Speaker biographies
Charles P. Blahous joined the National Economic Council on February 26, 2001. He is a special assistant to the president for economic policy, focusing on Social Security and pensions. In May 2001, he was appointed by President Bush to be the executive director of the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security. Mr. Blahous served as the executive director of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security from June 2000 through February 2001. He also served as policy director for Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) from 1996–2000. While staffing the senator’s policy initiatives in a wide range of legislative areas, Mr. Blahous focused on Social Security reform, including the senator’s chairmanship of the National Commission on Retirement Policy, a bipartisan, bicameral public/private commission convened by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Before joining Senator Gregg in 1996, Mr. Blahous served as legislative director for Senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), in which capacity he staffed the senator’s work on the President’s Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, co-chaired by Senators Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.) and John Danforth (R-Mo.). Blahous first joined Senator Simpson’s staff in 1989 as a Congressional science fellow, sponsored by the American Physical Society. Mr. Blahous is a frequent author and speaker on Social Security reform issues, and author of a book, Reforming Social Security for Ourselves and Our Posterity (Praeger Publishers, 2000).
Jason Furman is a visiting scholar at New York University's Wagner School and a non-resident senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Previously, Mr. Furman served as special assistant to the president for economic policy during the Clinton administration. Furman has been a visiting lecturer at Columbia and Yale Universities. In addition, he served as a staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, senior economic adviser to the chief economist of the World Bank, and director of economic policy for the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin is the director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and holds the Paul A. Volcker Chair in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was the sixth director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He has spent his professional career as an economist in academia and government and is on leave from Syracuse University, where he is a trustee professor of economics at the Maxwell School. His previous positions at Syracuse include chairman of the Department of Economics and associate director of the Center for Policy Research. Before his positions at Syracuse University, he held academic posts at Columbia and Princeton Universities. Prior to joining the CBO, Mr. Holtz-Eakin served for eighteen months as chief economist of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He also served as senior staff economist for the council in 1989 and 1990. In addition, he has been a faculty research fellow and research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Economics Advisory Panel to the National Science Foundation, and a visiting scholar at AEI. At the state level, he has served as a consultant for commissions and agencies in Arizona, New York, and New Jersey. Recently, his research has centered on the economics of fundamental tax reform; the effects of public infrastructure on productivity; income mobility in the United States; and the role of families, capital markets, health insurance, and tax policy in the success of business ventures. Mr. Holtz-Eakin has served as editor of the National Tax Journal and has been a member of the editorial boards of a wide range of economic journals, including Economics and Politics, Small Business Economics, Journal of Sports Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, and Public Works Management and Policy.
Jeffrey B. Liebman is a professor of public policy at Harvard University, where he teaches courses in social policy, public sector economics, and American economic policy. He studies tax and budget policy, social insurance, poverty, and income inequality. His recent research has examined the impacts of government programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Social Security, and housing vouchers. From 1998 to 1999, Mr. Liebman served as special assistant to the president for economic policy, and he coordinated the Clinton administration's Social Security reform technical working group.
Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and director of the Fiscal Policy Program at the New America Foundation. She oversees the foundation's efforts to bring accountability to the budget process, addresses the challenges presented by the nation's underfunded entitlement programs, and proposes reforms to improve both the efficiency and equity of the tax code. Ms. MacGuineas previously served as a Social Security advisor to the McCain presidential campaign. She has worked at the Brookings Institution, the Concord Coalition, and on Wall Street. She serves on the boards of a number of national, nonpartisan organizations. Ms. MacGuineas testifies regularly before Congress and has published broadly, including articles in The Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and the Los Angeles Times.
John C. Rother is the group executive officer of policy and strategy for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). He is responsible for the federal and state public policies of the association, international initiatives, and the formulation of AARP's overall strategic direction. He is an authority on Medicare, managed care, long-term care, Social Security, pensions, and the challenges facing the Boomer generation. Prior to joining AARP in 1984, Mr. Rother served eight years with the U.S. Senate as special counsel for labor and health to former senator Jacob Javits (R-NY), then as staff director and chief counsel for the Special Committee on Aging under its chairman, Senator John Heinz (R-PA). He serves on several boards and commissions, including those of Generations United, the National Health Care Quality Forum, the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, the National Academy on Aging, and Civic Ventures.
Andrew A. Samwick is the director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences and a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2003 and 2004, he served as chief economist on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. His scholarly work has covered a wide range of topics, including pensions, saving, taxation, portfolio choice, and executive compensation, and his articles has been published in American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, and a number of specialized journals and conference volumes. Since 2002, he has served as coeditor of Economics Letters.
Kent Smetters is a visiting scholar at AEI and a tenured associate professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He worked for the U.S. Congress from 1995 to 1998, before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 as an assistant professor. Mr. Smetters was the Kaiser Visiting Professor of Economics at the Stanford University Economics Department during the 2000–01 academic year. He was appointed deputy assistant secretary for economic policy of the U.S. Treasury on July 3, 2001, where he served until August 30, 2002. Mr. Smetters remains active in Washington, D.C., and recently served as a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Dynamic Scoring for the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress.
View Event Details
