Courses

Charles Blahous

Director of Spending and Budget Initiative, Senior Research Fellow

Mercatus Center

Charles Blahous is the director of the Spending and Budget Initiative and a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He 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.

Blog Posts

It’s time to face Obamacare’s problems

November 6, 2016
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Healthcare

There’s a joke from the old Soviet Union that essentially goes: “What’s harder to predict in the Soviet Union than the future? The past.” At the risk of killing the joke by explanation, its point was this: people’s opinions in the present are influenced heavily by their memories of the past. Thus, any government like the Soviets’ that seeks to manage people’s political opinions must spend a lot of time rewriting history. This week’s announcement that Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchange premiums are rising this year by 25% on average brings that old joke to mind,

Why Government Doubles Down on Policy Mistakes

September 30, 2016
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Role of Government

Frustrated voters often wonder why, after electing well-intended lawmakers to office, so many subsequent government economic policies prove damaging. Part of the answer lies in the nearly irresistible public policy dynamic of “doubling down” on mistakes.  Lawmakers, press and the public need to understand the strength of this phenomenon and guard against it when adopting policy positions. In simplified form, the dynamic runs as follows: Government, in response to a perceived need, takes action to meet that need in a manner that distorts economic behavior and produces predictable adverse