Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D.

Vice President, Domestic and Economic Policy

Stuart Butler has been generating ideas for The Heritage Foundation since 1979, when the young British scholar joined the still relatively obscure conservative think tank as a Policy Analyst specializing in urban issues.

Now as Heritage’s Vice President of Domestic and Economic Policy Studies, Butler’s ideas continue to change the course of public policy in America. Take “enterprise zones,” which encourage development in blighted neighborhoods by offering entrepreneurs and investors tax and regulatory relief if they start businesses in the area. Butler introduced them in his first paper for Heritage 20 years ago. It caught the attention of then-Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., who co-sponsored legislation in Congress (with then-Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of the South Bronx) based on Butler’s idea. There are now at least 70 zones in cities across the country. And almost all politicians nowadays-liberal and conservative-will say they support some form of “enterprise zones” when asked how to help America’s inner-cities.

His bipartisan approach to solving urban problems is typical of his approach. He has gained a reputation and respect in policy circles for his willingness to reach across the ideological divide to develop bipartisan solutions to problems. And he has attained a similar reputation in academic circles. In 2002 he spent a semester at Harvard University as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Graduate School.

Butler has played a major role in shaping the policy debate on a wide range of domestic policy issues from health care and Social Security to welfare reform and privatizing government services. Perhaps that’s why National Journal, Washington’s most influential magazine of politics and policy, named him in the 1980s as “one of 150 individuals outside government who have the greatest influence on decision-making in Washington.”

Butler grew up in a sheep-farming district about 80 miles south of Manchester, England, the son of a mechanic who left school at age 13. His down-to-earth roots influence his approach to policy. Although he has the requisite academic credentials-degrees in physics and math and a doctorate in American economic history from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland-Butler is no ivory-tower scholar. In his early days as a Policy Analyst, for example, he visited tenements in the South Bronx and Washington, D.C., to discuss with residents how conservative ideas, such as tenant ownership of public housing, would make them better off.

In the 1990s, Butler led the debate over health-care reform, arguing for a system based on consumer choice and market competition. His manifesto “A National Health System for America,” published in 1989 with Edmund Haislmaier, explained how distortions in the tax code have created a health-care system that denies individual choice and drives up costs. When President Clinton took office in 1993 and launched his effort to nationalize health care, Butler was one of the most-quoted experts in the country on why the scheme wouldn’t work. Even many liberal pundits thought Butler’s approach was superior, with then-Editor of The New Republic Michael Kinsley calling it “the simplest, most promising, and in an important way, the most progressive idea for health care reform.” More recently, National Journal again noted Butler’s influence, calling him one of Washington’s twelve “key players” on health care.

Butler’s ideas on reforming Medicare, the giant government health program for senior citizens, have been just as central to the debate. Sen. John Breaux, D-La., Chairman of the congressionally chartered National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, put forward a reform plan that relied heavily on Butler’s recommendations.
In addition to the dozens of research papers he has written for Heritage, Butler is the author of three books, “Enterprise Zones: Greenlining the Inner Cities” (1981), “Privatizing Federal Spending” (1985), and “Out of the Poverty Trap” (1987), co-authored with Anna Kondratas. Over a decade after its publication, “Out of the Poverty Trap” still garners attention. A New York Times story on Dec. 8, 1999, mentioned the book in a story on the “poverty industry,” citing the passage where Butler wrote, “It is the middle-class members of this industry, and not the poor, who truly are most dependent on welfare spending.”

Butler also has been published in leading academic journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, and in leading newspapers, including The New York Times. He has been profiled by The Washington Post and has appeared on all the leading television networks commenting on policy issues. And he has testified before Congress dozens of times on a range of policy issues.