Search results for ""Author Charles Blahous""

Drawing on more than fifteen years of work on Social Security policy, first in the U.S. Senate and later in the White House, Chuck Blahous argues that our national Social Security debate is more polarized than it needs to be, even given the depth of legitimate differences over the program's appropriate future direction. Unless we identify and understand our respective initial assumptions, he explains, we will not be able to fathom the conflicting policy initiatives that they drive. In Social Security: The Unfinished Work he presents some often misunderstood, basic factual background about Social Security. He discusses how it affects program participants and explains the true demographic, economic, and political factors that threaten its future efficacy.Beginning with a review of the events of 1983, focusing on the substance, intent, and scorekeeping of that year's Social Security reforms, Blahous explains what happened then, why, and how it led to sharply divergent views of program finances during the Bush administration's reform initiative and on through today. He dissects competing positions in the current debate and concludes that, unless and until there is broader understanding of how these analytic differences drive opposing policy conclusions, we will continue to talk past and over each other, with little room for negotiation and compromise.

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America’s insurance system for single-employer pension plans, operated by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), is under serious financial strain. In Pension Wise: Confronting Employer Pension Underfunding—And Sparing Taxpayers the Next Bailout, Charles Blahous—one of the nation’s foremost retirement security experts—explains the origins and dangers of current underfunding in our single-employer defined-benefit pension system and offers principles to underlie a solution.Blahous details both the technical reasons behind pension plan underfunding and the political considerations that prioritize the near-term financial demands of employers and pension beneficiaries over the long-term fiscal health of the pension insurance system. The author also presents the fundamental value judgments concerning who should bear the cost of filling the PBGC shortfall and to what extent the risk of financing pension benefits should continue to be shifted away from plan sponsors, either to other employers or to taxpayers at large. Although acknowledging that there are no obviously correct answers, he suggests a range of reforms to improve the pension insurance system’s operation and to resolve its projected shortfall.

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