Conservative Think Tanks Gain Influence and Reshape Social-Issues Debate, Report Says

Conservative think tanks have grown dramatically in size and influence in the past decade, says a new report. They have succeeded not only in helping to win major political battles on social issues but in framing the very dimensions of the national debate.

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America’s Largest Conservative Think Tanks

Bankrolled in large part by a growing number of foundations and corporations, a score of non-profit policy institutions with an ideologically conservative bent have helped to refine and to popularize some ideas — like a flat tax, school vouchers, or the privatization of Social Security — that once loitered at the fringes of political discourse, says the report, published by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

“Since 1995, the national policy discussion in numerous areas has moved noticeably to the right,” the report says. “Major new efforts to expand the role of government in order to solve social or economic problems appear to be virtually unthinkable, despite the strong economy and a budget surplus.”

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, which says it “is committed to making philanthropy more responsive to people with the least wealth and opportunity,” previously has reported on the growth of conservative policy groups at the state level and on the grant making of conservative foundations.

Its latest study finds that the 20 wealthiest conservative think tanks together spent $158-million in 1996 — more than doubling their budgets since 1992. They are likely to spend an aggregate $1-billion in the current decade, it says.

“During the 1970s and 1980s, foundations, wealthy individuals, and corporations invested heavily to reshape the strategic terrain on which the war of ideas is fought,” the report says.

For decades, conservative grant makers — particularly the Lynde and Harry Bradley, J.M., John M. Olin, Sarah Scaife, and Smith Richardson Foundations — have supported the think tanks with grants, strategic guidance, and other assistance, it says.

The Heritage Foundation — the wealthiest of the conservative think tanks — has long since diversified its revenue sources to embrace wealthy individuals and grassroots members, and in 1996 got only one-fifth of its $29-million budget from foundations. But at other policy institutes, grants still made up as much as 70 per cent of their 1996 budgets.

U.S. corporations have been giving more money as well.

“Conservative think tanks have increasingly become a magnet for private-sector money,” says David Callahan, the report’s author, who is a fellow at the Century Foundation, in New York. “Corporations increasingly see them as effective tools for pushing their own interests within the political process.”

Thus pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and those that produce medical devices gave upwards of $400,000 to the Progress and Freedom Foundation for a major project on restructuring the federal Food and Drug Administration, the report says. And financial-services companies — which stand to reap major benefits if U.S. citizens are permitted to invest their Social Security taxes in the stock market — are among the major donors to the Cato Institute’s project on privatizing the Social Security system.

The think tanks have achieved their success partly by combining the kind of analysis traditionally done in policy institutes with robust marketing, fund raising, and grassroots mobilization that have helped to convert their research into a powerful political force.

The Heritage Foundation, for example, bought a supercomputer in hopes of being able to analyze proposed legislation and other policy changes with the same degree of speed and sophistication used by the federal Congressional Budget Office. Its analyses are quickly made available to members of Congress, the news media, and other influential opinion makers, and can also be distributed directly by using the institute’s own radio-broadcast facilities or Internet site.

Liberal policy institutes, by contrast, have far fewer resources and tend to focus on single issues without weaving them into an overarching philosophical framework, the report says.

“The conservatives have a critical mass of very large and well-funded multi-issue think tanks,” Mr. Callahan says. “Not only do they have a big picture of where they want to take America, but they also have details of various programs, down to how much money you’ll have in your privatized Social Security account. They’ve done a very good job of shifting the architectural framework of American politics to the right.”

Copies of the report, “$1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s,” are available for $25 from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 2001 S Street, N.W., Suite 620, Washington 20009; (202) 387-9177; fax (202) 332-5084. The price is $25 prepaid; committee members pay $12.50. Information about the report is also available on the committee’s Web site at http://www.ncrp.org.