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As Social Security’s trust funds face nearing depletion dates, leaders in the White House may be poised to influence reform efforts.
Here’s what the vice presidential picks for 2024 have said about the program’s future.

Trump’s pick for Vice President, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) arrives on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 
Joe Raedle | Getty Images

The clock is ticking to fix Social Security’s funds.
The next White House administration may have a powerful role in shaping the program’s future.

Social Security’s combined trust funds are projected to last until 2035, at which point 83% of benefits will be payable, the program’s trustees projected earlier this year. Yet the fund Social Security relies on to pay retirement benefits is due to run out sooner, in 2033, when 79% of those benefits will be payable.
Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have promised not to touch benefits, though Trump alluded to cutting entitlements in a March CNBC interview.
The November race includes the oldest presidential candidates. Biden, at 81, is the oldest American president, while Trump, 78, is among the 20 oldest world leaders.
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Trump’s pick for vice president — Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio — adds another perspective on the issue.

Either Vance, 39, or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, may be poised to one day occupy the Oval Office. Historically, one-third of U.S. presidents previously served as vice president.
Some experts have expressed reservations about what Vance as VP could mean for Social Security and Medicare.
“Former President Trump, one day he’ll talk about, ‘We need to cut these programs,'” said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
“And then the next day, he’ll say, ‘Well, that’s not what I what I was talking about,’ and Vance is kind of cut from the same mold,” Richtman said.

In recent years, Vance has said he does not support cuts to Social Security or Medicare, according to press interviews sent by his Senate team dating back to 2022.
“In 2019, we had about $4.4 trillion of federal outlays …. last year, we expect to collect about $4.4 trillion in taxes,” Vance told Fox Business in January. “So the idea that you need to mess with Social Security and Medicare to get to a long-term fiscal sanity picture … I don’t think that’s right.”
However, the National Committee points out that is an about-face from earlier comments he has made.
The advocacy group has endorsed Biden for the 2024 race, which is only the second time it has done so. When asked whether Trump could have picked a better running mate to support Social Security, Richtman said most Republicans would have been the same.

‘Neither candidate really has a plan’

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris looks on during a campaign event at Girard College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., May 29, 2024.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters

The National Committee has endorsed Democrats’ plans for Social Security, which call for applying additional taxes on wealthy individuals with incomes over $400,000.
As part of the White House administration, Harris has supported those plans. As a senator for California, she also backed a plan for similar reforms called the Social Security Expansion Act, which is now championed by leaders including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
“President [Joe Biden] and I will protect Social Security. Donald Trump will not,” Harris posted on X in June. “The contrast is clear.”
Biden has emphasized protecting Social Security in his State of the Union addresses and budget proposals.
While Democrats have called for requiring the wealthy to pay more into the program while expanding benefits, Republicans have opposed tax hikes.
Ultimately, Social Security reform may require a combination of changes.
Vance, in an interview with The New York Times that was published in June, suggested encouraging “seven million prime-age men not in the labor force” to work.
“You shift millions of those men from not working to working; you increase wages across the board; you increase tariffs; and I think that you buy yourself a whole hell of a lot more than the nine or 10 years that the actuaries say that we have,” Vance told the Times.

Getting more people back to work would help Social Security, but it would be difficult to accomplish, said Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who worked on Social Security reform policy in the President George W. Bush White House.
Moreover, Vance overestimates how far that change could go to repair the program, Biggs said.
“There is a much bigger funding gap than Social Security faced in 1983,” Biggs said. “And neither candidate really has a plan to address it.”
Democrats would beg to differ.
“There’s only one candidate in this race who will protect earned benefits that millions of Americans have paid into all their lives — Joe Biden,” said Joe Costello, a Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson.
Yet come 2029, Biggs predicts the nation will continue to face the same Social Security dilemma. And the president to take office then — whether it be Vance, Harris or someone else — may be forced to address it.
Correction: Former President Donald Trump is 78 years old. An earlier version misstated his age.

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Among the policy issues that Donald Trump and his newly chosen running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, agree on: Student loan borrowers should not get their debt canceled.
“Republicans must fight this with every ounce of our energy and power,” Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, wrote on X in April 2022.

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance applaud during Day 1 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 15, 2024. 
Brian Snyder | Reuters

Among the policy issues that Donald Trump and his newly chosen running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, agree on: Student loan borrowers should not get their debt canceled.
“Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America,” Vance, a Yale Law School graduate and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” wrote on X in April 2022. “Republicans must fight this with every ounce of our energy and power.”

Outstanding education debt in the U.S. stands at around $1.6 trillion. Nearly 43 million people — or 1 in 6 adult Americans — carry student loans. Women and people of color are most burdened by the debt, research shows.
Vance seems to approve of loan forgiveness in extreme cases. In May, he helped introduce legislation that would excuse parents from student loans they took on for a child who became permanently disabled.
Vance’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

GOP efforts to eliminate student loan forgiveness

Vance’s readiness to fight student loan forgiveness policies could pose a threat to the Biden administration’s recent efforts to reduce or eliminate people’s debts, experts say. Those relief measures are already under attack by Republicans.
In response to lawsuits brought by several red states, including Arkansas, Florida and Missouri, two federal judges in Kansas and Missouri temporarily halted major provisions of the U.S. Department of Education’s new affordable repayment plan for borrowers in late June.

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A legal challenge from six GOP-led states — Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina — also led to the downfall of President Joe Biden’s sweeping loan forgiveness plan. The majority-conservative Supreme Court ultimately struck down Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for millions of Americans.
As president, Trump called for the elimination of the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness initiative, and his administration halted a regulation aimed at providing loan forgiveness to those defrauded by their schools.
Meanwhile, Project 2025, a collection of policy plans developed by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, calls for further cuts to student loan forgiveness programs, including the elimination of several affordable repayment plans for borrowers. A number of people who formerly worked for Trump were involved in creating the playbook, and a recently resurfaced video from April 2022 shows Trump speaking at a Heritage Foundation gala about the group’s plans.
“If Donald Trump is given the chance to implement this right-wing manifesto it will wreak havoc on the economic stability of millions of student loan borrowers and their families and make the student debt crisis worse,” said Aissa Canchola Bañez, political director for Protect Borrowers Action.

‘Student debt forgiveness is a working-class issue’

Vance reiterated his view that student loan forgiveness is unfair in an interview on Fox News in August 2022.
“If you want to give student debt relief, you should penalize the people who have benefited from this very corrupt system, not ask plumbers in Ohio to subsidize the life decisions of college-educated young people, primarily young people who are going to make a lot of money over the course of their lifetime,” Vance said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
That’s not an unusual stance from the right.
Conservatives typically question the fairness of forgiving the debt of those who’ve benefited from higher education, and saddling taxpayers with the costs of doing so. Just over a third of Americans aged 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree, according to an estimate by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

Consumer advocates say rising costs force many families to borrow to send their children off to college, an increasingly necessary step to land in the middle class. They also point to failures in the loan system for worsening the crisis and making it harder for borrowers to pay down their debt.
Jane Fox, chapter chair of the Legal Aid Society Attorneys union, UAW local 2325, said it was hypocritical and incorrect of Vance to frame debt relief as a benefit to those who are well off.
“Student debt forgiveness is a working-class issue,” said Fox. “Those in the 1% who went to elite institutions and then worked in private equity as Senator Vance did rarely need debt relief.”
In Ohio, where Vance is senator, student loan borrowers owe $62 billion, and carry an average balance of roughly $35,000, Kantrowitz found.

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After mostly trending up for years, workplace engagement has flatlined.
The latest symptom of this detachment is “coffee badging.”
In part, workers are feeling tapped out and don’t want to spend any more time at the office than they already do, research shows.

Some workers are phoning it in, and it shows.
After mostly trending up for years, workplace engagement has flatlined. Now, only one-third of full- and part-time employees are engaged in their work and workplace, while roughly 50% are not engaged — reflected in the evolution of “quiet quitting” — and the rest, another 16%, are actively disengaged, according to a 2023 Gallup poll released earlier this year.

To be sure, quiet quitting, or coasting, has become a sign of the post-pandemic times, some experts say, with more employees trying to do the least they can get away with without drawing the attention of a boss or manager.
The latest example of this detachment is “coffee badging.”

What is coffee badging?

Coffee badging is the practice of going into the office for a few hours to “show face,” which could entail coffee with co-workers or sitting in on a work meeting — but then leaving to work remotely.
More than half — 58% — of hybrid employees admitted to checking in at the office and then promptly checking out, according to a 2023 survey by Owl Labs, a company that makes videoconferencing devices.
“Employees have become accustomed to the flexibility of working from home and may only come to the office when absolutely necessary,” said David Satterwhite, CEO of Chronus, a software firm focused on improving employee engagement. “It’s just too hard to put that genie back in the bottle.”

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Roger Hall, a business psychologist based in Boise, Idaho, says this latest trend comes as no surprise, especially considering how much easier it has become to work virtually and how many employees feel disengaged.
“Anytime there is an accountability method that is easy to circumvent, human beings will circumvent the accountability,” he said.

Workers are too distracted to work

In part, there is a fatigue that has accelerated since the Covid pandemic from being increasingly connected to work, Hall also said. “Every time an email or text comes in, we get a ding.”
Almost 50% of workers are distracted at least once every half hour, according to a new study by Unily, and nearly a third are distracted at least once every 15 minutes.

Getty Images

“For every interruption, it takes about 20 minutes to get at a deep level of concentration again,” Hall said. “If you do the math, if their interruptions are at every 15 minutes, then never, in the course of a day, ever [is someone] at a deep level of concentration.”
“At the end of the day, our brain is tapped out,” Hall said. The result is that “we are less productive — that has taken a hit.”
Not engaged or actively disengaged employees account for approximately $1.9 trillion in lost productivity nationwide, Gallup found.

Workers don’t want to spend more time at the office

“The issue isn’t just about employees badging in and out; it’s about what drives this lack of motivation and interest,” Satterwhite said.
Research shows that employees are more engaged when they have opportunities for development, learning, mentorship and career pathing, he noted. “Without these, ‘coffee badging’ is just a symptom of a deeper problem.”

While 56% of workers consider themselves to be ambitious, 47% are not focused on career progression at all, according to Randstad’s 2024 Workmonitor, which surveyed 27,000 workers globally.
These days, employees are more likely to consider work-life balance, flexible hours and mental health support as more important, the report found. And fewer want to spend any more time at the office than they already do.
“We saw a huge acceleration of the shift to hybrid work during the pandemic and people don’t want to give this up,” Sander van ‘t Noordende, Randstad’s CEO, told CNBC.
To that point, 37% of workers now say they would consider quitting their job if their employer asked them to spend more time in the office, and 39% say that working from home is nonnegotiable, Randstad found.  

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Enacted via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the qualified business income deduction, or QBI, is worth up to 20% of eligible revenue, subject to limitations.
That tax break is scheduled to expire after 2025 without changes from Congress, which could affect millions of filers.
“It’s something that is very important to a lot of privately held businesses,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

The Good Brigade | Digitalvision | Getty Images

Tax breaks worth trillions of dollars are scheduled to expire after 2025 without extension from Congress — including a hefty deduction for millions of self-employed filers and business owners.  
Enacted by former President Donald Trump, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 created the qualified business income deduction, or QBI, which is worth up to 20% of eligible revenue, subject to limitations.

The temporary deduction applies to so-called pass-through businesses, which report income at the individual level, such as sole proprietors, partnerships and S-corporations, along with some trusts and estates. 
“The hope is that this gets extended because it’s going to be very disruptive for a lot of business owners” if the tax break is allowed to expire, said Dan Ryan, a tax partner at law firm Sullivan and Worcester.
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Lawmakers added the temporary QBI deduction to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to create tax rates for pass-through businesses that are similar to tax rates for corporations.
But while the QBI deduction will sunset after 2025, the legislation permanently reduced corporate taxes by dropping the top federal rate from 35% to 21%.

For tax year 2021, the most recent data available, there were roughly 25.9 million QBI claims, up from 18.7 million in 2018, the first year the tax break was available, according to the IRS. 
“It’s something that is very important to a lot of privately held businesses,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

An extension would be ‘fairly pricey’

As the 2025 tax cliff approaches, there have been “very strong feelings” about whether to extend the QBI deduction, according to Garrett Watson, senior policy analyst and modeling manager at the Tax Foundation.  
Business advocates say the deduction promotes growth and have pushed to make the tax break permanent. Meanwhile, some policy experts and lawmakers point to the high cost and the deduction’s complexity.
The QBI deduction is “fairly pricey,” with an estimated 10-year cost of more than $700 billion, Watson said. That could pose a challenge amid debate over the federal budget deficit.

Other critics say the QBI deduction primarily benefits the wealthy because higher earners are more likely to have pass-through income. However, there are millions of middle-income taxpayers also claiming the deduction, according to IRS data.
Watson said some Democrats are eager to see the tax break expire, “but that runs right into the president’s tax pledge.”
White House National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard in June reaffirmed President Joe Biden’s promise to extend Trump’s tax breaks only for those making less than $400,000. More

The Social Security Administration is upgrading its “my Social Security” personal accounts online.
The goal is to provide a simpler login experience and more secure online access, the agency said.
But first, some users may have to log in and transition their current accounts.

zimmytws | iStock | Getty Images

The Social Security Administration is updating its online services.
To make sure you can continue to access your account, the agency is urging you to log in, particularly if you created your online “my Social Security” account before Sept. 18, 2021. These account holders will soon have to transition to a Login.gov account to access online Social Security services.

The online “my Social Security” accounts enable both beneficiaries and people who are not yet receiving benefits to access services, including requesting Social Security card replacements, estimating future benefits, checking on the status of benefit applications and managing current benefits.
The online services aim to save time for both current and future beneficiaries, as well as the Social Security Administration, as the agency grapples with long wait times for its national 800 phone number. The average speed to answer those calls was about 36 minutes in the second quarter, according to the Social Security Administration. The agency is working to bring that average wait time down to 12 minutes by the end of September 2025.

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“Rentvesting” means that someone rents their primary residence while trying to enter the housing market by buying a home they can afford elsewhere.
However, there are a few considerations to make before jumping in.

Oscar Wong | Moment | Getty Images

Not every renter wanting to buy a home dreams of ditching their lease. Some wish to remain tenants even as they become landlords.
The concept behind “rentvesting” is that an individual rents their primary residence in one city and then buys an investment property somewhere else that they let out as a short- or long-term rental, according to Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com.

“It can be a good way to get into the property market,” she said, especially if you live in a city where home prices are out of your budget.
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That said, becoming a landlord at a distance can be tricky, and rentvesting may be trickier for a first-time homeowner than buying a property they intend to live in.
“There are some costs involved you’ll want to make sure that you research and consider before you get in,” said Hale.

When ‘rentvesting’ can make sense

Rentvesting may be an option for someone who has a relatively high income from a job in a major city where rents are high and home prices are even higher, said Hale. She said these individuals might have room in their budget to save but find it too expensive to buy a home in their metro area.

“So they would look for a less expensive market where their savings might be able to translate into a nice down payment,” said Hale.
Small investors, or those with up to 10 investment properties, made up 62.6% of investor purchases in the first quarter of 2024, according to a recent report from Realtor.com. That figure represents the highest share of small investor activity in the data’s history, going back to 2001.
Hale said the data does not necessarily distinguish whether the small investors are rentvestors. It also doesn’t specify whether they own their primary residence or a second rental home.
“There’s a lot of concern about big investors getting into the single-family home space and competing with owner-occupants,” she said. “Although big investors have been making headway and growing their share, they’re still a relatively small share of the overall landlord population in the United States.”

Some shifts in the market in buyers’ favor may also benefit rentvestors.
Mortgage rates have dropped to 6.85% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, the lowest level since March, according to a new analysis by real estate brokerage site Redfin.
“Somebody with a $3,000-a-month budget can now spend $20,000 more on a home for that same budget,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.
She said lower rates are going to be “welcome news” for rentvesters looking for a mortgage. But it will be important to keep in mind that rental prices are coming down as more supply comes on the market.
“They might have a hard time filling it with a tenant if there are other properties down the street that are renting for less,” said Fairweather.
“Rents are going up a little bit, but not all that quickly, and they’re actually falling in parts of the country where a lot of new supply is coming online,” she said.

5 questions to ask yourself before rentvesting

While rentvesting can be an opportunity to become a homeowner, those who want to try that path must consider all the pros and cons. Here are five questions to ask:
1. Does this strategy work for the property I want to buy?
Take stock of the short-term rental regulations of the town, city and state you’re considering, as some areas can have rules that limit or even prohibit rental activity. As you narrow your search to particular properties, be aware that some homeowner’s associations and condo or co-op boards can have regulations limiting rentals, too.
2. Do I need to hire a property manager?
If you want to become a landlord, you could either manage the home or apartment on your own or hire a property manager to serve as the middleman between you and the tenant.
About 55% of small-portfolio rental owners hire a property manager because they don’t live near their rental property, according to the State of the Property Management Industry Report by Buildium, a property management software company. The site polled 1,885 property management professionals in May and June 2023. 
However, hiring a property manager comes at a cost, which depends on factors such as the property location and services provided. Property manager fees can reach up to 25% of the monthly rent price, depending on the specifications, according to Apartment List.
3. Can I afford all the costs associated with homeownership?
Buying a property goes beyond affording the down payment, closing costs and monthly mortgage. You must also consider property taxes, insurance and maintenance, among other expenses.
Having a clear understanding of what those dollar figures might look like now and how they might change over time is key, especially in an area you’re less familiar with.
After you assess all the factors involved, then you can figure out whether renting out the home is enough to cover your expenses.
4. How much competition will you have?
You may have more competition with other landlords or rentals if you’re getting into the rental market right now, said Fairweather, especially in places like the South, where more new builds are becoming available.
“Pay attention to rental trends,” said Fairweather.
Rent prices are increasing in coastal areas. But in regions like the South, they’re coming down. That’s good news for renters, “but not good news if you’re a property owner,” said Fairweather.

5. Can you afford a vacancy?
Short-term rentals include perks such as the ability to use the property yourself and more flexible pricing based on seasonal demand. But high vacancy throughout the year can be a drawback, said Hale.
In slower periods, you could end up paying for two monthly housing payments: the rent price of your primary residence and the mortgage payment for the investment property.
The monthly mortgage payment on the typical $400,000 U.S. home is about $2,647 with the current 6.85% mortgage rate, according to Redfin. Check to make sure that you can potentially afford this on top of your own monthly rent.

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Everything from private student loans, car loans, mortgages and credit cards will be impacted once the Federal Reserve starts lowering interest rates.
Here’s how to position your finances for the months ahead.

Recent signs that inflation is easing have paved the way for the Federal Reserve to start lowering interest rates as soon as this fall.
The consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, dipped in June for the first time in more than four years, the Labor Department reported last week.

“With abundant signs of a cooling economy, the consumer price index for June certainly constitutes the ‘more good data’ on inflation that Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said we need to see before the Fed can begin cutting interest rates,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.
With a fall rate cut looking more likely now, households may finally get some relief from the sky-high borrowing costs that followed the most recent series of interest rate hikes, which took the Fed’s benchmark rate to the highest level in decades.
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Fed officials signaled they expect to reduce its benchmark rate once in 2024 and four additional times in 2025.
The federal funds rate, which is set by the U.S. central bank, is the interest rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another overnight. Although that’s not the rate consumers pay, the Fed’s moves still affect the rates they see every day on things such as private student loans and credit cards.

“If you are a consumer, now is the time to say, what does my spending look like? Where would my money grow the most and what options do I have?” said Leslie Tayne, an attorney specializing in debt relief at Tayne Law in New York and author of “Life & Debt.”
Here are three key strategies to consider:

1. Watch your variable-rate debt

With a rate cut, the prime rate lowers, too, and the interest rates on variable-rate debt — such as credit cards, adjustable-rate mortgages and some private student loans — are likely to follow, reducing your monthly payments.
For example, credit card holders could see a reduction in their annual percentage yield, or APR, within a billing cycle or two. But even then, APRs will only ease off extremely high levels.
Rather than wait for a small adjustment in the months ahead, borrowers could switch now to a zero-interest balance transfer credit card or consolidate and pay off high-interest credit cards with a personal loan, Tayne said.

Olga Rolenko | Moment | Getty Images

Many homeowners with ARMs, which are pegged to a variety of indexes such as the prime rate, Libor or the 11th District Cost of Funds, may see their interest rate go down as well — although not immediately as ARMs generally reset just once a year.
In the meantime, there are fewer options to provide homeowners with extra breathing room. “Your better move may be waiting to refinance,” McBride said.
Private student loans also tend to have a variable rate tied to the prime, Treasury bill or another rate index, which means once the Fed starts cutting interest rates, the interest rates on those private student loans will start dropping.
Eventually, borrowers with existing variable-rate private student loans may also be able to refinance into a less expensive fixed-rate loan, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. 
Currently, the fixed rates on a private refinance are as low as 5% and as high as 11%, Kantrowitz said.

2. Lock in savings rates

While borrowing will become less expensive, those lower interest rates will hurt savers. 
Since rates on online savings accounts, money market accounts and certificates of deposit are all poised to go down, experts say this is the time to lock in some of the highest returns in decades.
For now, top-yielding online savings accounts and one-year CDs are paying more than 5% — well above the rate of inflation.

The opportunity to earn 5% annually on those cash investments may not last much longer.

Howard Hook
wealth advisor with EKS Associates

“One thing you may want to do is consider investing any idle cash you have into a higher-yielding money market fund,” said certified financial planner Howard Hook, a senior wealth advisor at EKS Associates in Princeton, New Jersey.
“Money market brokerage accounts usually pay higher rates than money market or savings accounts at banks,” he said in an emailed statement. “If the Fed is indeed looking to reduce rates five times over the next eighteen months (as currently projected), then the opportunity to earn 5% annually on those cash investments may not last much longer.”

3. Put off large purchases

If you’re planning a major purchase, like a home or car, then it may pay to wait, since lower interest rates could reduce the cost of financing down the road.
“Timing your purchase to coincide with lower rates can save money over the life of the loan,” Tayne said.
Although mortgage rates are fixed and tied to Treasury yields and the economy, they’ve already started to come down from recent highs, largely due to the prospect of a Fed-induced economic slowdown. The average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage is now just above 7%, according to Bankrate.
However, lower mortgage rates could also boost homebuying demand, which would push prices higher, McBride said. “If lower mortgage rates lead to a surge in prices, that’s going to offset the affordability benefit for would-be buyers.”

When it comes to auto loans, there’s no question inflation has hit financing costs — and vehicle prices — hard. The average rate on a five-year new car loan is now nearly 8%, according to Bankrate.
But in this case, “the financing is one variable, and it’s frankly one of the smaller variables,” McBride said. For example, a quarter percentage point reduction in rates on a $35,000, five-year loan is $4 a month, he calculated.
In this case, and in many other situations as well, consumers would benefit more from improving their credit scores, which could pave the way to even better loan terms, McBride said.

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Project 2025, a collection of policy recommendations “for an effective conservative administration,” proposes an overhaul of the federal government.
The proposals include cuts to food stamps and federal student loan forgiveness programs, tax bracket changes and a rate cut for high-income investors.
While some of the changes pitched in Project 2025 could happen via executive action, many would need congressional approval, which could prove difficult in a divided government. 

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, June 22, 2024, in Philadelphia. Trump is seeking to distance himself from a plan for a massive overhaul of the federal government drafted by some of his administration officials.
Chris Szagola | AP

As the presidential election heats up, both parties are talking about Project 2025, a collection of policy plans developed by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation in conjunction with more than 100 other right-leaning organizations.
If enacted, Project 2025 would bring major changes to Americans’ finances.

Aiming to “pave the way for an effective conservative administration,” the roughly 900-page “mandate” proposes an overhaul of the federal government and sweeping policy changes that would affect families’ taxes, savings and more. The Heritage Foundation launched the project in 2022 and published the policy collection in April 2023.
President Joe Biden and Democrats have pointed to Project 2025 as an example of what a second term from former President Donald Trump could look like. Biden has a page on his campaign website about the project, describing it “as a blueprint for Trump to implement.”
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However, in recent weeks, Trump has made statements distancing himself from the policy proposals.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it,” Trump wrote on July 11 in a Truth Social post.

Yet while Trump may not embrace the treatise, its creators have certainly embraced Trump. Several people who formerly worked for Trump were involved in creating the playbook, and a recently resurfaced video from April 2022 shows Trump speaking at a Heritage Foundation gala about the group’s plans.
“This is a great group,” Trump can be seen saying, “and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign,” a spokesperson from Project 2025 said in a statement. “We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president.”
“But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement,” the organization said.
Project 2025’s spokesperson said they were unavailable to comment on specific proposals.
While some of the changes proposed in Project 2025 could happen via executive action, many would need congressional approval, which could prove difficult in a divided government.
Here are some of the plans that would affect household finances.

Cuts to food benefits

The project calls for a number of reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, a federal government program that provides money for low-income people to buy food for themselves and their families.
Under one proposal in Project 2025, more recipients could face work requirements in order to receive their benefits. Another plan calls for closing the “loophole” in which people can enroll in food stamps if they’re already receiving another benefit, such as help through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.
The Biden administration’s move to increase food stamps for households during the pandemic is described as “a dramatic overreach” by the project writers. They also call on the next conservative president to “reject efforts to transform federal school meals into an entitlement program.”

“SNAP/EBT Food Stamp Benefits Accepted” is displayed on a screen inside a Family Dollar Stores Inc. store in Chicago, Illinois.
Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images

These changes would have devastating impacts on families, said Salaam Bhatti, the SNAP director at The Food Research & Action Center.
“Cutting this vital component of our safety net would increase poverty-related, preventable hunger, result in poor health outcomes, increase health-care costs and lower academic performance among students whose families rely on SNAP to put food on the table,” Bhatti said.

An end to student loan forgiveness

Project 2025 calls for drastic cuts to the U.S. Department of Education’s loan forgiveness programs for federal student loan borrowers.
It would eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness initiative, which provides debt cancellation to nonprofit and government workers after a decade of payments, and the Borrower Defense regulation, which offers a way for defrauded students to get debt relief.
The Biden administration’s new repayment plan for student loan borrowers, known as SAVE, would also come to an end under the project’s provisions.
“If Donald Trump is given the chance to implement this right-wing manifesto, it will wreak havoc on the economic stability of millions of student loan borrowers and their families,” said Aissa Canchola Banez, the political director for Protect Borrowers Action.

A ‘simple two-rate individual tax system’

After 2025, dozens of provisions enacted by Trump via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, are scheduled to sunset, including lower federal income tax brackets, a bigger standard deduction, boosted child tax credit and higher estate and gift tax exemptions, among others. 
While Trump has called for full TCJA extensions, Project 2025 proposes a “simple two-rate individual tax system” of a flat 15% and 30%. The latter would kick in around the Social Security wage base, which is $168,600 for 2024.
The plan would also eliminate most deductions, credits and exclusions, including tax breaks for state and local taxes and education.

If it were enacted, some taxpayers would pay more and some would owe less, depending on their current income, credits, deductions and exclusions, explained Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
The second phase could include some type of consumption tax, levied on goods and services, such as a national sales tax, business transfer tax or others, the plan outlined.
But historically, “consumption taxes get no traction in Congress,” Gleckman said.

‘Substantial cut’ to taxes on investment income

Project 2025 would reduce the tax on capital gains and qualified dividends for higher earners. The top rate is currently 20%, and the proposal calls for 15%.
The plan would also eliminate the so-called net investment income tax, or NIIT, an extra 3.8% levy on assets once modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI, exceeds $200,000 for single filers or $250,000 for married couples filing together. Including the NIIT, top earners currently pay a combined 23.8% on capital gains.
If enacted, the proposal would represent “a substantial cut in taxes for people who make their money in investments,” Gleckman said.

Adding ‘universal savings accounts’

Although retirement isn’t a primary focus for Project 2025, the plan calls for “universal savings accounts,” or USAs, with a yearly after-tax contribution limit of $15,000, indexed for inflation.  
The tax treatment would be similar to Roth individual retirement accounts, which offer tax-free withdrawals of earnings after age 59½, with some exceptions. By comparison, USAs would be “highly flexible” for investments, and gains could be withdrawn “at any time for any purpose,” according to the plan.

While some policy experts support USAs, others argue lower earners struggle with voluntary retirement contributions and likely wouldn’t benefit from the proposed higher annual limits. 
“The top one-third is well taken care of,” said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “We don’t need to provide any more subsidized savings for that group.”  
In a July 9 post on X, Project 2025 said the plan does not advocate for cuts to Social Security.
But the mandate describes balancing the federal budget as a “mission-critical objective.”
With growing concerns over the solvency of the Social Security trust fund, “there’s no way those two statements are consistent,” Munnell said.
The Social Security trust fund has a projected depletion date in 2035, the annual trustees’ report showed in May. This could result in a benefit cut of at least 20% by that date without action from Congress. More