Charles Paul "Chuck" Blahous III (; born 1963) is the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Chair and Senior Research Strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, as well as a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, specializing 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 was nominated by President Obama, and confirmed without opposition by the Senate, to serve as a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare. Blahous and Robert Reischauer served as the public trustees from 2010 through 2015. Blahous was formerly the deputy director of President Bush’s National Economic Council, special assistant to the president for economic policy, and executive director of the bipartisan President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security. He served on the Bipartisan Policy Center's Commission on Retirement Security and Personal Savings. Additionally, through the Bipartisan Policy Center, Blahous and Reischauer have continued to monitor Social Security and Medicare finances as “shadow trustees.” Research In July 2018, Blahous published The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System. The study found, if enacted, the Medicare for All Act would cost at least $32.6 trillion, on top of current federal healthcare spending, in the first decade. On April 30, 2019, Blahous testified on this research at the first Congressional hearing on Medicare for All, in front of the House Rules Committee. Biography Blahous was born in 1963 in Alexandria, Virginia, United States, the second of three children of Charles Paul Blahous II of Czech descent and Marjorie Alice Robertson of Scot/English ancestry. His father's paternal grandfather Cyril Blahuš (1883–1934) was from Ostrožská Lhota and grandmother Alžběta Sochorová (1885-1978) was from Strážnice. He was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Princeton University in 1985, and a Ph.D. in computational quantum chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. Between 1989 and 1996, Blahous worked as a legislative aide to Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming; he was his Congressional Science Fellow in 1989–1990 and legislative director in 1994–1996 (sponsored by the American Physical Society). After Simpson's retirement, Blahous served from 1996 to 2000 as a policy director for Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. From June 2000 through February 2001 he served as the executive director of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security. From 2001 to 2007, he served as a