host: always glad to welcome back charles blahous, senior research strategist at george mason university's mercatus center discussing a new report on the status of siathis is an m the social security and medicare board of trustees. first, remind us who those folks are, what their mission is. guest: there are six trustees. four of them are trustees by virtue of their government offices, ex officio trustees. secretary of treasury who is a managing trustee. sec. of labor, hhs, and the full security commission. normally there are also -- sadly we don't have them now -- but public trustees. i did that once. the two public trustees tend to be the public face of the trustees report. when there is testimony in congress on the contents of the report, it tends to be delivered by the public trustees. but the annual reports are very important, important because they basically tell lawmakers and the public the amounts of the changes that have to be made to social security if we want to continue in its current form. just by way of background, social security is a unique animal among federal programs. pr

charles blahous, currently a senior research strategist at the george mason university mercatus center. always plenty of calls when we have this topic. mary is from front royal, virginia on that line for social security recipients. caller: thank you for having me. i am curious about the other side of the social security. for fica, they are able to write that off as an excise tax or something. then they receive social security as well, so it is almost as if they are double dipping. guest: the taxation of social security contributions is complicated. i will try to make some sense out of it. the caller is right. the employer share of the contribution is tax-deductible to the employer. it is regarded as an expense of doing business. the employee share, the part taken out of drug wages, is not -- wages is not tax-deductible. in some ways that is artificial. most economists will tell you, in effect, both halves are paycheck. certainly comes out of your wages, the amount of compensation your employer can give to you. another implication here is the taxation of benefits. right now, depending o

we will be joined by charles blahous of george mason university.sion right after the break. >> when nigel hamilton was a student at cambridge university, he stayed for a brief time with winston and lydia churchill at their home in kent. he also spent hours talking about world war ii after the war of course with field marshal montgomery. these experiences lead to a life as an author. he first moved to the united states in 1988, based in the boston, massachusetts area. books include the bestseller jfk, reckless youth. two volumes on president bill clinton, and a trilogy on fdr about his role as commander in chief during world war ii from 1941 until 1945. nigel hamilton is now an american citizen. >> nigel hamilton on this edition of books notes plus. available on the free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> c-spanshop.org is c-span's online store. browse through our lives collection of products, apparel, books, home to core, and accessories. there is something for every c-span fan, and every purchase helps to support our nonprofit operat