The Heritage Foundation is a right-of-center policy think tank founded in 1973 that researches and recommends policies such as free markets, limited government, a strong national defense, and courts that adhere to the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution. ^{1 2} Many of Heritage’s most significant policy recommendations have been adopted, notably by the Reagan Administration,³ the Clinton administration,^{4 5 6} and the Trump administration. ⁷ Heritage Action for America, the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying and electoral arm, was created in 2010 and provides both grassroots influence and professional lobbying to advance the implementation of the Heritage Foundation’s policy recommendations. ^{8 9}

Heritage policies and personnel were particularly influential during the Reagan and Trump administrations. A report in The Atlantic estimated that President Ronald Reagan implemented at least 60 percent of Heritage’s recommendations; the late National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., joked that this meant “Mr. Reagan’s tenure was 60 percent successful.” ^{10 11} As a candidate, Donald Trump pledged that he would consult Heritage for a list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees, and a Heritage staffer was subsequently credited by Politico as “the man who picked” future Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. ^{12 13} At least 66 former Heritage employees landed positions within the Trump administration, and at least two senior Heritage officials (including founder and former president Ed Feulner) played influential roles on the Trump transition team. ^{14 15 16} Heritage recommendations were used to create two of the Trump administration’s most significant policy successes: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, an update of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). ^{17 18}

A major reform of welfare was adopted by Democratic President Bill Clinton with the cooperation of a Republican-controlled Congress in 1996. ¹⁹ The welfare reform law implemented many longstanding and major Heritage policy recommendations, required most recipients to find employment, and by 2016 had reduced the number of Americans on cash assistance from 13 million to 3 million. ^{20 21} Similarly, Heritage staffers have participated in events and advocated policy solutions in cooperation with center-left organizations such as the National Urban League,²² the Brookings Institution,²³ and the American Civil Liberties Union. ²⁴

Kay C. James has been president of Heritage since 2018, though she announced her intention to step down upon the appointment of a successor in March 2021. ²⁵ She had been a Heritage board member since 2005. Four U.S presidents have appointed her to executive branch management and advisory positions, most prominently director of the U. S. Office of Personnel Management under former President George W. Bush. She received an undergraduate degree from Hampton University, one of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities, and was one of the first children to desegregate Virginia’s all-white schools. ²⁶

Background

The Heritage Foundation is a right-leaning research and public policy think tank that began operation in 1973. Heritage’s research and recommendations explore policies that promote free-markets, limited government, the rule of law, private property rights, a strong national defense, free trade, fiscal and regulatory restraint, and a judiciary that adheres to the plain meaning of the words written in the U.S. Constitution. ^{27 28}

According to a 2018 New York Times profile, Heritage was “born in the spring of 1971 in the basement cafeteria of the United States Capitol” during a discussion between Ed Feulner and Paul Weyrich, both congressional aides for Republican lawmakers. ²⁹

According to the Times, Feulner and Weyrich “commiserated over a recent study from the American Enterprise Institute, an established conservative think tank, about a proposed supersonic transport plane.” A research funding proposal for the aircraft, supported by then-President Richard Nixon, had just been defeated in the U.S. Senate. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) had produced a report favorable to the aircraft but had withheld publication until two days after the Senate vote. ^{30 31}

According to a 2013 report in the left-leaning The New Republic, Weyrich asked AEI “why the report arrived after the fight was over” and was told “they didn’t want to be seen as influencing the vote” on the supersonic aircraft. Because of this, Feulner and Weyrich conceived of a new think tank with a different model, one that would instead use its research to educate policymakers and influence their decisions. In the idea that became the Heritage Foundation, the think tank would de-emphasize “long reports” and instead concentrate more of its research on “short backgrounders” so that “congressmen could get a quick opinion on their way to the floor.” ³²During 2019, Heritage published 83 “Backgrounders” versus 12 “Special Reports.” ³³

The idea conceived in 1971 was presented to Coors Brewing Company president and right-of-center donor Joseph Coors in 1972, and Coors wrote out a $250,000 donation as the seed money for what became the Heritage Foundation (nearly $1.6 million in 2021 dollars). Feulner later said, “There wouldn’t be a Heritage Foundation without Joe Coors.” ³⁴

Weyrich became Heritage’s first president when it was founded in 1973, and Feulner became one of the founding trustees. Four years later in 1977, after several leadership changes during Heritage’s early years, Feulner became the president and held the position until 2013. ^{35 36}

Feulner’s biography at the Heritage website described his vision for leading the organization for nearly four decades:³⁷

“He did not want to lead a group of academics that would write studies, place them on a shelf and hope someone important would read them. Instead, Feulner decided that Heritage would operate like a business that expected progress from its analysts and results from their policy studies. Heritage would achieve these results by creating timely, concise studies and aggressively marketing them to Congress, policymakers and the media.” ³⁸

Influence

In January 2020, for the third consecutive year, Heritage was ranked as the top think tank in the “Significant Impact on Public Policy” category of the 2019 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program. In its annual ranking, the Penn report considers more than 8,200 think tanks in the world and surveys the opinion of nearly 4,000 journalists, donors, and policy experts. ³⁹

Heritage’s policy range covers dozens of subject areas, and most every major issue that affects federal and state elected officials. In 2019 Heritage policy experts testified 33 times before Congressional committees, and produced more than 200 advisory documents, including 12 special policy reports. ⁴⁰

Heritage has had major influence over both policy making and policy successes during several Republican presidential administrations, in particular those of Reagan and Trump. ⁴¹ It also has been critical of Republican presidents when they have rejected Heritage’s policy goals⁴² and accomplished major policy objectives during a Democratic presidential administration. ^{43 44}

Reagan Administration

During the 1980 presidential election, Heritage produced Mandate for Leadership, a 20 volume, 3,000-page guide of policy advice for whomever won the presidency. After winning the election, President Ronald Reagan delivered a 1,100-page abridged edition of the document to attendees of his first cabinet meeting. A follow-up set of recommendations was published for Reagan’s second term in office. ^{45 46}

According The Atlantic, the Reagan Administration implemented at least 60 percent of the proposals. The late right-leaning essayist and National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., quipped that Heritage’s influence was the reason “Mr. Reagan’s tenure was 60 percent successful.” Analyzing 22 policy ideas put forward by Reagan in his second inaugural address in 1985, a New York Times report noted that “the wording of the president’s speech and the foundation’s document were different” but “many of the proposals were strikingly similar.” ^{47 48}

Examples of Heritage ideas the Reagan administration turned into federal policy included a 23 percent reduction in federal taxes across all income groups, the creation of “enterprise zones” (tax and regulatory relief offered to entrepreneurs willing to invest in blighted urban areas), and the Strategic Defense Initiative (research on a defensive shield to protect the nation from a nuclear missile attack). ^{49 50}

George H.W. Bush Administration

When President George H.W. Bush succeeded Reagan in 1989, Heritage advised him to preserve Reagan’s tax reductions. During the 1988 Republican National Convention, Bush pledged to the delegates that he would not raise taxes: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” ⁵¹

Bush abandoned this pledge during federal budget negotiations with congressional Democrats in 1990, a course change that Heritage publicly opposed. A Heritage analyst warned that surrendering to tax hikes would have severe political consequences: “If Bush expects to keep the support of the people who put him in office, he must read their lips. They are saying: Mr. President, keep your promise: No new taxes.” ⁵²

Bush was defeated when he stood for reelection in 1992.

Clinton Administration

As a candidate, future President Bill Clinton strongly supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a trade agreement that had been a Heritage-supported priority since the 1980s. The idea for a unified trade zone linking the economies of the United States, Canada, and Mexico had initially been raised by Ronald Reagan during his 1980 presidential campaign, and was developed and negotiated during the Reagan and Bush administrations. In 1993, during his first year in office and despite opposition from most of his fellow Democrats in Congress and many large left-leaning labor unions, Clinton successfully lobbied Congress to ratify the treaty. ^{53 54}

In a November 1993 analysis, Heritage praised Clinton’s role in NAFTA’s approval and the new president’s stated desire to expand it to other nations in Latin America: “In so doing, he will move even closer to the conservative vision of a hemisphere-wide free trade area.” ⁵⁵

Welfare reform—limiting the entitlement and moving former welfare recipients into jobs—was also a major long-term policy objective of Heritage. In 1996, Clinton aligned with a Republican-controlled Congress to create the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, a welfare reform law that was supported by Heritage and largely adopted the right-leaning think tank’s major recommendations. ⁵⁶

As a candidate in 1992 Clinton had campaigned on the promise to “end welfare as we know it.” The reform he signed limited a recipient to no more than five years of lifetime welfare support, required most recipients to find gainful employment, and gave states greater flexibility in administering their welfare programs. According to a 2016 analysis in The Atlantic, 13 million Americans were receiving “cash assistance” from the government during the year before welfare reform was passed, and that number fell to 3 million by 2016. ⁵⁷

Trump Administration

In August 2016, Heritage board member, co-founder and long-time president Ed Feulner was named as a member of the transition team for then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. After Trump’s election victory that November, Heritage continued to be an influence on the policy decisions throughout the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal reported that future Vice President Mike Pence was “a conservative close to Heritage” who “took control of the Trump transition effort days after the November election” and turned to Heritage to move quickly and “help bolster a thinly staffed transition operation to oversee the handoff between administrations.” ^{58 59}

Many Heritage policy staffers, with the encouragement of the Heritage Foundation, became employees within the new administration. The Wall Street Journal reported that many Heritage alumni began working in the West Wing of the White House, and that more than “a dozen Heritage staffers served on different landing teams across a range of cabinet agencies, including the Defense, State and Treasury departments.” Examples included Russ Vought, a former deputy at Heritage Action who became the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget; Paul Winfree, who became deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council; and James Sherk, a Heritage labor policy staffer who also joined the Domestic Policy Council. By June 2018, the New York Times reported at least 66 former Heritage employees had landed administration positions. ^{60 61}

The New York Times also reported that Heritage vice president for policy promotion Ed Corrigan joined the Trump transition team within weeks after Trump’s election victory and “oversaw the staffing of 10 different domestic agencies.” According to the Times, Heritage had prepared for the job two years earlier when it compiled a “searchable database” of 3,000 potential employees who could fill the thousands of appointed positions under the control of the president. Many of the Trump administration’s first cabinet secretaries and top administrators were on this list, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Office of Management and Budget Director and later White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. ⁶²

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Heritage published Mandate for Leadership, a report with 321 policy reform recommendations for whoever became the new president. One year into the Trump administration, Heritage estimated the new administration had “embraced fully” 64 percent of the proposals. ⁶³

Also, during the 2016 campaign, Trump said he had asked Heritage and the Federalist Society to compile a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees for him to choose from if elected and given the opportunity to appoint new justices. John Malcolm, director of Heritage’s Meese legal center, prepared the list for Heritage. After he was elected, Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the first of three Supreme Court positions that became available during his term. A 2017 report about Gorsuch in Politico referred to Malcolm as “the man who picked the next Supreme Court justice.” ^{64 65}

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a major overhaul of the tax code promoted by Trump and enacted in late 2017, was created with the input of Stephen Moore (both a Heritage tax policy expert and Trump administration official). The Heritage 2017 annual report states that then-OMB director Mick Mulvaney “quickly called on us to help” when the administration began drafting its tax cut plan. ⁶⁶

Heritage claimed in 2017 that the administration had adopted so many of its long-desired reforms of the regulatory state that “Red Tape Rising,” Heritage’s annual tabulation of the cost and number of federal regulations, was renamed “Red Tape Receding.” ⁶⁷

Heritage also stated its policy experts played a “major role” in assisting the administration in the drafting of what became the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a North American trade agreement that updated and rewrote NAFTA. ⁶⁸

Policy Advocacy

Environment

Throughout its history Heritage has provided significant research and advice in the energy and environmental policy fields. The Heritage policy position is that “greenhouse gas emissions are affecting the climate” and that human behavior “plays a role in a changing climate.” ⁶⁹

Heritage’s general recommendation is that policymakers should promote economic growth (i.e.: preserving a wealthy nation that can conquer many challenges) as the most important environmental protection strategy:

Without question, extreme weather and long-term climate changes can adversely affect communities and infrastructure. The federal government (when applicable), state and local governments, and the private sector should address climate-related infrastructure vulnerabilities through site- and situation-specific analysis and spending. ⁷⁰

Heritage advises that access to reliable energy is central to economic growth and must remain a priority policy goal: “global warming is neither a planetary emergency nor does it necessitate massive, costly government programs to curtail energy use.” ⁷¹

Heritage advised against the Obama administration’s use of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions, stating this policy had “unnecessarily driven up energy prices and eliminated choices, while having no meaningful climate impact.” Similarly, Heritage has recommended against the imposition of carbon taxes and against implementing the Green New Deal, asserting that both would harm economic growth while providing negligible progress toward global temperature reduction. ⁷²

Nuclear Energy

Heritage has repeatedly promoted the value of carbon-free nuclear power as a “safe, clean, and affordable energy source” with the potential to produce a much larger share of American electricity and reduce carbon emissions. ⁷³ Heritage recommends a comprehensive “overhaul” of nuclear energy regulations and argues that needless regulatory burdens imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are holding back a build-out of nuclear power. ⁷⁴

A 2008 Heritage analysis advised: “When considered properly, nuclear power is the only available technology that is adequate, affordable, reliable, safe, and environmentally clean. If the nation wants to limit CO₂ emissions, then it must turn to nuclear power.” ⁷⁵ In a March 2009 report, Heritage advised the incoming Obama administration to help meet its energy and environmental goals by adopting a seven-point plan to increase the use of nuclear power. ⁷⁶

Energy Subsidies

Heritage recommends the elimination of all taxpayer subsidies for every form of energy:⁷⁷

Energy companies do not need government incentives. With the enormous value of the energy market (over $6 trillion for electricity and transportation fuels), any innovative technology or company that could capture even a tiny sliver of this market would be enormously successful. There is no such thing as a perfect energy resource or technology. All have tradeoffs and benefits that should be weighed by investors and customers rather than politicians and bureaucrats. Subsidies muddle this rational decision-making process. ⁷⁸

A 2020 Heritage report asserted that subsidies for wind and solar energy are particularly counterproductive: ⁷⁹

Wind and solar energy impose hidden costs on other power plants, especially in states that mandate renewable energy use. Consistently reliable plants—usually coal, natural gas, or nuclear—must be available as backup power and consequently must run inefficiently to accommodate wind and solar. According to a study by the Institute for Energy Research, this imposes hidden costs of at least $21 extra per megawatt-hour for solar, and $24 per megawatt-hour for wind.” ⁸⁰

In December 2019, a Heritage researcher argued that a political bias for wind and solar harmed the development of reliable, zero-carbon energy options:⁸¹

Very often, presidential candidates, government officials at all levels and sometimes voters have equated clean energy with renewable energy, rather than considering the actual environmental results of energy choices. Deployed in regulatory schemes, mandates and big-government handouts, such narrow definitions have actually shut out nuclear power from providing affordable, reliable electricity. ⁸²

Education

Heritage researchers have historically provided substantial advice regarding potential reforms to K-12 education. Heritage recommends reducing the federal government’s influence over education and empowering parents with the resources and authority to decide where and how their children should be educated. ⁸³

Heritage’s policy advice prioritizes school choice generally, subsidies to permit parents to use state education dollars to send their children to private schools (particularly for children in underperforming public schools), and the creation of education savings accounts (ESAs). ^{84 85}

ESA programs place education tax dollars into individual savings accounts for each child, under control of parents who may use the accounts to custom-build an education program to meet the learning needs of each child. ESA accounts may be used for any valid education expense, such as tuition at a private school, individual classes at a public school, online courses, homeschool textbooks, community college classes, and tutoring for specific subjects. ⁸⁶

National Security and Foreign Policy

National security and foreign affairs constitute a major research area for Heritage. Heritage policy advisors generally recommend prioritizing funding for military readiness and a strong leadership role for the United States against international terrorism and other foreign threats. ⁸⁷

On the national security spending side, a webpage listing Heritage’s 2020 policy recommendations included specific items such as “Increase funding for ship construction,” “Invest in the Coast Guard,” “Continue to invest in U.S. Cyber Command,” “Support Marine Corps procurement of ground and aviation platforms,” and “Fund consumables such as ammunition, fuel, and spare parts.” On the cost-containment side of the defense budget, the report recommended “Commit to Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) iteration,” a policy designed to dispose of military bases and infrastructure no longer needed by the Department of Defense yet frequently protected from elimination by members of Congress whose districts contain the obsolete infrastructure. ⁸⁸

Under the heading of “Radical Islamic Terrorism,” Heritage’s Solutions 2020 webpage included items such as “Finish the job against ISIS while encouraging regional allies to step up,” “Allocate resources to contain future threats from newly released terrorists—at home and abroad,” and “Roll back the Muslim Brotherhood.” ⁸⁹

The Solutions 2020 list declared that “Iran’s radical Islamist regime poses the greatest long-term Middle Eastern threat to the United States and its allies.” Escalating international and American economic sanctions on Iran, deploying U.S. forces to the region, and applying pressure against Iran’s human rights abuses were some of the strategies Heritage recommended to contain the Iranian regime. ⁹⁰

Solutions 2020 described Russia as a “21st-century country with 19th-century ambitions” that would remain “a geopolitical adversary and competitor for NATO and the United States” so long as Vladimir Putin retained a leadership role in Russia. The report included several recommendations regarding increased U.S. cooperation within NATO and with other allies in regions close to Russian borders. ⁹¹

The Solutions 2020 page listed North Korea as “one of the most dangerous threats to U.S. national security interests” and “a multifaceted military threat to peace and stability in Asia, as well as a global proliferation risk.” Heritage recommended several programs aimed at curtailing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, increased U.S. military exercises in the region, and the use of economic sanctions to influence North Korea’s behavior. ⁹²

Health Care

Reform of health care policy has also been a major Heritage research area. Heritage advisors have opposed health care proposals such as a full government takeover of the health care system under “Medicare for All” and other “single-payer” proposals. They also recommend repealing the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). ⁹³

Heritage experts generally favor policies that place health care dollars under control of patients, remove power and influence from healthcare bureaucracies, and use market incentives to reduce health care costs. Specific policy recommendations have included removing federal restrictions and regulations on low cost, high deductible, catastrophic insurance policies; reducing restrictions on and expanding the use of health savings accounts; and eliminating obstacles preventing access to Direct Primary Care physicians who do not accept insurance, but instead provide patients unlimited visits and all basic primary care services in exchange for a monthly membership fee. ^{94 95}

Programs and Communications

The Heritage Foundation operates a wide variety of both internal programs and external outreach to promote its public policy research and recommendations. In some instances, it has also promoted policy solutions and discussions in alliance with center-left organizations. ^{96 97}

The Daily Signal

The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia website providing investigative reports, policy news, and commentary. Using the format of a daily local newspaper website, the Daily Signal provides individual subject sections, letters from readers, book reviews and a podcast. ⁹⁸

As of 2019 the Daily Signal claimed 405,000 subscribers to “Morning Bell,” its daily email. ⁹⁹

An example of the Daily Signal’s investigative work was a 2012 report about the film Promised Land, produced by Participant, a film studio created by left-leaning philanthropist Jeffrey Skoll. The fictional drama, starring Matt Damon and John Krasinski, portrays hydraulic fracturing (a common and effective process used to extract domestic natural gas) as the cause of contaminated water that kills cows. A fictional energy company in the film is portrayed as deploying an elaborate and sinister conspiracy to conceal the supposed fracking dangers. ¹⁰⁰

Shortly before the release of Promised Land, Participant confirmed that Image Media Abu Dhabi had assisted with funding the film. A report from the Daily Signal showed that Image Media Abu Dhabi was a “wholly owned by the government of the UAE [United Arab Emirates].” The UAE is a major exporter of oil and natural gas and a prominent member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) price cartel. The UAE government has a major economic interest in preventing non-OPEC nations such as the United States from becoming more significant oil and natural gas producers. ¹⁰¹

Digital Media

In a 2019 annual report Heritage claimed 45 million combined visitors to the websites of the Daily Signal and the Heritage Foundation. The report also stated Heritage’s social media reach was 3.1 million Facebook fans and 727,000 Twitter followers. Heritage listed 70.9 million views of its videos in 2019 and 303,000 subscribers to its weekly email (in addition to the 405,000 subscribers to the Daily Signal’s daily email). ¹⁰²

Mass Media and Events

In 2019, Heritage hosted 159 public events. Also, according to Heritage’s 2019 annual report, the think tank’s staffers appeared on nearly 1,800 television shows, gave 3,100 radio interviews, and had their commentaries placed more than 1,800 times in major mainstream publications. ¹⁰³

Index of Economic Freedom

Beginning in 1995, Heritage began producing an annual Index of Economic Freedom, which measures and ranks nearly every nation based on 12 categories, such as property rights, labor freedom, government integrity, and fiscal health. Each component is scored 1 (worst) to 100 (ideal), with the average of the 12 components comprising a country’s overall score. ¹⁰⁴

Nations scoring 80 or better are ranked as fully “free.” Those scoring between 70 and 79.9 are ranked as “mostly free,” those between 60 and 69.9 as “moderately free,” those between 50 and 59.9 as “mostly unfree,” and those below 50 as “repressed.” ¹⁰⁵

The global average ranking in the 2021 Index of Economic Freedom was 61.6. The United States scored 74.8, behind 19 other nations and classified as “mostly free.” Only five nations exceeded a score of 80 and obtained the fully “free” classification: Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and Ireland. ¹⁰⁶

Cooperation with the Center-Left

At several points during its history Heritage has participated in outreach efforts with left-of-center policy organizations and (when applicable) jointly recommended common solutions with these organizations.

Some examples include:

• In 2018 Heritage hosted a Communities of Color Breakfast, a monthly meeting to discuss challenges facing minority communities, that was co-sponsored by Insight America and the left-leaning National Urban League. ¹⁰⁷
• Also, in 2018 Heritage, the center-left Brookings Institution, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program co-hosted the 2018 North American Think Tank Summit. ¹⁰⁸
• In September 2015, representatives of Heritage and the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union jointly signed a newspaper editorial recommending reform of civil asset forfeiture laws. The authors wrote: “The Heritage Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union seldom see eye-to-eye on an issue, but our two organizations both seek to reform a broken civil forfeiture system that regularly violates property and civil rights, and undermines the integrity of our justice system.” ¹⁰⁹
• Heritage and Brookings have been partners on other projects. In October 2005, the two organizations, along with the National Press Foundation, co-hosted a seminar to discuss the risk posed by growing federal budget deficits. ¹¹⁰ A similar budget and deficit seminar was co-hosted by Heritage and Brookings in April 2004. ¹¹¹

Heritage Action for America

For more information, please see: Heritage Action for America

Heritage Action for America (Heritage Action) is the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying and electoral advocacy arm. Heritage Action staffers directly lobby federal politicians to follow the Heritage Foundation’s policy advice. Heritage Action’s direct lobbying is supplemented and reinforced by the Heritage Action “Sentinels,” nearly 20,000 members across the nation who are mobilized and equipped to pressure their own federal lawmakers on each of Heritage Action’s priorities. ¹¹²

Heritage Action was created in 2010. As of March 2021, Jessica Anderson was the executive director and the “staff” page showed 22 additional employees. ¹¹³ Federal Tax filings for 2018 showed total expenses of nearly $11 million, total revenue of $11.3 million, and net assets of $5.8 million. ¹¹⁴

Strategic Goal

In April 2010, Edwin Feulner, then the Heritage Foundation’s president, and Michael Needham, the first CEO of Heritage Action, announced the birth of Heritage Action with a co-authored opinion in the Wall Street Journal. Noting that the Heritage Foundation had been referred to as “the beast” of policy research think tanks, Feulner and Needham declared that Heritage Action was intended to become the “new fangs” on the “beast.” ¹¹⁵

Describing Heritage Action’s strategy, Feulner and Needham wrote that it would “guarantee that when a wavering congressman thinks of voting for higher taxes, increased regulation, or a weaker national defense, television ads in his home district will remind him that a vote for bigger government is a vote for less freedom.” The pair also wrote that these advertisements would be supplemented by Heritage Action advocates in every state who would visit members of congress in their home offices and let them know to “vote the right way or start looking for a new line of work.” ¹¹⁶

In their conclusion they wrote: “The Heritage Foundation will continue to shed light with its fact-based research. Action for America will provide the political heat.” ¹¹⁷

Legislative Scorecard

Heritage Action has compiled a Legislative Scorecard for each session of Congress since the 112^th Congress (in session during 2011 and 2012). The Scorecard assigns a percentage grade to every lawmaker that is based on roll call votes and bill sponsorship for legislation related to the Heritage Foundation’s policy advice. ¹¹⁸

For the 116^th Congress (in session for 2019 and 2020), the Heritage Action Legislative Scorecard gave an average grade of 1 percent to House Democrats and 85 percent to House Republicans. Similarly, Senate Democrats received an average grade of 3 percent, and Senate Republicans 73 percent. ¹¹⁹

The Sentinel Program

Heritage Action provides its nearly 20,000 activist members, the Sentinels, with general training programs and specific assistance for each Heritage Action agenda item that comes before Congress. ¹²⁰

Prior to what Heritage Action defines as the “key votes” on items to be judged as part of the Legislative Scorecard, the organization alerts lawmakers and media that the vote will be “scored.” In concert with this, Heritage Action’s Sentinels are provided with talking points to use when advising their respective senators and representatives to follow Heritage Action’s advice. The Sentinels are also provided with “Issue Toolkits,” which include suggested language, graphics, and memes to use when making social media posts regarding the key votes and legislation. ^{121 122}

As an example, a March 2021 alert recommended that senators cast a vote against the confirmation of Xavier Becerra, who was then President Joe Biden’s nominee to become Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The alert stated: “Heritage Action opposes the Becerra nomination and will include the confirmation vote on our legislative scorecard.” Similarly, an Issue Toolkit referenced Becerra’s actions as Attorney General of California as recommend language to be used on Twitter: “Xavier Becerra has little to no experience in health care. What he has done, however, is sue Catholic nuns to try and force them to pay for abortions. Becerra isn’t pro-choice…he’s pro-abortion…and way too radical for America.” ^{123 124}

Personnel

President

Kay C. James became president of the Heritage Foundation in 2018. She had been a trustee on the Heritage board of directors since 2005. ¹²⁵ In March 2021, she announced her intention to step down upon the appointment of a successor. ¹²⁶

Four American presidents have appointed her to numerous executive branch management and advisory positions. She was a senior advisor for the transition team of President Donald Trump, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for President George W. Bush, the associate director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in the George H.W. Bush administration, assistant secretary for public affairs at the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George H.W. Bush administration, sat on the board of the National Commission on Children during the Reagan administration. ¹²⁷

Outside of her work for presidents, James has frequently held professional, advisory, and volunteer positions relating to education and poverty mitigation. She was raised by a single mother, spent her early childhood living in the housing projects of Richmond, Virginia, and became one of the first children to desegregate Virginia’s then-all-white schools. ¹²⁸

She has held positions on the Fairfax County, Virginia School Board; the Virginia Commonwealth University board of visitors; and the Virginia State Board of Education. James is a former secretary of health and human resources for the state of Virginia, and the founder of the Gloucester Institute, a mentoring organization for college-age African Americans. ¹²⁹

James has held corporate board positions at PNC Financial Services Group, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Phycor, Magellan Health Services, and Amerigroup Corporation. She is also a former senior vice president of the Family Research Council, and a former director of public affairs at the National Right to Life Committee. ¹³⁰

She received an undergraduate degree from Hampton University, one of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities. ¹³¹

Board

As of 2021, Heritage was governed by a 21-member board, which included the president, Kay C. James. Some additional members of the 2021 board are listed below:¹³²

Barb Van Andel-Gaby is the board chair. As of 2021, she was also the co-trustee (along with Richard Gaby) of the eponymous Richard & Barbara Gaby Foundation and a board member of Alticor (the parent company of Amway). She is a former vice-president of the Amway Hotel Corporation, and the daughter of the late Jay Van Andel, co-founder of Amway. She became a Heritage board member in 1996. ^{133 134 135}

Michael W. Gleba is the board vice-chair. As of 2021, Gleba was the CEO/chairman of the Sarah Scaife Foundation and had held board or advisory positions with several additional center-right policy organizations. He joined the Heritage board in 2016. ¹³⁶

Trustee Edwin Feulner was the founder of the Heritage Foundation and its president from 1977 until 2013. He reprised this role as interim president in 2017, prior to the hiring of James. ¹³⁷

Thomas Saunders III is another trustee and the former board chair. Saunders was the chair of the Heritage board for a decade, until 2018. He is an investment fund manager and the founder of two firms in this field. ¹³⁸

Edwin Meese III is another trustee. Meese served as U.S. Attorney General during the Reagan administration and a close political advisor, employee, and friend of the former president for all of Ronald Reagan’s political career.  Meese took on the first of his formal roles with Heritage in 1988, the final year of the Reagan presidency. He became the founding chair of its Center for Legal and Judicial Studies in 2001 and held the post until what he referred to as “semi-retirement” in 2013. He became a Heritage board member in 2017. ¹³⁹

Trustee Steve Forbes is a former Republican presidential candidate, journalist, business executive, and frequent cable television news commentator. He is the president and CEO of Forbes, Inc., the publisher of Forbes magazine and parent of other eponymously named media properties. He joined the Heritage board in 2001. ¹⁴⁰

William Middendorf II is a former Secretary of the Navy, has held three different posts as a foreign ambassador for the United States, and advises federal politicians on foreign affairs, trade and defense policy. He became a Heritage trustee in 1989. ¹⁴¹

Rebekah Mercer is a private business owner, the director of the Mercer Family Foundation, and a board member for several additional center-right organizations. She is the daughter of computer scientist and hedge fund manager Robert Mercer. ¹⁴²

Abby Spencer Moffat is the CEO of the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation and a board member for other policy organizations. ¹⁴³

Staff

As of March 2021, the staffing page of the Heritage website listed at least 250 individuals. Notable staff included:¹⁴⁴

Tommy Binion was listed as vice president for government relations. ¹⁴⁵

Robert Bluey was listed as vice president for communications and the executive editor for the Daily Signal, Heritage’s daily news outlet. ¹⁴⁶

James Carafano was listed on the Heritage website as the “vice president of Heritage’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and the E. W. Richardson Fellow.” ¹⁴⁷

Ken Cuccinelli was the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration and is a former attorney general of Virginia. He joined Heritage in 2021 as a visiting fellow for national security and foreign policy issues. ¹⁴⁸

Becky Norton Dunlop was the vice president for external relations at Heritage from 1998 until 2016, and a member of the Trump administration transition team. As of 2021 the Heritage website described her as “special projects” and traveling as “an ambassador” for Heritage as the “Heritage Foundation’s Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow.” ¹⁴⁹

Mike Gonzalez was listed on the Heritage website as the “senior fellow in Heritage’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy and the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum fellow.” ¹⁵⁰

Kim Holmes was listed as executive vice president of the Heritage Foundation and is a former assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs during the George W. Bush administration. ¹⁵¹Holmes announced his resignation alongside Heritage president Kay C. James in March 2021. ¹⁵²

John Malcolm was listed as a senior legal fellow and director of Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. ¹⁵³

Mike Pence began his role as a visiting fellow at Heritage in 2021, after four years as the vice president of the United States. He is also a former governor of Indiana and former U.S. Representative. ¹⁵⁴

Jack Spencer was listed as the vice president for Heritage’s Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity. ¹⁵⁵

Hans A. von Spakovsky was listed as a senior legal fellow and the manager of Heritage’s election law reform initiative. ¹⁵⁶

Genevieve Wood was listed as a senior advisor and spokesperson. ¹⁵⁷

Bridgett Wagner was listed as the vice president for policy promotion. ¹⁵⁸

Finances

In its 2019 annual report Heritage claimed to have more than 500,000 individual donors to either the Heritage Foundation or Heritage Action. ¹⁵⁹ Additional information regarding its financing is available from federal tax forms submitted by the Heritage Foundation and many of its foundation donors.

2018 Finances

For tax year 2018 the Heritage Foundation reported more than $81 million in revenue. For tax years 2012 through 2018, cumulative total revenue was approximately $633 million, for an average of $90.4 million per year. Heritage reported $79.9 million in total expenses for 2018, with salaries ($37.9 million) the largest line item. Heritage reported $250.6 million in net assets at the end of 2018, for liquidity equivalent to 300 percent of expenses at the 2018 level. ^{160 161}

Contributions and grants accounted for $75.6 million of Heritage’s $81 million total revenue for 2018. Investment income ($4.4 million) was the second-largest source of 2018 revenue. ¹⁶²

Private Foundation Support

According to the recordkeeping service Foundation Search, approximately $5.4 million of the $75.6 million in contributions and grants in 2018 were provided by 292 private foundation sources, with 280 of these donors providing grants of less than $100,000. ^{163 164}

More than $1.5 million of the $5.4 million in private foundation donations for Heritage in 2018 was provided by three donor-advised fund providers: the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, the Schwab Charitable Fund, and the Chicago Community Trust. ¹⁶⁵

A donor-advised fund manages charitable accounts through which donors can distribute gifts to charities of their choice while receiving immediate tax benefits. Many of the largest, such as those noted above, exist to serve the clients of large investment firms or residents of a metropolitan area, rather than a particular charitable cause or ideological agenda.

Outside of the large donor-advised funds, the three largest of Heritage’s institutional foundation donors in 2018 were as follows:¹⁶⁶

• Lillian S. Wells Foundation ($1 million). In 2018 this foundation also gave six figure donations to two other right-of-center organizations: the James Madison Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. ¹⁶⁷
• Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($200,000). In 2018 this foundation also gave donations in excess of $100,000 to libertarian and right of center organizations such as the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the Daily Caller News Foundation; and to centrist-left organizations such as the Vera Institute of Justice, the Brookings Institution and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. More than half of Koch’s 2018 grants (at least $64 million) were given to programs affiliated with approximately 100 public and private universities. ¹⁶⁸

• Henry E. Haller Jr. Foundation ($200,000). In 2018 this foundation also gave five figure donations to other right-of-center organizations, such as the Federalist Society and the Media Research Center. ¹⁶⁹

For donation years 1998 through 2018, Foundation Search reports Heritage receiving a cumulative total of more than 4,300 separate foundation grants totaling in excess of $274 million, for an average of $13 million per year. The ten largest foundation contributors during the 21-year period were as follows: the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund ($16.8 million over 21 years), the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($13.7 million), the DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative ($13.3 million), the Herrick Foundation ($12.6 million), the National Christian Charitable Foundation ($11.4 million), the Howard Charitable Foundation ($10.4 million), the Noble Research Institute ($9.2 million), the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation ($9 million), the Lillian S. Wells Foundation ($8 million), and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation ($7.9 million). ¹⁷⁰

DeMint Tenure Controversy

In April 2013, former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) became president of the Heritage Foundation, taking over for retiring Heritage co-founder Ed Feulner, who had been president since 1977. Four years later, on May 2, 2017, the Heritage Foundation board of trustees, including Feulner, voted unanimously to request (and then accept) the resignation of DeMint and reappoint Feulner as interim president until a permanent replacement could be hired. ^{171 172 173}

In an official statement regarding the decision, Heritage board chairman Thomas Saunders III said the following: “After a comprehensive and independent review of the entire Heritage organization, the Board determined there were significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation. While the organization has seen many successes, Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems.” ¹⁷⁴

Alleged Management Dispute

Multiple media accounts of the decision to remove DeMint implied there had been a management feud between DeMint and then-Heritage Action director Michael Needham.

Politico cited information gathered from “a dozen sources at the center of the drama” which suggested that “Heritage’s stewards — particularly DeMint’s predecessor, Ed Feulner, and Feulner’s sharp-elbowed protégé, Mike Needham — became convinced that DeMint was incapable of renewing the foundation’s place as an intellectual wellspring of the conservative movement.” ¹⁷⁵

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the inner workings of the foundation,” reported that “Heritage officials had leaned on Mr. DeMint to resign over the past week after the leadership dispute, which pitted one faction loyal to Mr. DeMint against another loyal to Michael Needham.” ¹⁷⁶

However, after conceding there had been rumors of the alleged dispute, the Washington Post quoted (on the record) Heritage trustee Bill Walton, who said the decision he and the rest of the board made was not because of a “Needham versus DeMint” dispute. Instead, Walton told the Post that DeMint’s dismissal was due to “boring old management stuff.” ¹⁷⁷

Walton also said: “What we came away with was we thought there was significant and worsening management issues, leading to breakdowns in cooperation and communication . . . We had too many layers of management.” ¹⁷⁸

Heritage Action

Allegations of mismanagement of the Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm, Heritage Action, was also cited in many media accounts as a reason for DeMint’s dismissal. Some reports implied DeMint had allowed Heritage Action to become too aggressive, and in so doing had damaged the Heritage Foundation’s relationships and influence in Congress. ¹⁷⁹ Alternatively, other sources alleged DeMint’s fault was in trying to restrain Heritage Action. ¹⁸⁰

According to a September 2013 report in The Atlantic, during that summer Heritage Action, under DeMint’s direction, had “spent half a million dollars on online ads targeting 100 Republican House members” who were not participating in a Heritage Action strategy to force then-President Barack Obama to defund the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). In a national promotional tour to support the strategy, DeMint told an interviewer that Republicans fearful of Heritage Action’s ObamaCare strategy “need to be replaced.” ¹⁸¹

This attitude was criticized by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who accused Heritage Action of “destroying the Republican Party” and becoming a “purely partisan group that never asks anybody’s opinion.” ¹⁸²

Also, during July 2013, Heritage Action applied lobbying and grassroots pressure on a vote over a farm bill. The strategy became controversial when Republican lawmakers accused Heritage Action of changing its advice at the last minute and trying to punish them for adhering to Heritage Action’s original recommendation. The original recommendation had been for Republicans to separate food stamp funding into a separate piece of legislation. Republicans succeeded in separating the two issues, but then said Heritage Action changed the standard and confused the situation by continuing to apply pressure for a vote against the bill even after the food stamp funding had been removed. ^{183 184}

As a result, after the farm bill incident Heritage Foundation staffers, who had been regular attendees for decades and even lunch sponsors for meetings of the Republican Study Committee, were barred from the meetings. ^{185 186} Then-Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) criticized Heritage Action’s farm bill behavior: “We went into battle thinking they were on our side, and we find out they’re shooting at us.” ¹⁸⁷

DeMint’s response to the farm bill controversy was to assert that Heritage Action was doing its job: “Exposing folks, it certainly makes them angry, and in the normal agenda let’s just pass a farm bill and the other gravy train stuff . . . Heritage and Heritage Action has gotten in the way of business as usual.” ¹⁸⁸

It is unclear when or if DeMint may have altered his opinion of Heritage Action’s relations with Congress.

A Wall Street Journal account from the day of DeMint’s dismissal in May 2017 implied he had decided to restrain Heritage Action: “Mr. DeMint sought to preserve Heritage’s relationships on Capitol Hill by curtailing Heritage Action’s aggressive posture toward Republicans. But others have faulted the foundation for providing fewer ideas that could advance conservatives in government, a weakness exposed now that the GOP has faced difficulty advancing any major legislation through a Republican-controlled Congress and White House. ¹⁸⁹

Conversely, a Washington Post report from the same day, citing “people familiar with the situation,” stated that board member and former president Ed Feulner had become “concerned that the DeMint-era emphasis on political activism overshadowed the institution’s role in the intellectual development of the conservative movement.” ¹⁹⁰ Also in a report published that day an unnamed Republican policy expert told Politico that DeMint had been pushing the two Heritage organizations toward more aggressive Congressional pressure and advocacy. ¹⁹¹

Sheldon Whitehouse Enemies List

During July 2016, Heritage was one of 32 free-market policy organizations that were denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by 19 Democratic senators. Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the campaign was aimed at passage of a Congressional resolution that would have called on the non-profit groups to cooperate with “active or future investigations” of their climate-policy positions that might be launched against them by federal or state law enforcement officials. Whitehouse accused Heritage and the other organizations of work that was creating a “filthy thing in our democracy.” ^{192 193}

Whitehouse’s proposed resolution was adding onto the work he had begun in a May 2015 opinion piece in the Washington Post, wherein he advocated for a federal lawsuit against the energy industry using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Originally designed for and used in criminal cases to prosecute the mafia, RICO has a civil-lawsuit component that has since been applied to corporate targets such as cigarette manufacturers. Whitehouse admitted in the opinion piece that he did not “have enough information” to know whether “racketeering activity” had occurred with the energy industry but speculated the civil discovery in a RICO lawsuit might uncover the evidence he was seeking. In March 2016, then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced she had referred Whitehouse’s RICO concern to the FBI. ^{194 195}

During the early summer of 2016, the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands sent a subpoena to the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), demanding private internal research records, communications, and donor information. Two weeks later, Whitehouse and the 18 Democratic senators launched their program demanding that Heritage and other free-market organizations fully cooperate with investigations of this type. ¹⁹⁶

The CEI president responded, saying Whitehouse had become the “new Sen. Joe McCarthy,” and that it “is unhealthy for democracy and abusive when members of Congress create an enemies list based on policy positions.” ¹⁹⁷ And a joint letter sent to all of the Democratic Senators from Heritage and 22 free-market think tanks stated: “Your threat is clear: There is a heavy and inconvenient cost to disagreeing with you. Calls for debate will be met with political retribution. That’s called tyranny. And, we reject it.” ¹⁹⁸

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32. Ioffe, Julia. “A 31-Year-Old Is Tearing Apart the Heritage Foundation.” Heritage Foundation. November 24, 2013. Accessed March 16, 2021. https://newrepublic.com/article/115688/heritage-foundations-michael-needham-tears-apart-right-wing
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34. Miller, John J. “Joseph Coors, RIP.” Wall Street Journal. March 20, 2003. Accessed March 16, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122719750183444441
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