New Heritage Foundation Document Being Used to Reopen US Economy?

Here is more from Politico:

A blueprint released by The Heritage Foundation’s National Coronavirus Recovery Commission caught the attention of White House aides with its 47 suggestions for reopening the economy. Those include the White House not enforcing regulations for small businesses and making permanent some of the regulatory tweaks the federal government made during Covid-19 at the FDA, Department of Health and Human Services or the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Heritage Foundation has been one of the most influential think tanks during the Trump Administration.

Heritage Foundation Influences Trump Admin. on Health Policy

Here is more from Roll Call:

Close ties between the administration and a prominent conservative think tank correlate with several Trump administration health policy decisions, according to new information from a liberal government watchdog group shared exclusively with CQ Roll Call.

The 35-page Equity Forward report says that The Heritage Foundation’s influence plays a large role in decisions related to abortion, fetal tissue research, contraception and protections for same-sex couples.

Think tanks that support an administration are known to yield influence over policy decisions, but Equity Forward calls the ties with The Heritage Foundation “alarming” because the organization says Heritage is succeeding in securing policy decisions that contradict HHS’ intended mission.

A separate 2018 report by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program of the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania found that The Heritage Foundation ranked as the think tank with the most significant impact on public policy and the top U.S. think tank to watch in 2019.

Here is a link to Equity Forward's new report and here is a press release about it.

Here is an Equity Forward link that takes you directly to Heritage Foundation's ties to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

How Heritage Stocked Trump's Government

Here are our favorite excerpts from a New York Times Magazine piece by Jonathan Mahler about how the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has staffed the Trump Administration:


On staffing the Trump Administration:

The Trump team may not have been prepared to staff the government, but the Heritage Foundation was. In the summer of 2014, a year before Trump even declared his candidacy, the right-wing think tank had started assembling a 3,000-name searchable database of trusted movement conservatives from around the country who were eager to serve in a post-Obama government. The initiative was called the Project to Restore America, a dog-whistle appeal to the so-called silent majority that foreshadowed Trump’s own campaign slogan.

On Trump and Heritage being an unlikely match:

In some ways, Trump and Heritage were an unlikely match. Trump had no personal connection to the think tank and had fared poorly on a “Presidential Platform Review” from its sister lobbying shop, Heritage Action for America, which essentially concluded that he wasn’t even a conservative.

On helping each other:

And yet Heritage and Trump were uniquely positioned to help each other. Much like Trump’s, Heritage’s constituency is equal parts donor class and populist base. Its $80 million annual budget depends on six-figure donations from rich Republicans like Rebekah Mercer, whose family foundation has reportedly given Heritage $500,000 a year since 2013. But it also relies on a network of 500,000 small donors, Heritage “members” whom it bombards with millions of pieces of direct mail every year. The Heritage Foundation is a marketing company, a branding agency — it sells its own Heritage neckties, embroidered with miniature versions of its Liberty Bell logo — and a policy shop rolled into one. But above all, Heritage is a networking group.

On victory for Heritage:

Today it is clear that for all the chaos and churn of the current administration, Heritage has achieved a huge strategic victory. Those who worked on the project estimate that hundreds of the people the think tank put forward landed jobs, in just about every government agency. Heritage’s recommendations included some of the most prominent members of Trump’s cabinet: Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos (whose in-laws endowed Heritage’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society), Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions and many more. Dozens of Heritage employees and alumni also joined the Trump administration — at last count 66 of them, according to Heritage, with two more still awaiting Senate confirmation. It is a kind of critical mass that Heritage had been working toward for nearly a half-century.

On the five ideologies of Heritage:

[Heritage co-founded Ed] Feulner packaged his fledgling think tank’s ideology into five basic principles: free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional values and a strong national defense. 

Heritage avoids never-Trump:

In March 2016, the Republican establishment stepped up its effort to stop Trump. More than 100 Republican national-security experts signed an open letter publicly committing to fight his election, calling him a “racketeer” and denouncing his dishonesty and “admiration for foreign dictators.” A number of the signatories were fellows of conservative think tanks; none were affiliated with Heritage at the time. Heritage treated Trump as it would any other candidate, giving his campaign staff more than a dozen briefings and sending them off with decks of cards bearing Heritage policy proposals and market-tested “power phrases.”

On what Heritage staffers ate during election night:

On election night, Heritage turned its first floor over to a viewing party with an open bar, chicken wings and red, white and blue cupcakes.

On Heritage staffing the Trump Administration:

Heritage helped place countless others, from staff assistants to cabinet secretaries. In some cases, DeMint intervened directly, calling Pence to argue for Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman whose political career DeMint helped start years earlier in South Carolina. Mulvaney is now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and as this article went to press, he was serving out the remaining time in a stint as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...

On current Heritage-Trump relations:

The president and his favorite think tank continue to draw closer. Administration officials speak regularly at Heritage and give frequent interviews to The Daily Signal. In April, Pruitt and Attorney General Jeff Sessions were both scheduled to speak at a Heritage donor conference in Palm Beach, Fla. (Sessions, under fire from the president because of the Russia investigation, dropped out.)

On the Trump-Heritage revolving door:

Churn is a central feature of this administration, even for its unofficial staffing agency. Paul Winfree, a Heritage economist who helped draft Trump’s first budget, is back at the think tank. So are Stephen Moore, who worked on the Trump tax cuts; David Kreutzer, who played a key role in dissolving a White House working group that was studying the monetary costs associated with climate-warming carbon dioxide; and Hans von Spakovsky, who helped run the now-defunct voter-fraud commission...

Here is a recent Think Tank Watch piece about big changes that have taken place recently at the Heritage Foundation.

Fmr. Trump Aide Gorka Becomes Paid Lecturer at Heritage

Sebastian Gorka, a former Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump, has long been affiliated with a number of think tanks, and he has now attached himself with a think tank that has deep ties to the Trump Administration.  Here is more from Daily Beast:

Former White House counterterrorism aide and notorious sidewalk-parker Sebastian Gorka has landed a new professional gig on top of his newly minted Fox News contributorship: Gorka is now a paid lecturer at the Heritage Foundation. John Cooper, a spokesman for the flagship conservative think tank, told The Daily Beast that Gorka has been contracted to give five foreign-policy speeches to “Heritage audiences,” the fourth of which will take place next month. “Dr. Gorka is an independent contractor,” Cooper noted. “He is solely responsible for the content of his speeches and other statements, and his views are not necessarily those of Heritage or any of its personnel.” Gorka recently updated his LinkedIn page to list himself as a Heritage “consultant.” Gorka, who was ousted from the White House in August, recently joined Fox News as a contributor after departing from a super PAC run by right-wing “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists, which he had joined after his brief White House stint.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post about Gorka's past connections to think tanks.

Here is another Think Tank Watch post on rumors of Gorka and Steve Bannon starting a national security think tank.

Former Heritage Scholar a "Fixer" in Trump's Washington

Politico recently highlighted the work of Lisa Curtis, the former Senior Research Fellow in Asian Studies at the Heritage Foundation's Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, who is now in the Trump Administration.  Here is a clip:

It may not be President Donald Trump's list of problems to solve but the relationship with Pakistan has an unfortunate habit of flaring up, and doing so at the most inopportune times.

Tasked with making headway in the thorny and knotty relationship with Islamabad is Lisa Curtis, a longtime expert on Pakistan and counterterrorism who was recruited earlier this year to the White House's National Security Council to be its senior director for South Asia.

Curtis is one of dozens of scholars at the Heritage Foundation who either advised the Trump Administration during the presidential campaign or who has actually gone into the administration.

In related news, the Heritage Foundation continues to look for a new president after Sen. Ben Sasse reportedly turned down the job.

Did Trump Administration Cut and Paste Budget From Heritage Doc?

Think Tank Watch has several posts about the Heritage Foundation's deep influence on the Trump Administration and the Trump budget, and the Washington Post now has some new reporting:

Up against the clock and with many senior staff positions still vacant, President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget turned to one of the nation’s most conservative think tanks — the Heritage Foundation — for inspiration.

The result: The Trump budget proposal released last week bears a striking resemblance to the Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for 2017,” complete with a list of deep spending cuts designed to scale back the size and scope of the federal government.

The Trump administration’s budget document and the Heritage blueprint single out very similar lists of dozens of programs for elimination, including those on international climate, legal aid for the poor, energy research, aid to Appalachia, and insurance for U.S. exporters. And they cite the same reasons, noting for example that rural air service subsidies were meant to be temporary 40 years ago and now keep largely empty planes in the air.

Both documents lean on the same philosophical arguments for a greater role for states and private business, and for a federal government that seeks to get its money’s worth from spending — arguments that have appealed to ultra-conservative multimillion-dollar donors such as the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Richard and Helen De Vos Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation and, more recently, the Mercer Family Foundation. Rebekah A. Mercer, who is close to Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, is a Heritage trustee.

“I don’t think there’s any question. Heritage was the Number 1 source,” Stephen Moore, a senior economic policy expert at Heritage who advised the Trump campaign. “That was partly because there wasn’t a lot of time. They decided ‘we will get rid of this, and get rid of that.’”

“When we were on the campaign, for Trump’s speeches we would pull stuff from Heritage budget documents and make the arguments that Heritage was making,” Moore said. “I think it’s very accurate to say that a lot of these ideas … even some of the arguments they make, some of the rhetoric is almost verbatim from Heritage.”

The article notes that Romina Boccia is the lead author of this year's budget blueprint put out by Heritage.  That blueprint, officially released today (March 28) can be found here.

It also notes that the Cato Institute and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have played a much smaller role in influencing the Trump Administration, and points out that Heritage has an annual budget of more than $80 million, which is equal to the budgets of Cato and AEI combined.

The article suggests that AEI had much more influence during the George W. Bush era, having sent 20 people into that administration.

Donald Trump Blames Heritage Foundation for Healthcare Defeat

It appears that President Donald Trump is not too happy with the Heritage Foundation - the think tank that provided him with myriad policy advice and helped him transition into the White House.

Here is Trump's tweet:

Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 26, 2017

Here is Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint's statement on the defeat of the American Health Care Act (AHCA).  Here is the think tank's own repeal and replace plan.

As Think Tank Watch recently pointed out, Heritage Action, the lobbing arm of the Heritage Foundation, had been working to defeat the Republican healthcare bill.

Now that the Republican healthcare plan has failed, Heritage Foundation is working to influence the next big challenge in Congress: tax reform.

Heritage Foundation Working to Tweak Tax Bill

The influential conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, which has close ties to congressional Republicans and the Trump White House, is working intensely to make tweaks to the tax reform bill.  Here is more from Politico:

Ryan, Brady, and a couple of White House officials broke bread with Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint and other key Heritage players on Wednesday to discuss tax reform, Pro’s Transition 2017 team reports. (Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania were there, too.) The dinner shows that Heritage wants to make sure it can still be a key player on tax reform, and that it wants to help push Republicans away from the House GOP’s border adjustment framework. But: “Former Republican leadership aides and lobbyists don't think Heritage will ultimately have much influence or juice over tax reform, since the group is widely viewed on the Hill as disruptors who tend to complicate legislation rather than create a clear pathway for it, particularly in recent years,” Nancy Cook, Maggie Severns and Kelsey Tamborrino write.

The Heritage Foundation has also been lobbying to defeat the Republican healthcare bill, and has deeply influenced the Trump Administration's budget proposal.

Dozens of scholars from the think tank have either worked on the Trump transition team, advised the White House, or have actually gone on to work in the Trump Administration.

Heritage Lobbying Arm Opposes GOP Health Bill

The lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank which has extremely ties to the Trump Administration, is opposing the healthcare bill that Republicans have proposed.  Here is more from Politico:

Two influential conservative advocacy organizations — Heritage Action and Club for Growth — remain opposed to the GOP Obamacare repeal bill, offering some measure of cover for wary Republicans who have yet to sign on.

Heritage Action — the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank that had helped shape some of the Trump administration's health policies — again warned Tuesday that the American Health Care Act doesn’t go far enough to repeal Obamacare. That followed a similar warning from Club for Growth, a free-market advocacy organization, on Monday night.

“Barring additional changes, the AHCA keeps the architecture of ObamaCare (Title I regs) in place,” Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham posted on Twitter, minutes after President Donald Trump wrapped up a meeting with the House Republican conference. Heritage wants those insurance regulations eliminated.

“Heritage Action will be keyvoting against,” Needham added, meaning that lawmakers would be scored unfavorably if they vote for the AHCA.

As Politico recently wrote, the Heritage Foundation's cozy relationship with the Trump team will definitely get put to the test in the next few days.  Also, here is Politico Playbook's recent analysis of the Heritage Foundation.

Think Tank Watch is wondering if some on the Trump team would actually try to claw back the White House press credentials given to Heritage if the bill goes down in defeat...

Update: State-level policy think tanks are also issuing strong warnings on the healthcare bill.

Politico's Analysis of the Heritage Foundation

Here is Politico Playbook analysis of the Heritage Foundation's standing in Washington:

Ever since Heritage created its political arm Heritage Action, GOP lawmakers have been frustrated with the once-important conservative think tank. Most Republicans on Capitol Hill have written it off as one of the groups that raises money off of opposing GOP leadership.

Here is a a recent Politico piece on the Heritage Foundation, as well as a Think Tank Watch piece on the think tank's influence on the federal budget.

Heritage Foundation Fingerprints All Over White House Energy Budget

The Heritage Foundation has had a huge impact on many of the White House's early proposals, and dozens of the think tank's scholars have either been involved in the presidential transition, joined the Trump team, or provided advice to the administration.

In fact, more than 30 Heritage staffers were on Trump's transition team, the most from any think tank.

Here is more from E&E News about a Heritage scholar who is influencing the White House's energy budget:

When Nick Loris started sketching out budget proposals for the Department of Energy in 2012, he didn't realize his theories would actually go into practice.

Now the 33-year-old Heritage Foundation policy analyst's work might be the key to the Trump administration's energy strategy.

"It's fun," said Loris, an energy and environmental policy fellow at the conservative Washington-based think tank. "We certainly are writing what we're doing for a purpose, and that's to, in terms of energy, create a more market-oriented energy economy that works more efficiently and protects taxpayer dollars and rewards innovation."

The Heritage Foundation is poised to have a major role in President Trump's federal budget, and its small-government focus means big cuts are in store across federal agencies.

More than 30 Heritage staffers were part of the Trump transition team, and several now work at the White House, including Loris' boss at Heritage, Paul Winfree. Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), the president of the Heritage Foundation, met with Trump at the White House this week.

Since his first foray into DOE's budget, he has co-authored several policy papers for Heritage, slicing DOE's close-to-$30-billion budget with his razor-thin view of the role of government.

In the Heritage Foundation's 137-page "Blueprint for Reform" published last year, meant as a comprehensive budget proposal for a new administration, Loris and his co-authors' razor became a chain saw, eliminating DOE's offices of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Fossil Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Nuclear Energy.

The White House Office of Management and Budget pushed back on Heritage's role and insisted that staffers are writing a budget from scratch.

The article goes on to note that people at the US Department of Energy are taking Heritage Foundation's "Blueprint" very seriously, and are speaking of it in "hushed tones."  [More on the Blueprint can be found in this previous Think Tank Watch post.]

It also notes that the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), "an innovation think tank that has collaborated with the Heritage Foundation and Center for American Progress (CAP) on a plan to reform national laboratories," has issued a report challenging some aspects of the Blueprint.

Mr. Loris is the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy with the Center for Free Markets and Regulatory Reform at the Heritage Foundation.  His biography and writings can be found here.

Here is more on how former Heritage scholar Paul Winfree (mentioned above) is helping draft President's Trump first budget.

Update: Here is a piece by Zaid Jilani entitled "Trump the Outsider Outsources His Budget to Insider Think Tank."

Will Heritage Foundation Bring All Republicans Together?

Politico reports that the Heritage Foundation continues to bring powerful Republicans together, confirming the fact that the conservative think tank will play an outsized role in US politics in the years ahead.  Here is more:

...the House Freedom Caucus and the Republican Study Committee -- two conservative caucuses in the House -- are holding a joint retreat in New York in February. There will be A LOT of opinions at this one, as the two groups represent well more than half of all House Republicans. The weekend is organized by the Heritage Foundation.

The Freedom Caucus has quite an affinity for the Heritage Foundation, which reportedly plagiarized from the think tank a list of rules the incoming Trump Administration should immediately repeal or revise.

The Heritage Foundation has already been a big influencing on the Trump transition team and Trump's political and economic thinking.

However, Heritage and similar influential think tanks are not omnipotent.  After all, as Associated Press has noted, "Trump's roster of agency heads and advisers conspicuously lacks and academics."