Charles Blahous

Visiting Fellow
Biography: 

Charles Blahous is a Hoover visiting fellow specializing in domestic economic policy. His areas of expertise include retirement security, with an emphasis on Social Security and employer-provided defined benefit pensions, as well as federal fiscal policy, entitlements, demographic change, economic stimulus, financial market regulation, and health care reform.

From 2010 to 2015, Blahous served as one of the two public trustees for the Social Security and Medicare Programs. From 2007 to 2009, he served as deputy director of President Bush's National Economic Council. From 2001 to 2007, Blahous served as a special assistant to the president for economic policy, first covering retirement security issues and later encompassing energy policy. In 2001, he served as the executive director of the bipartisan President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security.

From 2000 to 2001, Blahous led the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, a private-sector coalition dedicated to the fiscally responsible reform of Social Security. From 1996 to 2000, he served as policy director for US senator Judd Gregg (R-NH). From 1989 to 1996, he served in the office of Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), first as a Congressional Science Fellow sponsored by the American Physical Society and, from 1994 to 1996, as the senator's legislative director.

Blahous’s latest publications include Social Security: The Unfinished Work (Hoover Press, 2010) and Pension Wise: Confronting Employer Pension Underfunding—and Sparing Taxpayers the Next Bailout (Hoover Press, 2010). He is also the author of Reforming Social Security. He has published in a number of periodicals including National Affairs, Financial Times, Politico, National Review, Harvard Journal of Legislation, Baseball Research Journal, and the Journal of Chemical Physics. He was named to SmartMoney's "Power 30" list in 2005. His public appearances include various radio and television programs including "Ask the White House," and speeches on university and college campuses.

Blahous has a PhD in computational quantum chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and an AB from Princeton University, where he won the McKay Prize in Physical Chemistry.

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Recent Commentary

Healthcare Costs
Analysis and Commentary

A Guide to the 2014 Medicare Trustees Report

by Charles Blahousvia e21, Economic Policies for the 21st Century
Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Each year there is enormous (I would say excessive) press interest in the projected date of depletion of Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund. 

Social Security
Analysis and Commentary

A Guide to the 2014 Social Security Trustees Report

by Charles Blahousvia e21, Economic Policies for the 21st Century
Monday, August 4, 2014

On Monday, July 28, the Social Security trustees released our annual analysis of the program’s financial condition (the full report can be found here, a summary here, and a video of our press conference here). 

The US Workforce, Wasting Away

by Charles Blahousvia Hoover Digest
Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Health-insurance subsidies that drive Americans out of the workforce? Bad medicine.

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Analysis and Commentary

A One-Sided White House Report on Medicaid Expansion

by Charles Blahousvia e21, Economic Policies for the 21st Century
Tuesday, July 8, 2014

The new White House report on Medicaid expansion, “Missed Opportunities,” argues that states that decline to expand Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act are sacrificing important benefits.

Social Security
Analysis and Commentary

An Unfolding Fiscal Disaster

by Charles Blahousvia The Weekly Standard
Monday, July 7, 2014

Imagine that it is 1937 and time for the first Social Security payroll taxes to be assessed on workers and their employers. Two years earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s new program was successfully sold to the American public as an ambitious yet fiscally responsible, self-financing expansion of social insurance protections. The new Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax—a payroll tax of 2 percent on earnings—will pay for it.

Analysis and Commentary

I Was Right About The ACA

by Charles Blahousvia e21, Economic Policies for the 21st Century
Monday, June 30, 2014

Around and after the time that the Affordable Care Act was enacted, many analysts identified problems with claims being made about the law, and we offered explanations of its likely actual effects. 

Tangled Stethoscope
Analysis and Commentary

The ACA Is the Problem, Not CBO

by Charles Blahousvia e21, Economic Policies for the 21st Century
Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Lately there has been a flurry of articles and columns about how the Congressional Budget Office is no longer able to tell us whether the Affordable Care Act will reduce or worsen the federal budget deficit.

Social Security
Analysis and Commentary

Social Security Adds to the Deficit; Stop Saying I Said Otherwise

by Charles Blahousvia Los Angeles Times
Thursday, June 12, 2014

In two recent online columns, The Times' Michael Hiltzik claimed that I, in testimony before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on May 10, 2011, supported his argument that Social Security "can't contribute to the federal deficit.

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Blahous on the John Batchelor Show: “a colossal fiscal disaster is unfolding before our eyes”

by Charles Blahousvia John Batchelor Show
Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Hoover research fellow Charles Blahous, along with Larry Kudlow of CNBC, discusses the Affordable Care Act on the John Batchelor Show. Topics include topics include the cost of the Affordable Care Act relative to other social programs, the Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act (CLASS), and the employer mandate.

Healthcare Application
Analysis and Commentary

The Unfolding Fiscal Disaster Behind ACA Enrollment Figures

by Charles Blahousvia e21, Economic Policies for the 21st Century
Thursday, April 17, 2014

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