Stephen Moore

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{{#badges:AEX}} Stephen Moore, also known as Steve Moore, founded the Club for Growth and has served on the Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Moore advised Herman Cain's 2012 presidential campaign and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He has been criticized for getting paid to promote policies for the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity.

President Trump announced Moore's nomination to Federal Reserve Board in March 2019.[1] In response to his nomination, Moore said “I’m kind of new to this game, frankly, so I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions. He continued "It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there, assuming I get confirmed.” Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor who was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, said that Moore "does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job.” [2]

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

Moore is also an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) "scholar" as of 2011.[3] On August 4th, 2011, he spoke at a Shell Oil-sponsored plenary session of the 38th Annual ALEC Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, along with fellow ALEC "scholar" Arthur B. Laffer.[4] Moore also participated in the 2011 ALEC Annual Meeting, speaking on a "Corporate Taxes and International Competitiveness Panel" in front of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force.[5][6]

About ALEC
ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site.

Club for Growth and Free Enterprise Fund

Moore played a lead role in the creation of the Club for Growth.[7] In January 2005, Moore and "some prominent" Club for Growth "members including Arthur B. Laffer, a board member, along with Mallory Factor, a businessman" started a similar group, the Free Enterprise Fund.[7]

In May 2005, Moore wrote a letter to Club for Growth members in which he said: "'To see the club splintered this way was a heart-breaking tragedy, but the good news is most of the original founding committee members of the old Club for Growth that we built into such a political juggernaut helped me launch the Free Enterprise Fund," he continued. He said he was leaving to join the Wall Street Journal's editorial board and turning the new group over to Mr. Factor, adding that there remained "a crying need" for an organization to hold Republican officials' "feet to the fire."[7]

Affiliations

Formerly:

Critics

  • "A voodoo economist ... [who uses] especially devious methods to torture the data," says The New Republic's Jonathan Chait. [19]
  • "His career has been marked by a pattern of errors, deception and falsehood," Brendan Nyhan and Ben Fritz.[20]
  • "Moore has zero credibility," concludes economist Brad DeLong. [21]

"Grading the States" Scrutinizes Rich States, Poor States and Other Rankings

Critical analysis of Rich States, Poor States and other "business rankings" can be found at GradingTheStates.org. Grading the States is a project of the Iowa Policy Project, overseen by economist Peter Fisher, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa.

"Across the years, we have continued to find profound problems in the way these business climate rankings are constructed," Fisher said.
"The measures that underlie the rankings often align with the ideology of the organization promoting the ranking, rather than research showing what may be important predictors of state economic success. The various measures, sometimes numbering over 100, are cobbled together into an index number that has no real meaning. As a result, we see wide disparity in the way various states are ranked. Most states can find a high ranking to brag about, and an alternative low one they can use to argue for drastic changes in state policy."[22]

SourceWatch Resources

External Articles

Books and Essays by Moore

Stephen Moore is the author, co-author and editor of several books and numerous essays including:

General Articles

References

  1. Jennifer Jacobs, Saleha Mohsin, and Margaret Talev Trump Says He'll Nominate Stephen Moore to Federal Reserve Board Bloomberg March 22, 2019
  2. Brendan Murray Swift Pushback on Stephen Moore, Trump's Latest Pick for the Fed Bloomberg March 24, 2019
  3. American Legislative Exchange Council, Board of Scholars, organizational website, accessed May 2011
  4. American Legislative Exchange Council, "Solutions for the States," 38th Annual Meeting agenda, on file with CMD, August 3-6, 2011
  5. American Legislative Exchange Council, 2011 Conference Sponsors, conference brochure on file with CMD, August 11, 2011
  6. American Legislative Exchange Council, "Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Meeting," agenda and meeting materials, August 4, 2011, on file with CMD
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 David D. Kirkpatrick, Leadership Dispute Causes a Split in a Powerhouse of Fund-Raising for Conservative Causes, New York Times,' July 8, 2005 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "NYT" defined multiple times with different content
  8. Cato Institute, Stephen Moore, organization biography, accessed June 30, 2011
  9. Institute for Policy Innovation biosketch of Stephen Moore, IPI organizational website, accessed July 9, 2011
  10. Stephen Moore, Virginia Institute for Public Policy Chicken Little Was Wrong Biosketch at end of article, May 1 2011, accessed July 9, 2011
  11. Donors Capital Fund Board of Directors, Organizational webpage, accessed October 28, 2010, re-verified July 9, 2011
  12. American Legislative Exchange Council Board of Scholars, Organizational webpage, accessed July 9, 2011
  13. Searle Freedom Trust, 2011 Form 990, organizational annual IRS filing, November 15, 2012.
  14. Stephen Moore Hoover Institute Essays in Public Policy: Immigration and the Rise and Decline of American Cities, About the Author, undated research article, accessed July 9, 2011
  15. Cato Institute Stephen Moore, organization biography, accessed June 22, 2011
  16. Stephen Moore Hoover Essay in Public Policy: Welfare For The Well-Off: How Business Subsidies Fleece Taxpayers by Stephen Moore, Press release/Essay, May 5, 1999
  17. American Legislative Exchange Council, 2011 Annual Conference -- Organizational Leadership, conference brochure on file with CMD, August 11, 2011
  18. American Legislative Exchange Council, 2011 Annual Conference -- Organizational Leadership, conference brochure on file with CMD, August 11, 2011
  19. Less is Moore, The New Republic, June 30, 1997
  20. Brendan Nyhan and Ben Fritz The deceptive advocacy of Stephen Moore, Spinsanity, September 22, 2003.
  21. J. Bradford Delong, Cranks and Charlatans, March 1, 2003
  22. Grading the States, "Grading the graders who grade the states," press release, January 19, 2016.