Advisory Council

Robert D. Reischauer

President, The Urban Institute

Robert D. Reischauer, a former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and nationally known expert on the federal budget, Medicare, and Social Security, began his tenure as the second President of the Urban Institute in February 2000.

He had been a Senior Fellow of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution since 1995. From 1989 to 1995, he was the Director of the nonpartisan CBO. Reischauer served as the Urban Institute's Senior Vice President from 1981 to 1986. He was the CBO's Assistant Director for Human Resources and its Deputy Director between 1977 and 1981.

Reischauer serves on the boards of several educational and nonprofit organizations. He is the Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation and one of two public Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. He was a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission from 2000-2009 and was its Vice Chair from 2001-2008.

He frequently contributes to the opinion pages of the nation's major newspapers, comments on public policy developments on radio and television, and testifies before congressional committees.

Reischauer holds an A.B. in political science from Harvard University and an M.I.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.