ROBERT D. REISCHAUER, Phd

Robert D. Reischauer is the president of the Urban Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and education organization that examines the social, economic, and governance problems facing the nation. He served as the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) between 1989 and 1995 and was CBO’s assistant director for human resources and deputy director of CBO during the 1977 to 1981 period. Mr. Reischauer has been a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program of the Brookings Institution (1986-89 and 1995-2000) and the senior vice president of the Urban Institute (1981-86).

Mr. Reischauer is an economist with an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a PhD in economics and master’s in international affairs from Columbia University. He has written and lectured extensively on a wide range of topics including federal budget policy, health reform, social welfare issues, and the Medicare and Medicaid programs. He frequently contributes to the opinion pages of the nation’s major newspapers, comments on public policy developments on radio and TV, and testifies before congressional committees.

Mr. Reischauer serves on the boards of several educational and nonprofit organizations. He is a member of the Harvard Corporation, vice chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and served as chair of the National Academy of Social Insurance’s project, “Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term” from 1995 to 2004.