September 6, 2024
Organized by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a “presidential transition project” that makes numerous policy recommendations that would negatively impact the federal nutrition programs as well as other critical federal anti-poverty, education, and health programs. The policy proposals would also weaken federal offices, departments, and regulatory agencies.
The over 900 page Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise includes 30 chapters, with Chapter 10 detailing their proposals for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the federal nutrition programs:
USDA
The document advocates narrowing the scope of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) role, cutting references to “equity” and “climate smart” in USDA’s mission statement, separating agricultural provisions from nutritional provisions in the Farm Bill, and moving the Food and Nutrition Service ) to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to put all means-tested programs in one department to uncover “the size of the welfare state.”
SNAP
This section uses the outdated term “food stamps” to refer to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Specifically, the section seeks to:
- Increase work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents by only allowing waivers if the state’s unemployment rate is above 6 percent for more than 24 months and disallowing long-standing state flexibility to calculate the local unemployment rate.
- Eliminate categorical eligibility, which would remove the state options of increasing gross income eligibility from 130 percent to 200 percent of the federal poverty level and increasing/removing the asset limit.
- Roll back the updates to the Thrifty Food Plan that modernized the SNAP benefits formula after decades of being connected to metrics and nutritional guidance from the 1960s.
- Eliminate the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and create a national standardized utility allowance for households with low incomes.
WIC
Proposed changes to this program include:
- Changing the way state agencies run competitive bidding for infant formula rebate contracts.
- Weakening regulations on baby formula.
School Meals
Without acknowledging the many students in need of school meals that are above the free or reduced-price eligibility threshold, stigma in the cafeteria, increased child food insecurity during the summer months or the connection between nutrition and learning, the mandate suggests:
- Prohibiting schools from grouping together to utilize the Community Eligibility Provision; (CEP).
- Working with Congress to ultimately eliminate CEP.
- Providing summer meals only to children enrolled in summer school classes.
- Rejecting efforts to establish Healthy School Meals for All policies nationwide and in states.
Dietary Guidelines
The mandate suggests changing or eliminating the Dietary Guidelines that USDA, in collaboration with HHS, publish every five years because in the past “issues such as climate change and sustainability infiltrated the process.”
The policy proposals included in this plan from the Heritage Foundation would roll back years of progress made increasing food security and, if implemented, harm children, families, and communities.
