The Heritage Foundation isn’t cool with Sen. Marco Rubio’s stand on immigration — particularly, what they consider to be his willingness to offer amnesty prior to border security. In response, Heritage is spending $100,000 for an online ad campaign intended to blast Rubio and stop immigration reform, and is doing so through their main 501(c)(3) which is funded using tax-exempt, anonymous donations.
Were Heritage to have funded this ad campaign through its political action affiliate “Heritage Action for America” — whose donors don’t get a tax deduction — few eyebrows could be raised at the basis for their position or their means of expressing it.
To writer Josh Barro of Business Insider, the Heritage ad reflects a failure of our current tax codes and the “ongoing debasement of think tanks”. He cites a piece by Tevi Troy for National Affairs explaining the trend in which groups that are supposed to be engaged in policy research are increasingly looking like “tax-advantaged vehicles for political activism.”
