The page numbers provided link directly to the relevant sections in the Project 2025 document.

Project 2025 and the Economy

The recommendations in Projects 2025’s Mandate for Leadership 2025 that could impact our economy in a detrimental way are extensive and cross many different areas of focus.  In light of that, the following are those that could have a significant impact on Oklahoma’s economy and the lives of its citizens.

• Stop employees from earning overtime pay. The restructuring of how overtime pay is calculated would cost many workers the pay they earn in the current system, impacting their disposable income and the local economy. [592]
  
  
• Cut funding for local job creating programs. Project 2025 has plans to eliminate, combine or cut back agencies that could impact Oklahoma’s economic development programs. For example, they want to merge or eliminate the Economic Development Authority which could lead to $1 million a year for local projects that result in job creation in Oklahoma being lost or drastically cut back. [663]   [664]
  
  
• Replace non-partisan federal employees with partisan loyalists. Project 2025 is making it easier to fire federal employees and replace them with political appointees.  This could be particularly harmful to those agencies involved in the growth and smooth running of the country’s economy.  In Oklahoma, we have already seen multiple times the impact that can have on the smooth and efficient functioning of government as illustrated when Governor Stitt assumed the power to make appointments to state agencies.  [615]
  
  
• Weaken child protections in the workplace. Project 2025 would change DOL policies and allow America’s youth to work “inherently dangerous jobs”, jobs that are currently not permitted due to significant safety concerns, meaning young people entering the labor force out of economic necessity could be subjected to more dangerous work because they need the income more than others — and cannot access a safer job or get paid as well. [595]
  
  
• Cut or eliminate programs that serve as safety nets for Oklahoma farmers. In an effort to “reform” farm subsidies, farmers will find themselves without the support from the Department of Agriculture that could impact whether they can afford to continue to farm their land.  Oklahoma’s agricultural economy generated $9.8 billion in agricultural cash receipts in 2022.  In an industry that is tied to the whims of Oklahoma weather, it could be devastating to lose the subsidies that make survival possible. [295]   [297]   Univ. of Arkansas
  
  
• Merging and/or eliminating numerous agencies responsible for growth and protection of our economy and privatization of their services would have an impact on a variety of programs in Oklahoma.  For example, they want to abolish the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and assign their agencies elsewhere. One of the agencies that fall under the umbrella of NOAA is the National Weather Service which has a major facility in Norman – The National Weather Center. They wish to “commercialize” the NWS which could impact the type of research being done at the National Weather Center and the number of employees at the facility, which has approximately 550 employees, including research scientists, operational meteorologists and climatologists, engineers, technicians, support staff, and graduate and undergraduate students. [674]   [675]   Nat'l Weather Center
  
  
• Cut and/or eliminate immigration programs and step up deportation. Every recommendation makes it harder to immigrate to the US and easier to deport, all of which could severely impact the Oklahoma economy. For example, they want to eliminate and/or limit the H-29 and H023 visas for temporary workers. For those trying to immigrate to the US, a “merit” system allowing the “best and brightest” and “high skilled” immigrants will be applied. [611]   [145]

It will be disastrous for them to put political appointees into leadership roles in all the agencies that impact the country’s economy.