Robert Rector

Robert E. Rector is a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He focuses on poverty issues. He is considered one of the architects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, and has also influenced immigration reform and abstinence education policy. Rector has written over 100 articles and research papers, and his writings include the book America's Failed $5.4 Trillion War on Poverty.

Rector received his undergraduate degree from The College of William & Mary and his masters in political science from Johns Hopkins University.

Rector has worked for The Heritage Foundation since 1984. He is the editor of the 1987 book, Steering the Elephant: How Washington Works, and the co-author of the 1995 book, America's Failed $5.4 Trillion War on Poverty.

Rector has been a management analyst for the United States Office of Personnel Management and a legislative assistant in the Virginia House of Delegates. From 2001 to 2002, he served as a commissioner of the Millennial Housing Commission.

Rector has been called an expert on poverty issues and it has been claimed that he has influenced policy. He has testified before Congress and written extensively on the subject.

Rector is considered one of the key architects of the 1996 federal welfare reform, which marked a significant shift in American welfare policy. The bill attempted to emphasize using government assistance temporarily to recover economic independence rather than depending on assistance indefinitely.

Rector has written frequently on the subjects of welfare and poverty, including the 1992 The Wall Street Journal article “America's Poverty Myth”, which asserted that the US Census inaccurately measures poverty, and his 1995 book with William Lauber, America's Failed $5.4 Trillion War on Poverty, which criticized welfare laws in the US for allegedly rewarding breakdowns in family values.

In 1995, The Wall Street Journal called Rector the "leading guru" behind the Republicans' position on welfare. In 2006, editor Rich Lowry of the conservative National Review called Rector, "the intellectual godfather" of welfare reform.

Role in opposing the 2006 immigration reform proposals

Rector has been a researcher on immigration policy and has testified before Congress on the subject. In 2006, Rector published a report on the proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act for The Heritage Foundation, stating that passage of the bill would lead to more than 100 million new legal immigrants within 20 years. Based on the report's findings, the Senate amended the bill to include restrictions on the guest worker program and visa caps. Rector has been featured in numerous media outlets as a conservative expert on immigration.

Role in opposing the 2013 immigration reform proposals

With statistical assistance from Harvard Ph.D. and then Heritage Research Fellow Jason Richwine, Rector wrote a report on the fiscal cost of proposed amnesty legislation to the United States. The report was published by the Heritage Foundation on May 6, 2013. Rector and Jim DeMint, a former U.S. senator and the newly installed Heritage Foundation president, introduced the report in an op-ed article in the Washington Post.

The methods used in the report met with considerable criticism from a number of think tanks and immigration policy analysts across the political spectrum, including Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, Michael Clemens of the Center for Global Development, and many others.

Later, widespread publicity of past research by study co-author Jason Richwine on race and intelligence as well as race and crime in the United States, as part of his Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard University under George Borjas, led to a greater backlash against the study. Richwine left Heritage as a result of the controversy.

On June 23, 2013, Rector appeared on C-SPAN debating Alex Nowrasteh on the immigration legislation under consideration at the time in the United States Congress.

Rector is a proponent of abstinence education. His advocacy prompted the inclusion of school-program funding for the teaching of abstinence in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. Rector has published research papers on this subject for The Heritage Foundation, and he has quoted as an expert on abstinence education by numerous media outlets, including The New York Times. In 1999, the Los Angeles Times called Rector the “architect of the abstinence-only movement.”