Ahead of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, the GOP on Monday published its 2024 platform — a 16-page outline of the party’s policy positions for a second Trump term. The document, dedicated “To the Forgotten Men and Women of America,” makes clear — as if there were any doubt at this point — that this is Trump’s party now and is much different compared with just eight years ago. The platform “cements Mr. Trump’s ideological takeover of the G.O.P.,” The New York Times reports. “The platform is even more nationalistic, more protectionist and less socially conservative than the 2016 Republican platform.”
Trump wrote and edited some parts of the platform himself, CNN reports.
News reports about the policy framework have focused largely on its softening the GOP’s position on abortion rights in keeping with Trump’s recently adopted stance that defers to the states, or its elimination of earlier references to “traditional marriage” as being between “one man and one woman,” or its promise to launch the largest deportation program in the nation’s history.
But the platform also highlights the Republican Party’s shifting positions on a range of fiscal matters. Gone is any reference to the national debt and budget deficits. The party’s 66-page platform from 2016 referenced the debt 10 times. The new platform includes only a promise to rein in “wasteful spending” as part of a list of steps meant to tackle inflation.
The document’s single page specifically dedicated to building “the greatest economy in history” promises to cut regulations and make permanent the 2017 Trump tax law provisions that “doubled the standard deduction, expanded the Child Tax Credit, and spurred Economic Growth for all Americans.” It also pledges to eliminate taxes on tips, an idea Trump embraced recently, and to pursue additional tax cuts.
In another shift away from conservative orthodoxy, the platform says that Trump “has made absolutely clear that he will not cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security,” a contrast with the 2016 platform, which said that “all options should be considered to preserve Social Security.” The new platform specifies that no changes will be made to the retirement age. It pledges that Republicans will “ensure the long-term sustainability of Social Security” and protect Medicare from what it baselessly describes as a “Democrat plan to add tens of millions of new illegal immigrants to the rolls.”
Why it matters: Republicans have long talked about restoring fiscal responsibility only to add to the debt when in power. The Trumpified party platform is now officially ditching even the talking points, much to the dismay of debt and deficit hawks.
“Ever since the party was taken over by Donald Trump, Republicans have backed away from speaking of debt reduction as an important goal — even as the situation has deteriorated,” writes Philip Klein at the conservative National Review. “Now, they have made that fiscal irresponsibility part of their official platform.”
The platform has additional political significance for Trump. It was released at a time when he has been trying to distance himself from “Project 2025,” a conservative plan overseen by the Heritage Foundation detailing a sweeping agenda for overhauling the government in a second Trump term.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts drew new attention to the plan when he said in a recent interview that the United States is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Many of those involved in the plan served in the first Trump administration and are expected to play key roles in government should the former president be re-elected in November, though the group also sought to separate itself from the Trump campaign. “As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign. We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy & personnel recommendations for the next conservative president,” the project said in a social media post last week. “But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”
