Stephen Moore (born February 16, 1960) is an American economist, writer, and conservative television commentator. He co-founded and served as president of the Club for Growth from 1999 to 2004. Moore is a former member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board. He worked at The Heritage Foundation from 1983 to 1987 and again since 2014. Moore advocates tax cuts and other supply-side policies. His columns have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, and National Review.
Moore advised the presidential campaigns of Herman Cain in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. Along with Larry Kudlow, Moore advised the Trump administration during the writing and passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Amid bipartisan resistance in spring 2019, Moore withdrew his name from consideration to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Education
Moore grew up in New Trier Township, Illinois. He attended Saints Faith Hope & Charity School in Winnetka and graduated from New Trier High School in 1978. He received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and a Master of Arts (M.A.) in economics from George Mason University.
Career
From 1983 to 1987, Moore served as the Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Budgetary Affairs at The Heritage Foundation. In 1987, Moore was the research director of President Ronald Reagan's Privatization Commission. Moore spent ten years as a fellow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. As senior economist of the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee under Chairman Dick Armey of Texas, Moore was said to be "instrumental in creating the FairTax proposal".
In 1999, Moore co-founded and became president of the Club for Growth, a group advocating tax cuts and a reduction in government spending, along with supporting political candidates who favored free-market economic policies. While president of the group, Moore targeted "Republicans in Name Only" whom he viewed as not aligned with his anti-tax views; he criticized Republican Senators who did not readily embrace tax cuts, including Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and George Voinovich.
At the Club for Growth, Moore sought to change the Republican Party, saying in 2003, "We want to take over the party's fundraising. We want it to be, in 10 years, that no one can win a Senate or a House seat without the support of the Club for Growth." From 2003 to 2004, the Club for Growth was the single largest fundraiser for Republican House and Senate candidates, being outdone only by the Republican party itself.
In December 2004, the Club for Growth's board voted to remove Moore as president, with his opponents within the organization upset by his criticism of President George Bush and by the narrow defeat of Senator Pat Toomey, who had the group's support. After Moore's departure, lawyers for the group sent letters to him and members of his new organization, the Free Enterprise Fund, threatening legal action for allegedly stealing the group's mailing list to raise funds for his new organization; Moore's partner Mallory Factor stated the list was acquired elsewhere.
After he left the Club for Growth, Moore founded the 501(c)(4) Free Enterprise Fund with other former Club for Growth members including Arthur Laffer and Mallory Factor. In 2005, Moore left the Free Enterprise Fund to serve on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
On September 19, 2005, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) filed suit against the Club For Growth, alleging that the group had failed to register as a political action committee in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 election cycles "despite spending millions of dollars on federal campaign activity during the 2000, 2002, and 2004 election cycle." In 2007, the FEC and the Club for Growth agreed to settle the lawsuit, paying $350,000.
Moore was involved with the consulting firms Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics, and 32 Advisors. In May 2015, Moore co-founded the advocacy group Committee to Unleash Prosperity with Laffer, Larry Kudlow, and Steve Forbes.
Moore advised Herman Cain, a former presidential candidate and business executive, on his 9-9-9 Tax Plan for his 2012 presidential campaign.
In 2014, The Heritage Foundation announced that Moore would rejoin the think tank as chief economist. Since March 2015 his profile on the Heritage website has described him as a "Distinguished Visiting Fellow."
In 2017, Moore worked with Larry Kudlow on overhauling the US tax policy for the Trump administration, which was eventually passed into law by Congress.
In 2017, he left Fox News Channel to join CNN as a senior economic analyst, leaving that position in early 2019.
In 2025, he left The Heritage Foundation.
Writings and statements
In July 2008, as the Fed had for months been rapidly cutting interest rates as the economy weakened into what became the Great Recession, Moore stated, "I happen to believe we should be raising rates, not cutting them."
Moore supports abolishing the income tax, and replacing it with a national sales tax.
Moore rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2009, he described climate change as "the biggest scam of the last two decades". In columns and op-eds, Moore called those with concerns about climate change "Stalinistic" and has accused climate scientists of being part of a global conspiracy to obtain money via research grants. In an April 2019 interview, Moore said that the Federal Reserve should not consider the economic impacts of climate change in decision-making. "The Fed's job is to keep prices stable; that's all it is," he said. "It's not to get involved in political and policy issues."
Moore wrote a 2014 Kansas City Star opinion piece entitled, "What's the matter with Paul Krugman?," responding to Krugman's earlier opinion piece "Charlatans, Cranks and Kansas", which had discussed a recent major tax cut in Kansas. Moore said that job creation had been superior in low-taxation states during the five years ending June 2009 following the recession. After errors were found in Moore's data, he sought to correct the errors with different data that were also incorrect. Miriam Pepper, editorial page editor for the Star stated "I won't be running anything else from Stephen Moore." Moore acknowledged his error in an email that also said, "My point is that they don't change the conclusion that the no income tax states have substantially outperformed the high income tax states over every period since about 1970…."
In a 2014 op-ed in The Washington Times, Moore cited the role of a "culture of virtue" in America's economic success, writing, "What is irrefutable is that marriage with a devoted husband and wife in the home is a far better social program than food stamps, Medicaid, public housing or even all of them combined."
Moore has often expressed support for some variation of a gold standard. In 2015, he declared, "We have got to get rid of the Federal Reserve and move towards a gold standard in this country!" Few economists support a gold standard.
During a 2016 debate on the minimum wage, Moore stated, "I'm a radical on this. I'd get rid of a lot of these child labor laws. I want people starting to work at 11, 12."
In 2018, Moore and Laffer wrote the book Trumponomics, in which they lauded the Trump administration's economic policies and criticized the economic performance of the George W. Bush years. Trump endorsed the book in a March 2019 tweet. In the book, Moore and Laffer argue that the Trump administration's 2017 tax plan would raise GDP growth rates to as much as 6% and not increase budget deficits. In a 2019 review of the book, conservative N. Gregory Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard University and head of the Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush, described the book as "snake-oil economics", writing that Moore and Laffer's analysis was based on "wishful thinking" rather than "the foundation of professional…