Charles Blahous

Charles Blahous is the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Chair and Senior Research Strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Blahous specializes in domestic economic policy and retirement security (with an emphasis on Social Security), as well as federal fiscal policy, entitlements, and health care programs.

Blahous’s media appearances range from The Diane Rehm Show and Fox News to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. He was named to SmartMoney’s “Power 30” list in 2005 and has written for the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Politico, National Review, Harvard Journal on Legislation, National Affairs, Journal of Chemical Physics, and Baseball Research Journal, among others.

Blahous is the author of Social Security: The Unfinished Work and Pension Wise: Confronting Employer Pension Underfunding and Sparing Taxpayers the Next Bailout, as well as the influential studies The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System and The Fiscal Consequences of the Affordable Care Act.

Blahous served as a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare from 2010 through 2015.  He was formerly the deputy director of President Bush’s National Economic Council, special assistant to the president for economic policy, and executive director of the bipartisan President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security.  He recently served on the Bipartisan Policy Center's Commission on Retirement Security and Personal Savings. 

Blahous received his PhD in computational quantum chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and his BA from Princeton University.