Republican Project 2025 Takes Dead Aim at Veterans' Health and Disability Benefits

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When I came to Congress two years ago and joined the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, I was cautiously optimistic that lawmakers would put aside their differences to serve the needs of veterans. After all, some Republicans had just broken party ranks to support the PACT Act, a cornerstone law pushed by President Joe Biden that expanded health care to millions of fellow toxic-exposed veterans and their survivors.

Sadly, no dice. The past 18 months on the committee have been marked by dysfunction, division, and a slew of damaging policy proposals. House Republicans used the committee not as a space to come together for veterans, but instead as a battlefield for their right-wing culture war. Too often, the committee became a venue to try to privatize veterans' health care. My Republican colleagues sided with corporate interests to outsource care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, despite studies indicating that this fee-for-service care falls woefully short of department standards. Worse still, some even tried to slash funding for the Pact Act and renege on the promise of health care for toxic-exposed veterans of my generation.

As November nears, Republicans are predictably claiming their deep loyalty to veterans. During the first presidential debate, former President Donald Trump claimed, with no evidence, that he had the "highest approval rating for veterans." This year's Republican Party platform is short on details, leaving veteran voters to consider the conservative ticket on little more than platitudes.

There are, however, worrying clues for what may be in store for veterans should Republicans regain full power, in the form of Project 2025, an intricate road map for a second Trump administration. Authored by right-wing strategists from the Heritage Foundation and other groups with close ties to Trump, the sweeping presidential agenda promotes an unprecedented attack on the VA. Millions of my fellow veterans and I earned our VA health care and benefits through service and sacrifice while in uniform. Project 2025's proposed attacks on the VA are a betrayal of the sacred promise this country makes to veterans.

Trump has tried to distance himself from the proposals in Project 2025, claiming not to know about their development and that he disagreed with parts of the plan. That denial never passed the smell test, as 140 of Project 2025's contributors previously worked for him, including the authors of its veterans' recommendations. Make no mistake, these are ideas that will dominate the White House if he wins.

At a Heritage Foundation conference in 2022, as Project 2025 was in preparation, Trump expressed support, stating, "They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do."

Come November, freedom-loving voters will remember it was Donald Trump and his party minions who pushed a plan to cut health care for millions of patriotic veterans, while supporting continued massive tax cuts for the rich and giant corporations.

Project 2025 envisions significant reductions to veterans' health care services and disability benefits. Proposed changes could disenroll millions of veterans without a service-connected designation from VA-paid health care. Other veterans could lose access to VA health care for issues that "don't align" with their service-related conditions. Take a look at the desired policies laid out in the Heritage Foundation's related blueprint: It's there in black and white.

Project 2025's plan would also require VA hospitals to "increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DoD medical facilities." That directive ignores the enormous differences in needs between generally healthy younger service members and older veterans, and risks compromising the quality of care for veterans. Project 2025 also calls for VA hospitals to outsource more care into costly private facilities, a fiscally reckless move that continues a Trump-backed trend promoted by the Mission Act that has ballooned costs for the VA. Project 2025 also endorses the revival of a scuttled Trump-era commission largely aimed at downsizing and even closing VA hospitals. The ultimate endgame of these plans -- to dismantle the VA's clinical care mission -- should send shivers down the spines of America's veterans and those who want them to have the best care out there.

And it gets even worse. Project 2025 is hell-bent on cutting veterans' hard-earned disability benefits. The agenda calls for cutting costs by revising disability rating awards for future claims and partially revising some existing claims. Let's call this what this is: a proposal to slash care and benefits for disabled veterans, in part or in whole. When asked about these slashed disability payments, a spokesperson for Project 2025 dug in on the possibility of rolling back the ratings scale for those who fight tomorrow's wars. In a Project 2025 world, future generations of disabled veterans could see their benefits cut or wiped out entirely.

We veterans are sick of being used as political props, welcomed in campaign ads and press conferences, but having our needs ignored by politicians more interested in tax giveaways to the rich and powerful. The truth is that, while Trump and Republican politicians continue to wrap themselves in the flag, their anti-veteran record speaks for itself. Veterans and the American public can see that while Democrats have delivered tangible results and expanded care for veterans, Trump's Project 2025 is an existential threat to those who served this great country.

Veterans won't fall for Republican two-faced messages of false patriotism in November.

-- Chris Deluzio, a Democrat, is a Navy and Iraq War veteran representing Pennsylvania's 17th Congressional District.