The conservative think tank could have supported a smaller proposal, but a broader shift at Heritage — toward the populist right — is under way.
The conservative think tank could have supported a smaller proposal, but a broader shift at Heritage — toward the populist right — is under way.
E arlier this week, the Heritage Foundation came out in opposition to a $40 billion bill to boost arms transfers, economic assistance, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The stance of the historically hawkish and influential think tank hints at a potentially new path forward for the organization, which is learning to adapt to the conservative movement’s populist turn.
A statement from the group’s political arm opposing the Ukraine aid supplemental bill comes in the middle of a pivot, the Heritage Foundation’s recently appointed president, Kevin Roberts, acknowledged in an interview with National Review yesterday. But that shift is not necessarily a move away from the group’s long-standing assertive posture toward Russia, in the spirit of President Reagan’s peace-through-strength approach, he said.
“As a recovering neocon, as many of us in the movement are, all of us at Heritage understand that the great lessons of Reaganism — and I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Reaganite — of peace through strength can be applied but more selectively in the 21st century,” Roberts told NR.
One example of this perspective: Roberts said that Heritage stands fully behind U.S. efforts to empower the Ukrainian government, short of a no-fly zone. He believes that, to make peace more achievable, the goal should be to empower Kyiv to take back territory seized since the start of the invasion in February, but not territory taken in 2014.
Heritage’s stance on the House Ukraine-aid bill — which cast the measure as a progressive policy item — is a striking example of this perspective.
In the weeks leading up to Tuesday night’s vote, Heritage Action, the group’s political and policy-advocacy arm, urged lawmakers to oppose the legislative package, primarily on grounds that it was too costly to send more aid to Ukraine amid rising inflation and a crisis at the southern border.
Then, in a memo titled “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last,” which it released publicly on Tuesday, the organization assailed the bill for putting U.S. assistance to Ukraine over domestic priorities. That document, once in public view, made a splash in the conservative foreign-policy world.
“America is struggling with record-setting inflation, debt, a porous border, crime and energy depletion yet progressives in Washington are prioritizing a $40 billion aid package to Ukraine — more than the entire annual budget of the U.S. Department of Justice,” Heritage Action executive director Jessica Anderson wrote.
The Ukraine aid bill passed along bipartisan lines on a 368–57 vote Tuesday evening, with Republicans casting all of the no votes. In the end, numerous objections shaped the thinking of conservative lawmakers who voted against the measure, but initially those objections did not fully overlap with Heritage’s full-throated opposition to the package.
Many of the 57 votes against the bill came from conservatives who generally supported a robust military-aid package with some modest humanitarian assistance. Those members could have supported a different version of that package at around the proposed $40 billion figure. They opposed the bill, however, because the version proposed this week would provide unaccountable funding to refugee-resettlement operations and, potentially, bolster a pro-abortion U.N. agency via the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Representative Chip Roy voiced another significant concern that some conservatives quickly coalesced around: that congressional leadership gave members only six hours to review the muti-billion-dollar package.
While the Heritage memo also criticized the process behind the bill, and while Heritage had voiced opposition to the refugee provisions, the first sentence of Anderson’s statement indicates that the group’s main objection was that the U.S. simply cannot provide that level of funding while the border crisis festers and inflation continues to roar.
This position sounded to some like a flat-out rejection of U.S. efforts to continue to aid Ukraine, and it prompted criticism from some corners.
Representative Peter Meijer took to Twitter to pan the Heritage Action statement:
The Ukraine supplemental had almost everything Heritage was calling for three weeks ago. But it’s more convenient to vacillate btwn Biden doing too little and Biden doing too much than have a sound, consistent approach
In addition, a scholar associated with the American Enterprise Institute called the statement “stunningly embarrassing” for tying the aid package to progressivism; a few of his AEI colleagues and one of the think tank’s board members retweeted his rebuke.
Meanwhile, American Moment, an upstart populist advocacy outfit that counts as one of its board members GOP Ohio Senate candidate J. D. Vance — a persistent voice against U.S. aid to Ukraine — praised the statement.
In response to questions from NR yesterday, Heritage Action clarified that its position isn’t to oppose future, smarter Ukraine aid packages and that the biggest concern was the rushed and opaque way by which House leadership put the bill together.
“Real leadership means having a plan abroad and cooperation with international partners, not giving members of Congress six hours to scrutinize a half-baked $40 billion spending package,” Anderson told NR, while repeating her previous concerns that the bill was fiscally irresponsible.
The Heritage Foundation late Wednesday night, meanwhile, circulated a policy brief making a similar point: “This is not a question of continued support for Ukraine’s self-defense. The administration’s proposal is fiscally irresponsible.”
For his part, Roberts said that he loves the Ukrainians. He called them “heroic,” pointed out that Heritage flew the Ukrainian flag outside its Washington, D.C., office building, and said that it’s in America’s national interest to support their efforts. But the process behind the bill should have allowed for more debate, he argued, to address concerns about enabling corruption in eastern Europe — and in the U.S. government. He opposed provisions that paid the salaries and pensions of Ukrainian government employees. A package one quarter the size of the one advanced by the House would have been more palatable to Heritage. An impressive list of conservative lawmakers, all of whom have advocated hawkish policies toward Russia, also voted against the bill, which in his view puts Heritage’s stance on solid ground.
“Think about the members who did vote against it. Not just my friend Chip, but Mike Johnson, Jim Banks, Kevin Hern, Kat Cammack. These are some of the most thoughtful members, with deep policy knowledge.”
While Heritage has not outright opposed aid to Ukraine, Roberts has hinted at a slight shift from its historical advocacy of a consistently assertive policy toward Russia.
“If we’re asking better questions and having better analysis about where we get involved, why we get involved, for how long we’re involved, answering the question of what success looks like, if that’s the third way, then you can sign Heritage up for that all day long,” he said. “And I happen to think that’s where the conservative foreign-policy movement is going.”