October 26, 2010
TG-926

U. S. Department of the Treasury

Secretary Geithner Swears in New Social Security Public Trustees

WASHINGTON ・Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner today swore in Charles Blahous and Robert Reischauer as the Public Trustees for the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.  Blahous  and Reischauer were nominated by President Obama in September 2009 to fill the positions, which had been vacant since December 2007. 

"It is essential that the public has confidence that Social Security and Medicare will be available to help future generations retire with economic security," said Treasury Secretary Geithner.  "The public trustees play a vital role in instilling that confidence, and I am pleased that Bob Reischauer and Chuck Blahous will be taking on this important role."

The Boards of Trustees overseeing the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are comprised of the Secretaries of Treasury, Labor and Health and Human Services, the Commissioner of Social Security and two members of the public.  The Public Trustees are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to serve four-year concurrent terms and cannot both be from the same political party. 

Two Public Trustee positions were created in the 1983 Social Security Amendments, based on a recommendation of the Greenspan Commission aimed at increasing public confidence in the integrity of the trust funds.  Blahous and Reischauer were nominated to the public trustee positions in September 2009 and confirmed by the Senate in September 2010.

Blahous is a senior research fellow with the New America Foundation's Fiscal Policy Program.  Blahous specializes in domestic economic policy, with areas of expertise including 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, health care reform, housing, tax policy, and energy issues.  From 2007 to 2009, he served as deputy director of President Bush's National Economic Council.  Blahous has a PhD in computational quantum chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and an A.B. from Princeton University, where he won the McKay Prize in Physical Chemistry.

Reischauer is president of the Urban Institute, a position he has held since February 2000.  Mr. Reischauer is a nationally known expert on the federal budget, Medicare, and Social Security and was director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 1989 to 1995.  After leaving the CBO, Reischauer served as a senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution from 1995 to 2000.  Reischauer holds an A.B. in political science from Harvard University and an M.I.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.

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