New Report Shows Extent of Taypayer Funding of Brookings

A new study shows the extent that US taxpayers are helping fund the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, a think tank that consistently collects more than $100 million a year in donations from corporations, foundations, and others.

Here is more from Capital Research Center:

Did you know you’re funding the well-heeled scholars at the Brookings Institution, a hoary D.C. think tank? A new report by OpenTheBooks.com, a database that tracks government grants, has uncovered millions of taxpayer dollars going to the Brookings Institution—and the findings are troubling.

Brookings was founded to be a government watchdog in Washington, D.C. Its motto is “Quality. Independence. Impact.” In reality, it has become the leading center-left think tank, and we’re all paying for it, to the tune of $19.5 million in public grants since 2008.

While there is no evidence that Brookings has violated the law, it’s certainly compromised its independence. OpenTheBooks CEO Andrew Andrezejewski puts it bluntly: “An organization loses all credibility to hold government accountable when the government becomes a donor.” Andrezejewski points to Brookings’ public policy studies as the most egregious example of its illusory independence. Brookings accepted $1.8 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for “humanitarian” causes. In 2016, Brookings published a white paper espousing the value of USAID public/private partnerships—without disclosing its obvious conflict of interest with the Agency.

Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks.com (which conducted the study), says that Brookings "does not resemble a think tank, but a jukebox - add a little coin and Brookings will play your tune, if the price is right."  Here is more from Mr. Andrzejewski:

Since 2008, Brookings amassed nearly $20 million in contracts and grants from 50 agencies – including the Obama Administration’s Office of the President. Despite assets of $496 million (IRS990, FY2014), our OpenTheBooks.com audit shows it was not enough. Brookings instituted an aggressive strategy to pursue federal business over the past nine-years.

Among other things, Mr. Andrzejewski notes that when Brookings published a 2016 white paper touting the veracity of US Agency for International Development (USAID) public/private partnerships, it failed to disclose that USAID was a donor to Brookings.

US government agencies that have recently donated to Brookings include: Food and Drug Administration (FDA), US Central Command, US Department of Treasury, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Social Security Administration (SSA), USAID, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), US Department of the Navy, US Coast Guard, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), US Department of the Air Force, and the US Department of the Army.

More details (including raw data) about the US government funding of Brookings can be found here.

The reputation of Brookings (as well as other think tanks) was severely damaged last year after the New York Times exposed a number of pay-for-play schemes at think tanks.

To be sure, a number of think tanks receive money from the US government, including the RAND Corporation, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Atlantic Council, and many more.

History and Reputation of the McKinsey Global Institute

This in an excerpt from the book "The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence":

Despite some missteps, [Frederick] Gluck also grasped that the firm had to do a better job publicizing its accomplishments.  Under his direction, in 1990 the firm launched the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), an independent research operation with the goal of developing "substantive points of view on the critical issues" faced by McKinsey clients.  Even in a world overflowing with economic think tanks, McKinsey brought a unique perspective to the table: The firm's understanding of actual company economics and industry structures gave specificity to its work.  "What's different about MGI is the unique access we have to information that doesn't show up in statistics that we can use responsibly to inform research," said Diana Farrell, head of MGI from 2001 to 2008, when she left to join the Obama Administration.

MGI has been successful in giving the firm a quasi-academic glow that's yet another in the long list of the ways it is differentiated from the competition.  The institute's work on productivity in the early 1990s is widely regarded as groundbreaking in economic circles.  Later work on global capital market developments, the US healthcare system, and energy productivity continues to give McKinsey a voice in conversations to which its competitors are not invited.  But it has also given an outlet to the firms' recurring eruptions of arrogance.  When the institute paid significant sums to lure Nobel laureate Robert Solow and other leading economists to its board, then-chairman Ted Hall reportedly professed the belief that the institute itself was doing Nobel-quality work instead of merely buying Nobel-quality window dressing.

According to rankings by the University of Pennsylvania (which takes money from the think tanks it ranks), McKinsey Global Institute is ranked as the best for-profit think tank in the world.