Stop Project 2025

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Congressman Huffman who also shares that lineage of being a fighter for the people. I thank him for convening us, bringing us together for this Project 2025 that we must discuss.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today because we cannot allow the agenda of MAGA Republicans to go unaddressed and quietly into the night.

On page 4 of Project 2025, it explicitly states that the goal is to get rid of terms like inclusion, equity, and diversity, so that no governmental policy can consider these things when determining who gets a contract, who gets hired, what management looks like, or who gets helped by a particular policy or administrative agency.

I find this to be as tragic as it is interesting because in a perfect world, we would not need diversity, equity, and inclusion, but that is not where we live.

We live in the United States of America, and we also live in a material universe where it is impossible to undo 300 years of legal exclusion with just 50 years of making this country do what is right.

For those who say America is different now, let me remind you that America didn't include Black people in the inherent opportunities that come along with being born into this great Nation because she magically wanted to.

It was those persons, the abolitionists and the civil rights workers and Black Americans, who made America do it.

That is why the civil rights movement enacted laws and policies and protections because of the whimsical nature of America.

America's commitment to our own principles cannot always be trusted. It, indeed, can be thick on ideals and thin on deeds.

Let us not forget that during the Reconstruction in the late 1860s, Black people were given access to the mechanisms of power in this country.

Then in the 1890s, America took it all back with the imposition of Jim Crow and segregation. Some people in this institution need to know America's history.

Here again, in the 1960s, African Americans made significant political and economic gains. Yet, here we are in 2024, living under the tyranny of a Supreme Court determined to roll it all back.

Affirmative action on college campuses, gone.

A women's right to determine what can happen with her body, gone.

The tragedy of our current situation is we don't know what is coming next.

Laws and policies that require the inclusion of Black people are not there to give us an advantage. They are here to make sure that we are not once again excluded because of the color of our skin by American law.

Project 2025 was created by the same people who formed the so-called intellectual brain trust around the candidacy of Donald Trump. These are his advisers, and here is what we know.

We know that Project 2025 wants to impose a national ban on abortion, prosecute political enemies, and eliminate the Department of Education.

Just think about it. What would we do without a public education policy?

Project 2025 wants to continue to ban books about slavery and the civil rights movement and prosecute teachers and librarians for assigning them.

This is insanity. Just think about the insanity that we are living in.

MAGA Republicans believe that books are dangerous for children, but automatic rifles are not.

Project 2025 openly declares that it wants to get rid of school lunches and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for families and children.

Both of these are part of the social safety net that ensures that millions of people will continue to have dignity in old age and access to clean food and water. Project 2025 wants to get rid of it.

Now, if it is okay to spend billions of dollars on bombs but making sure millions of people don't starve to death is somehow completely out of the question, something is wrong.

Please note that Project 2025 doesn't say anything, nothing, about getting rid of poverty, but they have no problem with getting rid of the programs that help people deal with the fact that they are tragically poor in a country that has excessive wealth. They want to leave poverty alone, but they want to undermine how people survive it.

Project 2025 wants to allow employers to no longer pay overtime. If your employer can demand that you work overtime, but they don't have to pay you for the extra time you put in, to put additional money into their pockets and making them rich, something is tragically wrong.

Can you imagine being required to work extra hours without extra compensation? That too is in Project 2025.

Essentially, Project 2025 says that you should be happy to have a job and that whatever your employer asks you to do, you should be happy to do it.

We don't owe you anything beyond the minimum requirement of your basic paycheck. That is un-American. This is ridiculous, but this is what Donald Trump and the people around him want to do.

Project 2025 is a complete disavowal of workers' rights. If you think they are going to stop at eliminating overtime, then you are completely delusional and drastically out of touch with reality.

This is not the language in the document, but I bet you all the money in my pocket against all the money in your pocket that healthcare will be next.

They have been trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, for the last 12 years. Project 2025 wants to give wealthy corporations another tax break.

It is not enough that multibillion dollar corporations got the biggest tax break in American history under Donald J. Trump. They want to give corporations more.

Notice how one-sided this is. They want to give corporations a big tax break, where Project 2025 says nothing about increasing wages.

Follow the wickedness of the logic. Corporations get bigger tax breaks so they can keep more of the money workers made for them, but the workers don't get to participate in the success of the corporation by having an increase in their wages.

Project 2025 calls for an end to Social Security, our great safety net program. Goal 3 of Project 2025 says that only a nuclear family should receive governmental support. This is a part of the ill-fated logic of J.D. Vance and Donald J. Trump.

If you are a single mother raising your children or a grandparent raising your grandchildren, Project 2025 says that the government should not make you a priority, and basically, you are not a family.

The policies and prescriptions of Project 2025 would lead to the greatest assault on Medicaid and Medicare in the history of this Nation.

This is what we are up against. This is why we are determined not to let it happen. We are determined to fight for what is right. We are determined to resist.

Once again, I thank the Honorable Congressman Huffman from the great State of California for championing this cause and for calling us out here tonight. I thank him for his undying commitment to our American democracy and his fight for what is right.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his outstanding leadership.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source