Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Has Heritage Just Released Donald Trump's Bible?

The Heritage Foundations has just released its Blueprint for Reform: A Comprehensive Policy Agenda for a New Administration in 2017, a document meant to guide what they hope is Donald Trump's policy agenda.

The think tank has released such policy agendas in every presidential election year since 1980.  At that time, Heritage released the well-known Mandate for Leadership, a series of books spanning some 3,000 pages.  That blueprint was titled Mandate for Leadership in subsequent years, and was last published under that name in 2005.

Nevertheless, the decades-old document is alive and well, albeit under a different name.  In fact, Heritage chief Ed Feulner penned a piece in The Washington Times saying that the new Blueprint is the "latest" in the think tank's "Mandate for Leadership" series.

Mandate for Leadership was dubbed "the bible" of the Reagan White House by the Washington Post, and "provided a step-by-step guide to how to transform conservative principles into government policy."

Heritage's new report says that the next president and US Congress should pursue a number or proposals, including:
  • Pro-growth tax reform
  • Balancing the budget
  • Reducing regulatory burden
  • Repealing "harmful" laws such as Obamacare and Dodd-Frank
  • Rebuilding the military capabilities of the US
  • Welfare reform

The Blueprint calls for reducing total US spending by $10 trillion over 10 years and balancing the federal budget by 2024.  Among other things, it also calls for closing most of the Department of Energy.

The full Blueprint for Reform report, which spans more than 130 pages, can be found here.

The Washington Times notes that the Blueprint offers "scores" of policy recommendations for the next administration.  A Heritage analysis of the Republican Party's platform notes that the 2016 platform has many of the same ideas as Heritage's Blueprint; others note that the Blueprint has a "competing" anti-poverty plan than House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

A number of advisers to Donald Trump are housed within the Heritage Foundation, including Stephen Moore (who is helping write Mr. Trump's tax plan).  Heritage was also tapped to select a list of potential nominees to the Supreme Court should he become president.

Morning Consult says that Heritage hopes their plan will be embraced by the Trump transition team if Mr. Trump wins the presidency.  Heritage has said that it has been in contact with Trump's campaign policy team and that the campaign was "very interested" in Heritage's views.  However, Morning consult notes that there is distance on some issues between the Heritage approach and Trump's campaign rhetoric.

Think Tank Watch should note that Heritage says it does not endorse any political candidate or party.  And James Jay Carafano of Heritage reminds us that anyone can use the Blueprint.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Think Tank Quickies (#230)

  • How think tanks influence the debate on Iran, by Barbara Slavin of Atlantic Council.
  • AEI head Arthur Brooks to speak at Conscious Capitalism annual CEO Summit.
  • Australian free-market think tanks ranked by social media presence.
  • ITIF launches Global Trade and Innovation Policy Alliance (GTIPA), an international network of think tanks dedicated to trade liberalization.
  • Debate with think tanks on thinking itself.
  • Wikileaks: Malaysia's most prominent think tanks.
  • Facebook still the predominant social media platform used by think tanks; some think tanks using Snapchat.
  • Does Connecticut need a think tank?
  • Costa Samaras: Proud that RAND Corp. pays summer associates.
  • NYT's Michael Gordan lands at conservative think tank FDD.

Monday, July 25, 2016

The Think Tanks That Appear in the Hacked DNC Emails

Think Tank Watch has scoured the emails of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that were leaked through Wikileaks and found that think tanks are playing a prominent role in the thinking of Democrats.

Here is how many times specific think tanks appear in those emails:
  • Heritage Foundation: 61
  • Brookings: 41
  • Cato Institute: 25
  • Center for American Progress (CAP): 19
  • American Enterprise Institute (AEI): 17 
  • Urban Institute: 14
  • Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): 13 
  • Council on Foreign Relations: 10
  • Atlantic Council: 6
  • Center for a New American Security (CNAS: 4
  • Hudson Institute: 4
  • Stimson Center: 4 
  • Economic Policy Institute: 4
  • Hoover Institution: 3
  • Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: 2
  • Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE): 1

Think Tank Watch is examining those emails now and will be releasing stories throughout the week.  Stay tuned!

Friday, July 22, 2016

Brookings Going Gaga Over Pokemon Go

The venerable Brookings Institution usually focuses on rather soporific topics such as foreign aid, the broadband spectrum, and domestic politics in Mongolia.

But scholars at the think tank are finally pivoting to a much more serious issue at hand: the location-based augmented reality mobile game Pokemon Go.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, along with Robert Michnick Golinoff of the University of Delaware, writes that Pokemon Go is the latest fad that "opens up a new vista for exploring learning."

Another Brookings scholar, Jack Karsten, wrote a piece of Pokemon Go saying that the game may be a fad but the technology behind it is not.

You heard it think tankers, it is perfectly fine to play Pokemon Go during work hours for the sake of education and technology advancement.  But as think tanker Jason Hong of New America warns, while you track Pokemon, Pokemon Go tracks you.

Trump's Think Tank Whisperer on Taxes and Trade

Mr. Stephen Moore, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation who is also an adviser to Donald Trump, is trying to make the Republican nominee, well, more Republican.

Moore, who formerly wrote on economics and public policy for The Wall Street Journal, has already been working on Mr. Trump's tax plan, and is currently updating that plan for a release in the near future.  Slate reported in May that Trump had asked Moore ("a notorious right-wing hack") and another adviser to rewrite his tax plan.  The pair have signaled that the tax plan will be released sometime after the Republican National Convention (RNC).

Moore, along with Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, the former host of CNBC's The Kudlow Report, has also been trying to push Mr. Trump to be more pro-trade.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post of Stephen Moore, who rejoined the Heritage Foundation in 2014.  Moore also used to work for the libertarian Cato Institute.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Think Tank Quickies (#229)

  • Vice President Joe Biden lays into Donald Trump's foreign policy at CNAS. 
  • Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg faces questions at conservative think tank AEI over last month's allegations that the company harbors an anti-conservative bias.
  • Think tank (AEI) hires Republican education staffer (from New America) "with cool glasses."
  • Bernie Sanders out of step with two think tanks - CAP and Demos.
  • Think tanks = sock puppets of political parties?
  • Stephen Walt bashes think tank report from CNAS.
  • Matthew Yglesias: 3,000 word explainers on think tank Twitter fights are the new clickbait.
  • Former DC think tanker on his experience telecommuting from a different state.
  • National Federation of Independent Business (NFID) has hired David Addington, group vice president for research at Heritage Foundation and former CIA official.
  • Drinker Biddle & Reath hires Katie Christophersen, who formerly worked at Manhattan Inst.
  • Liberal think tank Demos: DC politicians funded by donors who are whiter and wealthier than the constituents they serve.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Think Tanker Attacked by Name on Senate Floor...22 Years Later

There is some good news for think tankers out there who are wondering if the policy papers they write get any attention.  They certainly do, although it can sometimes take decades.  The case of former think tanker Sasha Volokh is a perfect example.  Here is what he just wrote for the Washington Post:
One of the problems with working in policy — whether at think tanks or in academia — is that it’s hard to measure one’s impact. We kind of believe that ideas have some effect in the real world (if we’re being optimistic), but it’s rare for us to see the evidence as to ourselves personally. Even intermediate measures — do people even read our stuff? — can be hard to come by.
In my case, I finally know that someone is reading my work from 22 years ago! Straight out of college, in 1993-94, I worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market policy organization in Washington, D.C. One of the areas I worked in a lot was the FDA and tobacco policy — this was shortly before the Clinton FDA asserted jurisdiction over tobacco, a move that the Supreme Court said in FDA v. Brown & Williamson (2000) was contrary to the statute. The capstone of that year was getting my first Wall Street Journal op-ed published: “Feel a Heart Attack Coming? Go to France."
Last week, I finally got tangible proof that someone was reading my pieces from back then. As part of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-NH) attack on CEI, she said..."CEI lobbied politicians, conducted symposia, and published policy papers and op-eds with titles such as ‘Safety Is a Relative Thing for Cars: Why Not for Cigarettes?’ CEI’s then-policy analyst, Alexander Volokh, even went so far as to describe the act of smoking as a civic duty."

The video of the attack can be viewed here (go to 5:15).  So do not fear you young think tankers.  After all, you too may one day have your paper blasted on the Senate or House floor, just like Mr. Volokh.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Sen. Ted Cruz Meets with "Secret" Conservative Think Tank

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently attended a gathering of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive group of conservative activists, many of whom backed Cruz in his failed presidential bid earlier this year.  Here is more from Politico:
The CNP is a nonprofit, but some of its members, including President Tony Perkins, who also serves as head of the Family Research Council, are part of a subgroup that had voted to endorse Cruz in hopes of uniting the conservative movement behind a single candidate in 2016, rather than splintering as it had in 2008 and 2012.

Council for National Policy is not be to mistaken for the Center for National Policy (also known as CNP), a think tank which "merged" with the Truman National Security Project in 2013.

It has been said that the Council for National Policy wants to be the conservative version of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Friday, July 15, 2016

Think Tank Quickies (#228)

  • The corporations behind big EU think tanks (includes charts/maps).
  • Clinton's monopolizing foreign policy brain trust (including think tankers) which is so large that campaign cannot offer definitive estimate of its size.  Advisors include Michele Flournoy, CEO of CNAS; Brian Katulis (CAP); and Dan Kurtz-Phelan (New America).
  • Bernie Sanders simply has one-off meetings with think tankers, including Ray Takeyh (CFR), Tamara Cofman Witttes (Brookings; she is an advisor to Clinton), and Lawrence Korb (CAP).
  • James Wallner, executive director of the Senate Steering Committee, is leaving to become the Heritage Foundation's VP for research.
  • Libertarian Cato Institute urging approval of TPP trade pact. 
  • Maya Harris, formerly a senior fellow at Center for American Progress (CAP), a senior policy advisor to Clinton campaign. 
  • Video: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) rips think tanks for fake climate change research.
  • Any Pokemon Go stops at major Washington think tanks?
  • Chinese think tanks: Confidential messengers and idea sources as well as spear carriers for the government, via Jerome Cohen.
  • US and Chinese think tanks agree the South China Sea situation needs to be cooled down.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Possible Trump Veep Pick Pence a Think Tanker

A little-known fact about Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R), a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump, is that he has a deep connection to think tank land.

From 1991 to 1994, Pence ran the Indiana Policy Review Foundation (IPR), a conservative, state-level think tank that was founded in 1989 by Craig Ladwig.

In fact, Pence apparently claimed in 2012 that he helped found the think tank.  In 2008 Pence said: "I was part of what we called the seed corn Heritage Foundation was spreading around the country in the state think tank movement.  We actually called our little foundation in Indiana the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, very much as a homage to Policy Review magazine of Heritage, and we modeled on the state level what Heritage had done before."

Policy Review was a conservative journal that was published from 1977 to 2013.  In 2001 it was acquired by the Hoover Institution, a Stanford University-based conservative think tank.

Here is more about the Indiana Policy Review Foundation from its own website:
Our mission is to marshal the best thought on governmental, economic and educational issues at the state and municipal levels. We seek to accomplish this in ways that:
  • Exalt the truths of the Declaration of Independence, especially as they apply to the interrelated freedoms of religion, property and speech.
  • Emphasize the primacy of the individual in addressing public concerns.
  • Recognize that equality of opportunity is sacrificed in pursuit of equality of results.
The Indiana Policy Review Foundation is a non-profit education foundation focused on state and municipal issues. It is free of outside control by any individual, organization or group. It exists solely to conduct and distribute research on Indiana issues. Nothing written here is to be construed as reflecting the views of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the legislature or to further any political campaign.
The foundation’s white papers are intended to make scholarly research on Indiana issues more widely available to policy analysts and researchers. White Papers represent research in progress and are published to invite comment and discussion as preparation for their submission to academic journals and other professional publications. The authors are solely responsible for the content of their research and analysis.

But besides IPR, it is a little-known fact that Pence has been a non-staff member of the conservative Heritage Foundation.  Pence has spoken at Heritage on several occasions, including this 2005 talk on journalists, and this 2006 talk on immigration reform.  Pence has also written special guest posts for Heritage, including this one remembering 9/11.

Pence also has allies at Heritage, including policy analyst Katie Tubb, who was once at intern for Pence when he was in the US Congress.

In 2015, Heritage wrote a piece entitled "What Are Mike Pence's Prospects for a 2016 Presidential Run?"

Pence has also spoken at other think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).  In fact, in 2005, Pence took part in an AEI conference along with Newt Gingrich, another possible VP pick for Trump.

Monday, July 11, 2016

DC Think Tanker Murdered

This is from the Washington Post:
59-year-old woman who was a senior official at a Washington think-tank was fatally stabbed in Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood as she was walking her dogs Friday night, police said.
Officers were called to the 600 block of W. University Parkway around 11 p.m. for a report of an injured person. Police said the woman, identified as Molly K. Macauley, was outside walking her dogs when she was stabbed by an unknown assailant.
Macauley was the vice president for research and a senior fellow with Resources for the Future (RFF) in Washington. She first joined the organization in 1993. She was an adjunct economics professor at Johns Hopkins University for nearly 20 years.

Here are some reactions, including from former RFF president Phil Sharp (who just retired several days ago and who is being replaced by Richard Newell), and RFF press secretary Dave Cohen.

Here is a statement from RFF, which includes an email excerpt from interim president Linda Fisher.

Some of Ms. Macauley's work at RFF, which was founded in 1952 and became the first think tank devoted exclusively to natural resources and environmental issues, can be found here.

RFF, which has a budget of about $13 million and 77 researchers/staff, was just ranked as the 34th best think tank in the United States and the world's 11th best energy and resources policy think tank.  It was also ranked as the world's 16th best environmental policy think tank.

Friday, July 8, 2016

China's Sole DC Think Tank Probably Not A Front for Spies


It appears that the launch of China's only think tank in the Washington, DC has made less of a splash than many people had imagined.

Foreign Policy's Isaac Stone Fish has just written a piece entitled "Beijing Establishes a DC Think Tank, and No One Notices," which essentially says that the Institute for China-American Studies (ICAS) has not gained any traction among policy elites.

Here is more:
Despite its advocacy for Beijing’s controversial and important position in the disputed South China Sea, the Institute for China-American Studies (ICAS) — the only Chinese think tank based in Washington D.C. — has been unable to rise from obscurity. Google their initials and they come up on the third page, behind the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, the International Council of Air Shows, and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, a tribe in Alaska. It has all of 46 Twitter followers.
 While U.S. scholars respect some of executive director Hong Nong’s work on China’s claims in the disputed South China Sea — the focus of the think tank’s five-person staff — ICAS is almost entirely unknown outside a narrow band of China watchers in the U.S. think tank community. Even Patrick Ho, who runs the China Energy Fund, one of the only other Mainland Chinese think tanks active in the United States — the exact number is unknown, but estimates range from two to roughly a dozen — said he has never heard of ICAS. “I don’t know if they [even] have a reputation yet,” said the South China Sea scholar Bonnie Glaser. “They have been pretty low-profile.”

The article goes on to ask why ICAS, which now has an office just a few blocks away from "Think Tank Row," appears to be unsuccessful in influencing US policymakers and China-hands.  Here is more on that:
[Bonnie] Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), doesn’t think it’s because they are spies — a plausible explanation for a Chinese organization that gathers and disseminates information. “Obviously people will suspect that they’re playing some intelligence role. But they’re not very aggressive,” she said. Rather, most of those interviewed for this story — roughly a dozen academics, think tank staff, and China watchers, the kind of people who traffic in acronyms and appreciate the intricacies of relevancy in Washington — have concluded that the problem is ineffectiveness.
ICAS, in other words, is not doing what a think tank should do: convening major events with respected scholars and politicians, publishing influential research, and challenging and improving government policy. Scholars say that their papers rarely get circulated, and they have not held a major event since their opening conference. “I wouldn’t say it’s a sophisticated operation at this stage,” said a member of the D.C. China policy community, who asked to speak anonymously because she wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. Jim McGann, the founder of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, which publishes an influential ranking of think tanks around the world, said ICAS seems “underfunded and not very well focused.” 

The article explains that the idea of a "think tank" in China is much older than in the US, where the phenomenon is relatively recent.  "The ideas of research institutions advising the ruler of China stretches back at least to Hanlin Yuan, established in the 8th century," says the article.

It also notes the various differences between US and Chinese think tank, saying that while Chinese think tanks "prize a close connection to the government, they are thus saddled with the intellectual restraint of being unable to speak truth to power."  Here is more:
According to a November 2014 article in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Newspaper, a publication affiliated with China’s best-known think tank, it is “advisable” for think tanks in China “to maintain strong linkages with the government.” On ICAS’s website, and in person, Hong describes her think tank as independent. And yet, that seems unlikely.

Lastly, on funding, the article says that ICAS has a relatively small amount:
ICAS sits under the lushly funded government research organization, the National Institute for South China Sea Studies (NISCSS), in the island province of Hainan. But for some reason, that largesse has not trickled down to ICAS. During a March interview, Hong estimated that ICAS’s budget is just $800,000 a year, a number several other think tankers privately said was very low. “Sometimes conferences can be very expensive,” Hong complained.

In response to the article, Ken Weinstein, President and CEO of the Hudson Institute (who has a picture of himself next to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as his Twitter picture), said: "I thought PRC more sophisticated.  Beijing builds an invisible DC think tank.  Much cheaper to buy an existing one."

To be fair, every think tank needs time to grow.  After all, Brookings didn't become Brookings overnight.  Also, one can only expect so much from a think tank staffed with five people and an annual budget under $1 million.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece on ICAS, which launched in April 2015.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Pro-Clinton Think Tank Helps Launch New National Security Initiaitve

The liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) is flexing its muscles once again in its ongoing attempt to help Hillary Clinton become president of the United States.  Here is more:
The political arm of the Center for American Progress, a leading progressive group that is aligned with Hillary Clinton, is bringing together major Democratic figures in national security to focus attention on the stakes of the election and to highlight what they see as the damaging potential of a Trump presidency.
The project, called the National Security Leadership Alliance, will be funded by C.A.P. Action. It will feature a roster of major members of the foreign policy and national security community, including two retired four-star generals; Leon E. Panetta, the former C.I.A. director; Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state; Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general; and Carl Levin, the former Michigan senator. All have endorsed Mrs. Clinton.
There will be an effort to highlight precisely what, in the military arsenal, Donald J. Trump would have access to as president. Mr. Trump has been criticized for his views on foreign policy, criticisms that have been central to the case that Mrs. Clinton has made against him in an effort to describe the stakes of the 2016 presidential election. The Center for American Progress is led by a top outside adviser to Mrs. Clinton, Neera Tanden, and the new project seeks to put a spotlight on what officials are calling a progressive foreign policy vision.

Ms. Tanden has long been rumored to be a possible pick for the chief of staff position under a Clinton Administration.  Here is a link to the NSLA's new website.  Here is a press release about the NSLA launch.

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Think Tank Quickies (#227)

  • What think tanks are thinking on the Brexit.
  • Keith Burnet of Chatham House: Road to think tank transparency not entirely straightforward.
  • Delete your think tank.
  • Alexandra Petri: This majestic species may still be spotted in a few select preserves, mainly think tanks...
  • 51 diplomats, two think tanks, and the future of Syria.
  • US think tanks dreaming up a Russian collapse?  Lost in own fantasy world of Russian aggression?
  • Think tanks "spinning themselves into a tizzy" about education reform.
  • MP Nicholas Soames: "Project Fear" probably invented by some twerp in a think tank.
  • Pic: Think tank of Nawaz Sharif and his family.
  • HBCU in Texas launching black leadership think tank.

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Roosevelt Institute Trying to Influence Clinton Cabinet Picks

The New York-based liberal think tank Roosevelt Institute is trying to influence who Hillary Clinton chooses for her Cabinet if she becomes president.  Here is more from the Boston Globe:
Now left-leaning Democrats, worried about being shut out of a centrist administration if Hillary Clinton wins in November, are furiously compiling what amount to binders full of liberals for the presumptive nominee’s consideration.
Spearheading the effort is a New York-based liberal think tank called the Roosevelt Institute, whose top economists include a prominent Warren ally. Staff members from the institute have been interviewing hundreds of progressive economists and other professionals who could fill posts throughout a Clinton administration.
“It’s a big undertaking to staff up an entire government,” said Marcus Mrowka, a spokesman for the institute. Eager to avoid seeming presumptive and creating a backlash, the institute is billing its work as an intensive networking effort.
The Roosevelt Institute is a liberal counterweight to the more centrist power bases in Washington like the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution, which are loaded with Clinton loyalists.
Five people familiar with the Roosevelt Institute’s initiative who weren’t authorized to talk about it publicly said the goal is to ensure that a hypothetical Clinton administration has access to a cadre of potential staff — particularly on financial issues — who aren’t closely connected to Wall Street interests.

The article notes that the Roosevelt Institute is the home of Joseph Stiglitz, a key Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) ally.  "Working for him and conducting many of the interviews is Lenore Palladino, a well-respected progressive who has been on the payroll of MoveOn.org and Demos, a left-wing group co-founded by Warren's daughter."  [Her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, is Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Demos.]

The Roosevelt Institute, however, isn't the only think tank trying to influence a Clinton Cabinet.  The article also mentions that some think tanks are putting together "opposition-research-style dossiers" that detail past positions taken by more centrist Democrats who might be in line for regulatory jobs in a Clinton Administration.  Here is more on that effort:
Some of that work is being done by the Revolving Door Project, an initiative housed in the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). It is part of a coalition of groups that is waging a more overt push to lobby around presidential appointments.
“In this environment, appointments really matter,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, who said he’s pushing for political appointees who focus on the public interest. “There are a lot of different progressives that have come to the same conclusion over the last eight years, that focusing exclusively on legislative goals is impractical.”

Despite that effort, think tanks closer to the Clintons, including Center for American Progress (CAP), Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and the Brookings Institution, will likely play an overwhelming role in helping decide and staff actual Cabinet posts.

Friday, July 1, 2016

Meet Trump's New Favorite Think Tank

Presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has a new favorite think tank, and it is not who you think.  You may have guessed something like the Heritage Foundation or the Hudson Institute or even the Hoover Institution.  Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Trump's new favorite think tank is the liberal, union-backed think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI).  No folks, we are not making this up.  On June 28 Trump gave an economic and trade speech which frequently cited statistics from EPI.  In fact, in a footnoted version of the speech, he cited EPI 20 times.  There was nary a single citation from a conservative think tank, which he also relies on from time to time.

The only other think tanks mentioned in the citations were the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and the conservative Tax Foundation, which each had one citation.

EPI, of course, it not too keen on being linked to Donald Trump, and has called his latest take on trade a "scam."  After all, EPI bills itself as the first (and the premier) think tank to focus on the economic conditions of low- and middle-income Americans and their families.  Being linked to a billionaire is a huge no-no.

From 2010 to 2014, about 57% of EPI funding came from foundation grants, while another 27% came from labor unions.  The remainder came from a mix of organizations, corporations, individuals, and others.

The Wall Street Journal recently called EPI "the AFL-CIO's think tank," referring to the largest federation of unions in the United States.