Romina Boccia is director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, where she focuses on federal spending, the budget process, the economic consequences of rising debt, and reforms to Social Security and Medicare. She is the principal author of the Debt Dispatch (Substack), the leading fiscal policy newsletter read by members of Congress. Her new book, Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons for Retirement Policy Changes (Cato Institute, 2025), coauthored with Ivane Nachkebia, has received high praise from leading social policy scholars. Boccia previously served as director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, where she was the principal author of the Blueprint for Balance, the organization’s flagship budget plan, which informed President Trump’s first-term budget proposal.
She has contributed chapters to A Fiscal Cliff: New Perspectives on the U.S. Federal Debt Crisis and published on James Buchanan’s case for a balanced budget amendment in the peer-reviewed journal Homo Oeconomicus. Most recently, Boccia was managing director at Dialog, an invite-only leadership network cofounded by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman, which convenes global leaders across politics, business, technology, the military, the arts, and academia for off-the-record conversations and retreats. She began her policy career as an analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, which in 2013 named her among the “women who should run for public office.” She cofounded Liberty Toastmasters in Washington, DC, and serves on the board of America’s Future.
A native of Augsburg, Germany, Boccia holds a BA and MA in economics from George Mason University.
Is Social Security a retirement savings program, social insurance, or a system of intergenerational transfers? Public understanding of the program differs sharply from its economic reality, with important implications for the politics of reform. This talk examines Social Security’s design, revealing the disconnect between the program’s pay-as-you-go financing, the nature of the trust fund, and the widespread belief that workers are saving for their own retirement. Drawing on nationally representative polling conducted by the Cato Institute, the discussion examines how Americans understand Social Security, where public perceptions diverge from reality, and how alternative framings affect support for reform. It considers reforms by other countries and the lessons they hold for the U.S.. The talk concludes by exploring what a simpler, more transparent, and fiscally sustainable system focused on preventing old-age poverty while expanding opportunities for personal saving and investment might look like.
