EIN: 23-7327730
Heritage Foundation, The
Washington, DC 20002
The creation of the influential Heritage Foundation was probably the single most important event in the development of a national network of conservative policy-oriented institutions. Heritage was founded in 1973 by the anti-labor, racist, homophobic brewery magnate Joseph Coors together with prominent right-wing activist Paul Weyrich and wealthy right-wingers Richard Scaife and Edward Noble. The initial funding came from Coors ($250,000), Scaife ($900,000), and "significant sums" from Noble. Large corporations, including Gulf Oil, also made early contributions. In the early 1980s, Heritage reported that "87 top corporations" were supporters. By 1995, it had an annual budget of $25 million.
In 1980, Heritage published a 3,000 page, 20-volume set of policy recommendations called "Mandate for Leadership" that proved to be the intellectual blueprint for the so-called "Reagan Revolution," including trickle-down economics, massive cutbacks in social programs and the Star Wars Defense Strategy, the gargantuan feeding trough for the military-industrial complex that even the Pentagon admitted was militarily useless.
More recently, the Heritage Foundation had substantial input into the writing of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America."
Among other Heritage efforts have been the publications "Beware of the Union Label," "The Case for Plant Closures," "Upsetting the Balance of U.S. Labor Law: The Striker Replacement Bill" and "In Praise of Corporate Radiers: Junking Three Fallacies About Hostile Takeovers."
The U.S. labor movement is a particular target for Heritage. Ronald Reagan's first appointment to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was Robert Hunter, a conservative activist who wrote the chapter on the Labor Department for the foundation's "Mandate for Leadership." In that paper, Hunter called for increasing the use of NLRB injunctions against unions., gutting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and drastically cutting the Bureau of Labor Statistics. [From "Downsizing the American Dream."]
In addition, Heritage "...has given berths to a range of Reagan/Bush officials, including former Attorney General Edwin Meese and former Education Secretary William Bennett."
Heritage Foundation
Over the 1992-1994 period, the Heritage Foundation garnered the greatest level of grant support, receiving close to $9 million in 42 separate grants. With money like that, the title of its 1995 Annual Report, Leadership in the New Conservative Era, is not just hubris. Indeed, the Heritage Foundation has been one of the most visible and influential think tanks in Washington over the past 17 years, with a revenue base that grew by over 40 percent per year in the second half of the 1970s and at a steady pace since then, with total revenues from all sources more than doubling over a recent ten-year period, from $14 million in 1986 to $29.7 million in 1995.21
Its substantial resources and commitment to policy activism gave Heritage significant access to power in the early 1980s, the pinnacle symbolized by the release of Mandate for Leadership, a 1093-page volume of policy analyses and recommendations prepared to influence and assist the Reagan transition team in 1981.
The timely release and comprehensiveness of Mandate for Leadership, subsequently updated and reissued in 1984 and 1988, indicates Heritage's unique operational style. Unlike other think tanks whose work has often been organized according to a system of academic "stars," Heritage has organized itself much more closely along a production model in order to deliver a stream of policy products to key audiences on a timely and efficient basis.
It has hired dozens of relatively inexperienced policy analysts who are largely told what to write and how to write it.22 In this way, Heritage has been able to run with current events and issues, feeding ideas to Congressional sympathizers while exerting constant pressure on more liberal lawmakers via lobbying and media manipulation. The Foundation's sense of timing was seen again more recently, with its substantial input into Congressman Newt Gingrich's Contract with America.23
Operating with over 100 management and professional staff, communications specialists, policy analysts and senior fellows, including former high-ranking government officials like William Bennett, Jack Kemp and Edwin Meese, Heritage produced over 200 policy products in 1995, widely distributing them to a variety of audiences, including Congressional aides, lawmakers, journalists, and activist constituencies. In the words of Heritage Foundation President Edwin J. Feulner, "We don't just stress credibility... We stress an efficient, effective delivery system. Production is one side; marketing is equally important." In a straightforward declaration of its advocacy purpose, Heritage Vice President of Government Relations, David Mason, stated that "we come up with the ideas and then provide the research and analysis to people who will champion those ideas in the political arena."24
According to one analysis of Heritage Foundation operations, the "delivery system consists of four marketing divisions: Public Relations markets ideas to the media and the public; Government Relations to Congress, the Executive branch, and government agencies; Academic Relations to the university community, Resource Bank institutions (including state think tanks), and the international conservative network; and Corporate Relations to business and trades. Division marketing is coordinated at twice weekly meetings of the senior management, but policy research drives the marketing process."25
As effective, timely and influential as Heritage has been in marketing its policy analyses and recommendations, it does not stop with the mere production and dissemination of its policy products to officials and journalists. Indeed, as Stuart Butler, Vice President of Domestic and Economic Policy at Heritage, acknowledged, "The unique thing we have done is combine the serious, high-quality research of a 'traditional think tank' like the Hoover Institution or Brookings Institution with the intense marketing and 'issue management' capabilities of an activist organization" [emphasis added] .26
In its activist role, Heritage has been linking policy analysts, Republican party officials, conservative scholars and grassroots constituencies together for years. It maintains a Resource Bank of over 2000 individuals and organizations working from the right on a range of issues, publishing each year a Resource Guide to Public Policy Experts to make this data bank widely available. It has also organized a bimonthly working group of conservative organizations, maintains a Speakers Bureau to bring "Heritage's conservative message" to college campuses, holds policy briefings in House and Senate offices, and sends policy analysts out to appear on radio talk shows on a regular basis across the country.
In 1995, Heritage policy analysts conducted 200 briefings on Capitol Hill and made over 500 radio talk show appearances. Through its Government Integrity Project, Heritage also played a lead role in reviving older "defund the left" strategies of the early 1980s, helping to hatch the Istook Amendment to restrict nonprofit organizations and public interest groups with federal contracts and grants from engaging in lobbying.
Since its founding in 1973, Heritage has been clear about the need for an aggressive approach to public policy reform, stating, "While other 'traditional' think tanks still cling to the notion that their work will leave its imprint on Washington through a process of osmosis, Heritage efforts are deliberate and straightforward."27
People
William J. Bennett, currently John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies.
Paul Weyrich. Founded Heritage. Founded the Free Congress Foundation.
Grover Norquist. His group, Americans for Tax Reform, has close ties to Heritage.
Grants
Grants to the Heritage Foundation.
Also See
Adolph Coors Foundation. Joseph Coors was instrumental in creating the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and has sat on its board ever since.
Bechtel Foundation. Helps fund Heritage.
Bradley Foundation. Helps fund Heritage.
Americans for Tax Reform. Close ties to Heritage.
Footnotes
May 19, 2017
Heritage Foundation at SourceWatch.org
http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Heritage_Foundation
May 19, 2016
Heritage Foundation at IRC Right Web
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1477
Michael Barbaro and Stephanie Strom
NY Times
September 7, 2006
Wal-Mart Finds an Ally in Conservatives
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/business/08walmart.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
As Wal-Mart Stores struggles to rebut criticism from unions and Democratic leaders, the company has discovered a reliable ally: prominent conservative research groups like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute.
Top policy analysts at these groups have written newspaper opinion pieces around the country supporting Wal-Mart, defended the company in interviews with reporters and testified on its behalf before government committees in Washington.
Think Progress
CAP
August 6, 2006
Cato: “At Heritage, anything that smacks of criticism of Bush will not be tolerated.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/07/heritage-fellow/
Last month the Heritage Foundation...fired John Hulsman. Heritage refuses to say exactly why they let him go, but the New Republic reports the “reasons for Hulsman’s departure” are “perfectly evident”; he criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
William Douglas
Knight Ridder
May 27, 2006
Heritage Foundation math on immigration disputed
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003023988_impgstudy28.html
It caught Vice President Dick Cheney off guard, emboldened the conservative opposition, and it's become one of the most talked about "talking points" in the battle over immigration.
A study by the Heritage Foundation...said the Senate's expansive immigration measure would allow a staggering 103 million immigrants to enter the United States over 20 years.
...But independent analysts and supporters of the immigration measure said the Heritage report's numbers don't add up.
A Congressional Budget Office study estimates the Senate bill would increase the U.S. population by 8 million residents by 2016.
WP staff writers
Washington Post
March 8, 2006
K Street Project moves to Heritage Foundation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802449.html
Senator [Santorum] Resumes Lobbyist Huddles
After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week.
...Instead of being held in the Capitol, however, the recent meetings were conducted nearby. The first was held about three blocks away, at the headquarters of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the second was held around the corner from that building, at the Heritage Foundation.
Atrios/Eschaton
February 20, 2006
Heritage and the anti-Semite
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_02_19_atrios_archive.html#114053286115521614
So why's the Heritage Foundation interested in having a famous anti-Semitic leader meet with and influence Bush?
Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Monday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to organize his 2002 meeting with President Bush...He [Mohamad] said he had been persuaded by the U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation to meet with Bush at the time."...Mahathir said the Heritage Foundation believed he could help "influence (Bush) in some way regarding U.S. policies."
Dana Milbank and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post
August 30, 2005
Conservative Author Is Seeing Red in America
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001862.html
Cindy Sheehan: anti-American communist?
That was the accusation coming yesterday from the Heritage Foundation, which hosted author John J. Tierney Jr. for a forum titled "The Politics of Peace: What's Behind the Anti-War Movement?"
Doug Ireland
June 14, 2005
The Times hypes dangerous right-wing virginity study
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/06/the_times_hypes.html
Today's Times front-pages a report on new studies by the oh-so-conservative Heritage Foundation claiming "young people who took virginity pledges had lower rates of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases and engaged in fewer risky sexual behaviors." This is nonsense -- in an article last year for the L.A. Weekly on the Bush administration's war on the condom, I cited "a Minnesota Department of Health study of the state’s five-year, abstinence-only program, which found last year that sexual activity by students taking the program actually doubled, from 5.8 percent to 12.4 percent."
Also see:
Jason DeParle
New York Times
June 13, 2005
Next Generation of Conservatives (By the Dormful)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/14/politics/14heritage.html
...The summer interns of the Heritage Foundation have arrived...The 64 interns are each paid a 10-week stipend of $2,500, and about half are housed in a subsidized dorm at the group's headquarters, complete with a fitness room.
ThinkProgress.org
Center for American Progress
May 31, 2005
Heritage Foundation Sponsors Stock Scam
http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=997
Last night, the conservative website Townhall.com sent a paid message to its reader entitled “How Often Does Life Offer You a Second Chance.” In it, a man named Mark Skousen promised huge returns from his can’t miss stock tip.
New York Times
August 20, 2001
Speaker who planned to name Heritage Foundation as key opponent of civil rights targeted by Republican Bush Administration
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/21/politics/21CENS.html?ex=999057600
Bush Aide Accused of Having a Talk Canceled
Alfred E. Ross, president of the Institute for Democracy Studies, had been scheduled to speak at "a trade association [meeting] of corporate antidiscrimination officers, whose members depend on Labor Department approval to win federal contracts."
Ross "said the group dropped him [as a speaker] on the demand of a Labor Department offical, Charles E. James Jr. Mr. Ross said Mr. James had threatened that the department would not participate in the conference unless Mr. Ross was dropped from the program [ which he subsequently was]."
...Mr. Ross...said he planned to single out the Heritage Foundation, where Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao worked before joining the administration, as one of the groups "engaged in a battle to turn back the clocks on the civil rights gains of the last four decades."
According to the text of remarks he intended to deliver, Mr. Ross planned to say that the Heritage Foundation and another group closely allied with the Bush administration, the Federalist Society, have put "fundamental principles of diversity and civil and constitutional rights under siege."
...In a letter to the trade group, [Ross] says that Robert Willis, the conference co-chairman who invited him, told him on Aug. 8 that Mr. James was concerned that Mr. Ross might criticize the Heritage Foundation. He said Mr. James's boss, Ms. Chao, and Mr. James's wife, Kay James, head of the Office of Personnel Management, had worked at Heritage before joining the Bush administration.
The New Republic
April 22, 2001
Kentucky Feeding Trough:
http://www.tnr.com/042301/judis042301_print.html
"Time To Come Clean"
Has the Heritage Foundation, using Elaine Chao and her husband - Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - sold out to the People's Republic of China?
Bill Berkowitz
Workingforchange.com
March 26, 2002
The Heritage Foundation buffs up
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=13037
Readying a twenty-first century attack on 'liberal' social programs
The folks at Heritage are not sitting back and resting on their laurels. They may be involved in shuttling comrades off to the Bush Administration, working on Homeland Security issues, pushing the privatization of Social Security, developing marriage proposals for welfare reauthorization and a bunch of other projects, but that hasn't stopped them from peppering their supporters for more cash.
Robert Borosage
TomPaine.com
February 12, 2003
Questionable Heritage
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7269
Thirty Years Of A Right-Wing Think Tank
...Heritage has championed many other ideas -- school vouchers, the assault on welfare moms, a return to the pre-New Deal constitutional order. And what has resulted? The vast majority of Americans have -- and will continue to -- pay dearly for this behemoth's heritage.
Extra!
FAIR.org
June 30, 1996
The Media's Favorite Think Tan
http://www.fair.org/extra/9607/heritage.html
How the Heritage Foundation Turns Money into Media
Washington Post
May 14, 2001
Heritage Bolsters Its Republican Lineup
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/fedpage/columns/ideasindustry/A27062-2001May15.html
Heritage has added a new batch of Republicans to its lineup:
Ted Schelenski Will oversee finance and operations. Schelenski is a former chief of staff for Rep. Philip M. Crane (R-Ill.), and a 33-year veteran of 3M Corp.
Frederick "Tripp" Baird Formerly of the office of Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), is the new director of Senate relations.
Steve Forbes Former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes is the latest addition to the tank's board of trustees.
Working for Change
October 21, 2001
Heritage Foundation hawks
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=12191
The lights are always on at America's elite conservative think tank
Spinsanity
February 26, 2003
The Heritage Foundation's dishonest "survey"
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030227.html
In a fundraising pitch from the Heritage Foundation billed as a "Tax Increase Impact Survey," the conservative think tank makes a series of hyperbolic and outright dishonest claims about "pending tax increases on families, businesses and senior citizens," once again putting public relations concerns before accuracy.
Also see:
Washington Post
May 22, 2004
In Iraq, the Job Opportunity of a Lifetime
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48543-2004May22?language=printer
Managing a $13 Billion Budget With No Experience
For months, newly-hired CPA staffers were wondering "what they had in common," reports the Washington Post, "how their names had come to the attention of the Pentagon, until one day they figured it out: They had all posted their resumes at the Heritage Foundation...
Interview with Paul Krugman
BuzzFlash.com
September 10, 2003
Paul Krugman:
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/11_krugman.html
...If you looked at what the Heritage Foundation says, they use the terms "New Deal" and "Great Society" as essentially curse words. Everything Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson did to provide a little bit of a cushion for Americans having bad luck is a bad thing, from their point of view.
Washington Post
April 16, 2005
Heritage Foundation's Ideas Shifted As Malaysia Ties Grew
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59539-2005Apr16.html
Business Interests Overlapped Policy
Heritage's new, pro-Malaysian outlook emerged at the same time a Hong Kong consulting firm co-founded by Edwin J. Feulner, Heritage's president, began representing Malaysian business interests.
Also see: