Vice President Kamala Harris is rolling out her closing argument for president in a brand new TV commercial that assaults former President Donald Trump on healthcare, entitlement programmes and taxes.

“What would a Trump second time period appear like? It’s all specified by his Undertaking 2025 agenda,” the narrator says. “He’d let insurance coverage corporations deny protection for preexisting circumstances, minimize Social Safety and Medicare and provides tax cuts to billionaires.”

For months, Harris’s marketing campaign has tied Trump to Undertaking 2025, a 900-page handbook of coverage proposals for the following Republican administration created by the conservative Heritage Basis suppose tank.

There’s appreciable overlap between the folks concerned within the mission and former Trump administration officers. However Undertaking 2025 shouldn’t be a part of Trump’s 2024 agenda, and he has labored to distance himself from it.

With that in thoughts, the commercial is a blended bag of accuracy. It refers to Trump’s earlier claims to repeal the Reasonably priced Care Act (ACA), misleads viewers about “cuts” to entitlement programmes which are common with older People and leaves out that People with common incomes would additionally obtain some tax breaks underneath Trump.

What Trump’s and Undertaking 2025’s plans say about preexisting circumstances

To help its declare that Trump would enable insurance coverage corporations to disclaim folks protection for preexisting circumstances, Harris’s marketing campaign pointed to actions and feedback by Trump and his working mate, Senator JD Vance, about repealing the ACA. The 2010 well being regulation, signed by former President Barack Obama, requires insurance coverage corporations to cowl folks with pre-existing circumstances.

In his 2016 presidential marketing campaign, Trump promised to repeal the ACA, and as president, he supported congressional Republicans’ failed repeal-and-replace efforts.

Throughout his 2024 marketing campaign, Trump’s place has gone forwards and backwards. At instances, he has mentioned he desires to interchange the regulation with an “various”. However in March, he wrote on Fact Social that he’s “not working to terminate” the regulation and as a substitute desires to make it “higher” and “inexpensive”. Throughout the September 10 presidential debate with Harris, Trump mentioned he has “ideas of a plan” to interchange the regulation, however he would “run it pretty much as good as it may be run” earlier than instituting his plan.

Greater than 1,500 docs launched a letter on October 17 calling on Trump to disclose particulars about how he would alter the ACA, saying voters want the reason to make an knowledgeable resolution.

Vance tried to fill in a few of these particulars in a September 15 interview on NBC Information’ “Meet the Press”, saying their administration would decontrol insurance coverage markets however would nonetheless “ensure that pre-existing protection – circumstances – are coated”. Days later, Vance floated the thought of grouping chronically ailing folks collectively in insurance coverage swimming pools primarily based on their elevated dangers. Threat swimming pools confer with a gaggle of people that share the burdens of well being prices.

Placing chronically ailing sufferers in higher-risk swimming pools would reverse a key pillar of the healthcare regulation, which largely ended the observe by requiring insurers to place all particular person market enrollees into the identical threat pool. That is performed to manage premium prices by utilizing the decrease prices incurred by wholesome individuals to maintain in verify the upper prices incurred by much less wholesome ones, in accordance with KFF Well being Information. Separating sicker folks into their very own pool might result in greater prices for folks with continual well being points, consultants say, probably placing protection out of economic attain.

Undertaking 2025 doesn’t name for eliminating the ACA or pre-existing protection protections. It recommends codifying Trump-era guidelines to broaden short-term, limited-coverage healthcare plans. Democrats name these plans “junk insurance coverage”, arguing that they restrict care, cost folks with pre-existing circumstances extra and may result in shock medical payments.

Undertaking 2025 wouldn’t minimize Social Safety, proposes some adjustments to Medicare

Harris’s commercial is deceptive concerning the Social Safety plans of each Trump and Undertaking 2025. Trump has mentioned he wouldn’t pursue cuts for Social Safety advantages, and not one of the coverage doc’s 10 references to Social Safety outlines cuts.

In his earlier campaigns and earlier than he was a politician, Trump mentioned a few half-dozen instances that he was open to main overhauls of Social Safety, together with cuts and privatisation. Extra just lately, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump mentioned of entitlement programmes akin to Social Safety: “There’s loads you are able to do when it comes to entitlements, when it comes to reducing.” Nevertheless, he shortly walked that assertion again, and his remark stands at odds with basically all the things else Trump has mentioned through the 2024 presidential marketing campaign.

Trump’s marketing campaign web site says not “a single penny” ought to be minimize from Social Safety.

Undertaking 2025 proposes adjustments to Medicare, together with making Medicare Benefit, the personal insurance coverage providing in Medicare, the “default” enrolment choice. Medicare Benefit plans have supplier networks and also can require prior authorisation, which means that the plan can approve or deny sure providers. Unique Medicare plans would not have prior authorisation necessities.

The guide additionally requires repealing well being insurance policies enacted underneath President Joe Biden, such because the Inflation Discount Act. The 2022 regulation enabled Medicare to barter with drugmakers for the primary time and just lately resulted in an settlement with drug corporations to decrease prices for 10 costly prescriptions for Medicare enrollees. New costs will take impact in 2026.

Trump has mentioned all through the marketing campaign that he won’t minimize Medicare.

Undertaking 2025 and Trump differ on taxes, however ‘tax cuts to billionaires’ are on the desk

Usually talking, the advantages from Trump’s tax plan would go to most earnings teams whereas flowing disproportionately in direction of wealthier People. Undertaking 2025’s suggestions differ from Trump’s tax agenda, although its adjustments might additionally lead to wealthier folks paying decrease taxes.

Beneath Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, earnings as much as $11,600 is at the moment taxed at 10 p.c, earnings from $11,601 to $47,150 is taxed at 12 p.c and earnings from $47,151 to $100,525 is taxed at 22 p.c. Individuals who earn extra are taxed between 24 p.c and 37 p.c.

Undertaking 2025 requires creating simply two earnings tax brackets: one at 15 p.c and one at 30 p.c, and eliminating most deductions, credit and exclusions. The programme says the 30 p.c tax price ought to begin “at or close to the Social Safety wage base”, which is about $168,600 in 2024.

The Undertaking 2025 plan doesn’t particularly suggest eliminating the usual deduction, the greenback quantity non-itemiser taxpayers could subtract from their earnings earlier than earnings tax is utilized.

If that have been nixed together with most different tax credit, folks making as much as $190,000 would pay the next efficient tax price on their entire earnings, whereas the wealthiest People would pay a decrease tax price.

This isn’t Trump’s plan. Trump says he would prolong the 2017 tax regulation provisions, that are set to run out on the finish of 2025. The regulation lowered taxes for all earnings teams, a minimum of initially; wealthier taxpayers benefitted disproportionately. The City-Brookings Tax Coverage Middle discovered that the drop in tax price ushered in by the regulation for the highest one-fifth of the earnings spectrum exceeded that for every quintile grouping.

Trump would scale back the company tax price from 21 p.c to fifteen p.c for corporations that make their merchandise within the US. (The 2017 regulation had minimize the company tax price from 35 p.c to 21 p.c.) Trump has additionally floated a number of extra focused tax cuts, together with ending taxation on Social Safety advantages, suggestions and additional time pay.

The College of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Finances Mannequin projected the consequences of each presidential candidates’ tax plans on a spectrum of earnings ranges in 2026.

It discovered that Trump’s plan would improve post-tax earnings for each earnings group. Nevertheless, the underside two-fifths of the earnings spectrum would have beneficial properties smaller than 2 p.c, the center fifth would have a acquire of two.1 p.c and the second-highest quintile would acquire 2.8 p.c. For cuts affecting the highest one-fifth of earners, beneficial properties would vary from 2.7 p.c to three.7 p.c.

Against this, the Penn Wharton mannequin projected that Harris’s plan would improve after-tax earnings for the underside one-fifth of earners by 18 p.c, the second-lowest one-fifth by 4.8 p.c, the center one-fifth by 2.7 p.c, and the second-highest fifth by 2.1 p.c. The highest 5 p.c of earners would see after-tax incomes decline.