Within the Free Markets giving area, Impact Fund donors can fund grant recipients that champion economic freedom and the free markets that allow for private enterprise, entrepreneurship, and voluntary exchange within the rule of law. Our community supports organizations and projects that conduct research and educate the public and policymakers about the conditions necessary for economic growth and prosperity. Three of those organizations were back by popular demand at the 2020 Bradley Impact Conference: Badger Institute, MacIver Institute and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL). They were joined by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. The Focus Wisconsin panel illuminated the impact of pandemic crisis response policies on the state, its citizens and businesses in the short term, and longer-term threats to Constitutional order. As WILL President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg noted about the increase in government overreach, “…it’s easy to make bad law in this environment...There’s no COVID pandemic in the Constitution, so we can’t say we will work on Constitutional order later on.”
As highlighted in their panel discussion, these organizations are doing important work to maintain our free enterprise system to foster economic health in Wisconsin amid the pandemic:
- BADGER INSTITUTE continues to research and publish information about the impact of pandemic policy on lives and livelihoods across the state.
- MACIVER INSTITUTE is pushing past media hype to validate data about the pandemic and the models being used as the basis for policy. MacIver has successfully pointed out fallacies in government and policy-maker claims of potential impact based on this data.
- WISCONSIN INSTITUTE FOR LAW & LIBERTY is engaging in public discourse, fighting bad policy, and bringing litigation against state emergency orders that challenge the rule of law and separation of powers in Wisconsin.
- WISCONSIN MANUFACTURERS & COMMERCE continues to encourage the administration to develop strong, smart strategies for keeping the economy open, and provides feedback on the impact of crisis response policies on businesses.