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The Heritage Foundation, sometimes referred to simply as Heritage, is an activist American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1973, it took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage Foundation studies, including its Mandate for Leadership. The Heritage Foundation has had significant influence in U.S. public policy making, and has historically been ranked among the most influential public policy organizations in the United States. In 2010, it founded a sister organization, Heritage Action, an influential activist force in conservative and Republican politics. History Early years The Heritage Foundation was founded on February 16, 1973 during the Nixon administration by Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, and Joseph Coors. Growing out of the new business activist movement inspired by the Powell Memorandum, discontent with Richard Nixon's embrace of the liberal consensus, and the nonpolemical, cautious nature of existing think tanks, Weyrich and Feulner sought to create a conservative version of the Brookings Institution that advanced conservative policies. In its early years, Coors was the Heritage Foundation's primary funding source. Weyrich was the foundation's first president. Later, under Weyrich's successor, Frank J. Walton, the Heritage Foundation began using direct mail fundraising, which contributed to the growth of its annual income, which reached $1 million a year in 1976. By 1981, the annual budget grew to $5.3 million. The Heritage Foundation advocated for pro-business policies and anti-communism in its early years, but distinguished itself from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) by also advocating for cultural issues that were important to Christian conservatives" But throughout the 1970s, the Heritage Foundation remained small relative to Brookings and AEI. Reagan administration In January 1981, the Heritage Foundation published Mandate for Leadership, a comprehensive report aimed at reducing the size of the federal government. It provided public policy guidance to the incoming Reagan administration, and included over 2,000 specific policy recommendations on how the Reagan administration could utilize the federal government to advance conservative policies. The report was well received by the White House, and several of its authors went on to take positions in the Reagan administration. Ronald Reagan liked the ideas so much that he gave a copy to each member of his cabinet to review. Among the 2,000 Heritage proposals, approximately 60% of them were implemented or initiated by the end of Reagan's first year in office. Reagan later called the Heritage Foundation a "vital force" in the successes during his presidency. The Heritage Foundation was influential in developing and advancing the Reagan Doctrine, a key Reagan administration foreign policy initiative under which the U.S. began providing military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements fighting Soviet-aligned governments in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, and other nations during the final years of the Cold War. When Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in the 1980s, The Wall Street Journal later reported, "the Soviet leader offered a complaint: Reagan was influenced by the Heritage Foundation, Washington’s conservative think tank. The outfit lent intellectual energy to the Gipper’s agenda, including the Reagan Doctrine—the idea that America should support insurgents resisting communist domination." The Heritage Foundation also supported the development of a new ballistic missile defense system for the United States. In 1983, Reagan made the development of this new defense system, known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, his top defense priority. By mid-decade, the Heritage Foundation had begun emerging as a key organization in the national conservative movement, publishing influential reports on a broad range of policy issues by prominent conservative thought leaders. In 1986, in recognition of the Heritage Foundation's fast-growing influence, Time magazine labeled the Heritage Foundation "the foremost of the new breed of advocacy tanks". During the Reagan and subsequent George H. W. Bush administrations, the Heritage Foundation served as the brain trust on foreign policy to both administrations. George H. W. Bush administration The Heritage Foundation remained an influential voice on domestic and foreign policy issues during President George H. W. Bush's administration. In 1990 and 1991, the foundation was a leading proponent of Operation Desert Storm designed to liberate Kuwait following Saddam Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990. According to Baltimore Sun Washington bureau chief Frank Starr, the Heritage Foundation's studies "laid much of the groundwork for Bush administration thinking" about post-Soviet foreign policy. In domestic policy, the Bush administration agreed with six of the ten budget reform proposals the Heritage Foundation proposed in its Mandate for Leadership III book, which the administration included in its 1990 budget proposal. Clinton administration The Heritage Foundation continued to grow throughout the 1990s. The foundation's flagship journal, Policy Review, reached a circulation of 23,000. In 1993, Heritage was an opponent of the Clinton health care plan, which died in the U.S. Senate the following year, in August 1994. In the 1994 Congressional elections, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, and Newt Gingrich was elected as the new House Speaker in January 1995, largely based on commitments made in the Contract with America, which was issued six weeks prior to the 1994 elections. The Contract was a pact of principles that directly challenged the political status quo in Washington, D.C. and many of the ideas at the heart of the Clinton administration. The Heritage Foundation also became engaged in the culture wars, publishing The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators by William Bennett in 1994. The Index documented how crime, illegitimacy, divorce, teenage suicide, drug use, and fourteen other social indicators had worsened measurably since the 1960s. In 1995, the Heritage Foundation published its first Index of Economic Freedom, an annual publication that assesses the state of economic freedom in every country in the world; two years later, in 1997, The Wall Street Journal joined the project as a co-manager and co-author of the annual publication. In 1996, Clinton aligned some of his welfare reforms with the Heritage Foundation's recommendations, incorporating them into the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. George W. Bush administration Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Heritage Foundation supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the war on terror. The Heritage Foundation challenged opposition to the war, and defended the George.... Discover the Margaret Heritage popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Margaret Heritage books.