Charles Paul “Chuck” Blahous, III, is the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Chair and Senior Research Strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
From 2010 to 2015 he served as one of two public trustees for the Social Security and Medicare programs. Dr. Blahous was Deputy Director of the National Economic Council under President George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009, previously serving from 2001 to 2007 as a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Prior to that, he served from 1996 to 2000 as Policy Director for Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. Between 1989 and 1996, Dr. Blahous worked for Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, first as a Congressional Science Fellow in 1989-1990, then as a legislative assistant from 1990-94 and as Legislative Director in 1994-1996.
Dr. Blahous is the author of the books Decoding the Debates, Social Security: The Unfinished Work and Pension Wise. He served from 2014-16 on the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Retirement Security and Personal Savings and later as a shadow trustee monitoring the finances of Social Security and Medicare.
Dr. Blahous has published studies with the Mercatus Center on subjects including the federal budget costs of Medicare for All, the fiscal ramifications of the Affordable Care Act, multiple aspects of Social Security, the origins of federal deficits, gerrymandering, the multiemployer pension solvency crisis, Medicaid expansion, and other issues.
Dr. Blahous holds a Ph.D. in computational quantum chemistry from the University of California/Berkeley and an A.B. in chemistry from Princeton University.