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In 2011, the State Policy Network's budget reached a sizable $83.2 million. Coordinating with the think tanks were over a hundred "associate" members that included conservative nonprofit groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, which the Kochs also helped to fund.
Adding clout to the Right's reach at the state level was the American Legislative Exchange Council. Weyrich's brainchild [see ALEC in search] had grown impressively since the 1970s, when Richard Mellon Scaife had provided most of its start-up funding. Critics called it a conservative corporate "bill mill."..On average, ALEC produced about a thousand new bills a year, some two hundred of which became state law. The State Policy Network's think tanks, some twenty-nine of which were members of ALEC, provided the legislative research.