Together with Stephen Moore and David R. Burton, William L. Walton is the author of the chapter in the Mandate for Leadership concerning the Department of the Treasury.
According to Walton’s Heritage Foundation bio, he is “the founder and chairman of Rappahannock Ventures LLC, a private equity firm,” and “Rush River Entertainment, the feature-film production company.” He also was “chairman of the investment banking firm Allied Capital Corporation for 12 years. Prior to that, he worked for Butler Capital Corporation, the merger and acquisition group of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, and the Continental Illinois Bank. He was also the personal investment advisor to William S. Paley, founder of CBS.” In addition, “he is vice president of the Council for National Policy” and “a life member of MENSA and the NRA.”
Walton’s grievances are in line with those of other conservatives behind Project 2025. For example, his name appears at the bottom of a letter excoriating Walmart for its policy regarding insurance coverage for abortion. A cursory survey of Walton’s articles for the Daily Signal finds such words as “communism,” “socialism,” and “cultural Marxism,” and the Walmart letter includes the word “woke.” There’s also the “growing threat of China” and an article about “politically-motivated content moderation” on the internet. (Conservatives have been known to make disingenuous complaints about being censored.)
In relation to the chapter on the Department of the Treasury, Walton has an article on the Daily Signal page titled “Why the Federal Reserve Has Done More Harm Than Good.” One bullet point in the article claims that the Fed has never really been independent and claims that “We need our money to be politically accountable.” This claim is in keeping with Project 2025’s goal of making the federal government more politicized.
As for the Fed’s being more politically responsive, Forbes magazine, in an article that is critical of the Biden administration and that therefore cannot be construed as favoring a liberal point of view, states: “The Fed is supposed to be non-partisan and focused on its dual mandate of full employment and stable prices.” The gist of the article is that the Fed should not be subject to the political influence of whoever is in the White House, given that political expediency and economic stability can be at odds. The American Institute for Economic Research has expressed a similar point of view, writing:
“The conventional view among economists is that a central bank should be insulated from political influence through a high degree of independence. Central bank independence permits the monetary authority to make policy decisions based on economic factors, even if those decisions are at odds with the goals of incumbent politicians. Politicians tend to have relatively short time horizons. They need to do what looks good today in order to ensure their reelection. Central banks, in contrast, are tasked with promoting long run macroeconomic stability.”
The American Institute for Economic Research describes itself as nonpartisan, but that is to be expected of a 501(c)(3) organization. It also espouses “the value of personal freedom, free enterprise, property rights, limited government,” which is typical language for a right-wing organization that receives Koch funds.
In the chapter on the Treasury, Walton is highly critical of the Biden administration’s acknowledgement that climate change and inequality could adversely affect the economy. Walton considers such awareness “woke” and outside the Treasury’s mission. Rather, the Mandate for Leadership states, “Treasury should make balancing the federal budget a mission-critical objective.”
(It should be noted that Trump’s tax cuts for the rich dramatically increased the federal deficit. It should also be noted that conservative politicians have a habit of seeking to balance government budgets on the backs of the poor. While conservatives may claim that they do not intend to cut such social benefit programs as Social Security and Medicare as means of balancing the budget, their actual budget proposals belie that claim.)
Regardless of how the federal budget may be balanced, it is a radical step to suggest that a federal agency such as the Treasury should be so involved in political policy as to make balancing the federal budget “a mission-critical objective.” Such policy making is typically reserved for Congress and the White House; federal agencies traditionally follow political directives rather than initiate them. In view of this, Project 2025 is not so much conservative as radical.
Evidence of such radicalism can be found in the chapter on the Treasury authored by Moore, Burton, and Walton. For example, they propose that once Project 2025 is enacted, there should be an ideological purge of the Treasury. Specifically, “every Treasury official who participated in DEI initiatives” should be identified. Once identified, each official should be examined regarding whether they objected to such initiatives, and if they did not, that would be “per se grounds for termination of employment.” It should be noted that if any DEI programs took place at the Treasury, it is highly unlikely that most employees would find them so objectionable as to make a record of their complaints. DEI, whatever its pros and cons, is not some sort of unconscionable evil that the authors make it out to be.
Similarly radical is the chapter’s proposed changes in tax policy, which would, predictably, adhere to right-wing political ideology (e.g., tax simplification that conspicuously avoids progressive taxation or analysis of whether revenue would decrease, anti-China, privatization), with practical considerations taking a distant second place. In sum, Walton, like other participants in Project 2025, may be characterized as Jim Brickman described them in an article in the Fort Worth Business press. In reference to Trump’s promise to drain the swamp, Brickman said: “This is filling the swamp, not draining it.”
