Washington is out of control. The left took over the levers of power less than a year ago, and we are seeing the drastic results: policies that are dangerously undermining our families, destroying our economy, and putting our safety at risk.
Comparing just the first 11 months of the Biden administration and a left-wing-controlled Congress with the prior four years of unprecedented conservative policy accomplishments has given us perhaps the starkest example in our history of the difference between leftism’s tendency to destroy and conservatism’s power to promote freedom and prosperity for all Americans.
During the four years of the Trump administration and a mostly Republican Congress, conservatives saw amazing policy advancements. In fact, over those four years, policymakers implemented more than 64 percent of The Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy recommendations—more than at any other time in Heritage’s almost 50-year history.
What happened as a result?
We witnessed one of the fastest growing economies in American history. Job-killing regulations were repealed and economy-crushing taxes on businesses and individuals were lowered. That led to more take-home pay for families, American companies returned to our shores, and businesses reinvested more money into their own growth. Record job growth resulted, followed by the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years—as well as record unemployment levels for minorities and women. Wages went up for virtually everyone, including America’s lowest-income earners.
We saw American energy independence for the first time in more than six decades. We had a southern border that was finally getting under control. And our enemies around the world began to understand that America would pacify them no longer.
When a worldwide pandemic hit, we saw therapeutics and vaccines developed faster than anyone could have ever predicted. Regulatory barriers and red tape were pushed aside to make way for the great American innovation engine.
And the list goes on.
Yet today, we are seeing how quickly such successes can be wiped out when leftists gain control, determined to push their radical agenda no matter what it costs the American people.
After the left took control of the White House and Congress, record numbers of illegal immigrants began to flood our border. We’re now witnessing record numbers of drug traffickers, human traffickers, criminal gangs, and COVID-infected people crossing freely into our country with no end in sight.
President Biden has proposed increasing taxes on businesses already struggling to stay afloat after COVID shutdowns.
Supply chain issues are wreaking havoc—crippling the manufacturing sector and creating empty store shelves. And unconstitutional vaccine mandates threaten to magnify these problems by forcing millions of Americans to leave their jobs when the economy needs them most.
Housing, energy, and food prices are rising dramatically and are squeezing our families. And that’s before we add on the president’s Build Back Broke plan, which will send inflation even higher.
And what about that energy independence we were celebrating only a year ago? President Biden shut down the Keystone pipeline yet recently went hat-in-hand, begging Russia and OPEC to sell us more oil.
Again, the list goes on: pushing cancel culture, rewriting our history, indoctrinating our students, undermining parents, and promoting socialism.
With the nation under constant assault from the left, now more than ever, the American people need champions like The Heritage Foundation fighting for them.
When the Biden administration took over 11 months ago, Heritage immediately began pushing back.
We started sounding the alarm when President Biden began reversing the successful policies that had significantly slowed illegal crossings at the southern border. Our voice was so deafening that it forced the media to finally report on the Biden border flood, and the American people began to take notice.
We stopped bills like H.R. 1—the “For the People Act”—and the left’s attempts to federalize our elections and to virtually guarantee leftist electoral majorities in perpetuity. We created model legislation for the states to strengthen their elections, make it harder for cheaters to cheat, and ensure that every legal vote gets counted.
Our research is helping conservative lawmakers and groups push back against Biden’s Build Back Broke plan and make his unprecedented government expansion scheme toxic even for some Democrats in Congress.
And months before critical race theory was on anyone else’s radar, we were warning that this divisive, racist ideology was spilling out of college campuses into the government, military, and even our schools.
It’s critical battles like these that need fighting every day if America is still going to look like America tomorrow.
That’s why Heritage is here, fighting for America. Heritage incoming president, Dr. Kevin Roberts, is committed to taking that fight straight to Washington: “There is no other institution that has the ability to remind the current regime in Washington to get back in its box and stay there.”
Heritage has been ranked the number one think tank in the world for its impact on public policy. Our world-renowned policy experts work each day to develop solutions to our nation’s problems based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. They are invited to testify before Congress throughout the year to educate our elected leaders and appear daily in America’s top news outlets to educate and rally the American people.
For nearly five decades, Heritage has been fighting the poisonous ideology of the left while also defending our conservative values and successfully creating conservative solutions to the issues we face.
At the same time, we are constantly innovating while also staying true to America’s foundational principles—the principles that made this the greatest nation on earth. That’s our formula for success. Join us as we build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish for all Americans for generations to come.