and coming up with “a plan to separate the non-subsidized insurance market from the subsidized market.”

But the document makes no mention of changes to Affordable Care Act protections for people with pre-existing conditions. And its suggestions for changes to the law are clearly not suggestions to get rid of the law entirely. “It does not end the Affordable Care Act,” Vought said.

Trump himself repeatedly promised during his 2016 election campaign to “terminate” Obamacare and replace it with an unspecified superior plan, but failed to achieve his goal as president. In a social media post during this campaign, in November 2023, he said he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to Obamacare, criticized Republican senators who had voted “not to terminate” the law, and added that “we should never give up!”

Then, four days later, he wrote, “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”

This story has been updated with a response from the Harris campaign.

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