Letters: Conservatives’ Project 2025 threatens disaster response

Hurricane Helene has caused historic damage to part of our country. We are the most fortunate people on earth to have a federal government structure that oversees the state’s welfare especially in a crisis. States declare an emergency and federal resources begin to step in. A massive infusion of federal assistance is already helping these people.
There is, however, a real problem afoot. Project 2025, authored by the right-wing Heritage Foundation wishes to completely change this way of doing business. The 900-page document contains a section dealing with this subject. In a few words, Project 2025 calls for the system to be dismantled, with states and local communities left to help themselves.
States have limited financial resources. Their budgets are governed by collection of tax revenues. The federal government is financed by all of us working together. Think of the government as an insurance company. We pay taxes for the unexpected when it happens. This evens out the cost to everyone. The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 promotes a system of dismantling these features of the federal government to the benefit the rich and the corporations.
Vote Nov. 5 to keep our democracy working.
John Carver, Decorah
Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris seem to be racing to see who can buy the most votes. Proposals include: no tax on tips and overtime pay, $25,000 down-payment assistance to first-time home buyers, lower corporate tax rates, no taxes on Social Security, free IVF treatments, expanded child care credits, a $50,000 tax deduction for small-business startups, and much more
Our national debt now totals over $35 trillion – more than $100.000 for every man, woman, and child in our country! We are spending more on interest than we spend on our total defense budget: over $800 million per year. And we will add almost $2 trillion more to the debt this year.
What do the candidates have to say about our federal debt? I hear crickets chirping. I guess you don’t win elections by telling voters that you favor spending cuts or tax increases. Unfortunately, everything that our government spends money on has a constituency that not only lobbies to keep their funding, but also lobbies to increase their funding.
This situation is not sustainable, and it is immoral. It is not sustainable because interest payments keep taking a larger portion of total government spending every year. It is immoral because we are placing a financial burden on future generations for benefits that we are taking for ourselves today. We must reverse this trend.
If we put limits on future spending increases, like Sen. Rand Paul has suggested, we can balance the federal budget in five years. We all need to ask our candidates for federal office what their plan is to balance our federal budget. Individually, we need to, as President Kennedy said, “…ask not what your country can do for you… ”
Kurt Johnson, Urbandale
I’ve recently been inundated by Lanon Baccam commercials, and one stood out to me because he said, “I once swore an oath to defend our country.”
As the son of a World War II veteran and stepbrother to a Vietnam veteran killed in action, I am insulted. The oath sworn to enter the military is to the US Constitution, NOT the government or the nation.
From the modern oath:
“I … do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…”
That’s similar to the oath Zach Nunn swore to serve in Congress! Why is this important? Because elected representatives – servants — often must choose between honoring those oaths while upsetting people and voting in violation of the Constitution.
Are we Americans or globalists bent on destroying our great constitutional republic? Zach Nunn may not vote to “give you everything you want.” I think it’s because he votes as he believes he “must” to honor the Constitution. I hear people say he’s pandering to political donors (as if the left doesn’t); I disagree. I believe that Lanon Baccam would do worse by blindly voting in violation of the Constitution to further the extreme left’s agenda!
Nunn will continue to support conservative solutions to the issues facing Iowans in compliance to the Constitution as written and interpreted by the framers who created it. Reinterpretation is putting words in the mouths of the framers. If you don’t like the Constitution, amend it!
I urge you to vote for Nunn, an unapologetic defender of the US Constitution.
Primo Giusti, Ottumwa
I was terribly disappointed when I saw the front page of the Opinion section of the Register on Sept. 22. The Register editorial board wants to persuade us that justice is protected in Iowa. Justice in Iowa is no longer at risk. It is gone! We can’t decide what books our children can read, what names they can use, what bathrooms they can use, or what health care they can receive. And women cannot make decisions with their physicians about their own health care or their bodies.
We are taught that we live in a democracy. In a democracy there are issues that are decided by the majority. They are generally of a political nature. It is the business of the Legislature, the governor or president to uphold these decisions.
In a democracy there are also liberties and freedoms that belong to all citizens and should be protected by the majority. These are things such as religious belief, the right to vote, speech and the right to control our own bodies and health care. We rely on the courts to protect our rights from the control of politics.
The piece mentioned that in the recent past the Iowa governor inserted politics into the appointment of judges, as did our Washington politicians into the selection of Supreme Court Justices. But the board excused this behavior with no strong condemnation. In a state where there are no term limits for either the judges or the governor who appoints them, there is no protection for liberties or freedom. There is only politics.
The praise for our selection of judges has become jaded and is no longer deserved. In the hands of an overwhelming GOP majority, willing to attack our rights and freedoms, voting is the only way to express disapproval of the politicization of the judiciary.
Martha Thien, Des Moines
There is a quote by Booker T. Washington which voters in the upcoming election should read and internalize, it is: A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good, just because it’s accepted by a majority.
Leota M. Lipovac, Urbandale