Cato Institute Senior Fellow Michael Tanner heads research into a variety of domestic policies, with an emphasis on poverty and social welfare policy, health care, and Social Security and entitlement reform.

More recently Tanner has undertaken a major project to develop innovative solutions to poverty in California, which is widely seen as a model for building bipartisan consensus around innovative ways to reform government‐​imposed barriers to economic participation by the poor and marginalized groups. The Project on Poverty and Inequality in California builds on Tanner’s most recent book, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor, a comprehensive look at the ways government contributes to poverty in the United States.

Tanner is also the author of numerous other books on public policy, including Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Leviathan on the Right: How Big‐​Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It, The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society, and A New Deal for Social Security. He also contributed a chapter on libertarian solutions for poverty to libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty.

Called a “lucid writer and skilled polemicist” by the New York Times and hailed as one of the nation’s the five most influential experts on Social Security by Congressional Quarterly, Tanner’s writings have appeared in nearly every major American newspaper, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. A prolific writer and frequent guest lecturer, Tanner appears regularly on network and cable news programs.