NASHVILLE – Project 2025 remains a key talking point of the upcoming election cycle, but how would the plan directly affect Tennessee? Colin Seeberger, a senior advisor for Communications at American Progress, recently published a piece breaking down how the implementation of Project 2025 could negatively impact the average Tennessean. He said that Project 2025 shifts the tax burden from the wealthy on to the middle class, and that under the plan, the average Tennessean supporting a family of four could see a yearly tax increase of $2,420.
Seeberger said Project 2025’s proposals on “limits or lifetime caps on [Medicaid] benefits” would put 770,800 Tennessean Medicaid enrollees in jeopardy of losing coverage because of their low-income status and lack of access to alternative, affordable coverage. He said the plan’s proposal to eliminate out-of-pocket Medicare drug cost limits, as well as blocking the government from negotiating lower drug prices, could raise the cost of prescription drugs for 459,280 Tennesseans.
Regarding childcare, Seeberger said Project 2025 suggests eliminating Head Start, which provides childcare access along with other services at no cost to 17,486 children throughout Tennessee. He said Head Start’s elimination would especially impact rural areas and other underserved communities already lacking in available childcare slots.
Seeberger said Tennessee’s child prevention options could also become more limited. He said Project 2025 suggests eliminating some emergency contraception medications from free preventative care requirements that would result in more than one million Tennessee women losing their access to free emergency contraception. He said the plan also instructs the Department of Justice to take legal action against local officials who refuse to bring cases against lawyers and doctors who violate state abortions plans, such as Tennessee.
Seeberger said Project 2025 would also impact Tennessee’s ability to provide education, a hot button issue in the volunteer state for years. He said the plan eliminates Title 1, which provides funds to ensure schools serving low-income students have additional resources to deliver high-quality education beyond that which can be supported by local property tax revenue, along with its plan to outright eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Seeberger said these actions would cost Tennessee 4,250 teaching positions which effectively serve 65,029 students.
College students could also feel the impacts of Project 2025, according to Seeberger, as income-driven repayment (IDR) plans would be replaced with a one-size-fits-all program that would increase payments for all IDR plan borrowers, including the Biden-Harris administration’s Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan. He said this would result in 151,600 borrowers throughout Tennessee enrolled in the SAVE Plan paying anywhere between $2,7000 to $4,100 a year.
Additionally, Seeberger said Project 2025 authors have also both supported and endorsed Social Security cuts by raising the retirement age for about 74% of Tennesseans or roughly 5,184,997 people statewide. He said support for raising the retirement age was shown in the two most recent Republican Study Committee budget proposals that suggested increasing the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 69.
In a recent Tennessean article, they analyzed 54 advisory organizations that contributed to Project 2025, of which they marked 19 notable connections the plan has with Tennessee, including other minor connections. The article noted the organization with the largest Tennessee involvement was the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national nonprofit organization of conservative legislators who create model legislation for state distribution, whose members include 28 Tennessee lawmakers. This includes two who serve as the Tennessee state chair for the organization, Rep. Chris Todd, R-Madison County, and Sen. Ed Jackson, R-Jackson.
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