Peter Ferrara is Legal Director and serves as General Counsel for The American Civil Rights Union ACRU). He also is currently the Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation and is a Senior Fellow at the Free Enterprise Fund. In addition to various speaking engagements throughout the United States, he writes and produces studies and media presentations on a wide range of domestic policy issues, including tax reform, budget issues, government spending, health care, and a personal account option for Social Security.

From 1995 to 2000, Mr. Ferrara served as General Counsel and Chief Economist at Americans for Tax Reform. Prior to 1995, Mr. Ferrara served as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C.. He was centrally involved in defeating Bill Clinton’s proposed nationalization of health care and in developing free market alternatives. He produced studies, articles, and op-eds on these issues, and he participated in hundreds of radio and TV interviews, talk shows and other public forums.

Considered one of the foremost experts on a personal account option for Social Security, Mr. Ferrara has published numerous books and articles on the issue for the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and the National Center for Policy Analysis, as well as a large number of journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Human Events, Washington Times, and National Review. He wrote Cato’s first book on the subject, Social Security: The Inherent Contradiction (Wash. D.C.: Cato Institute, 1980). More recently he co-authored with Michael Tanner A New Deal for Social Security (Wash. DC: Cato Institute, 1998) and Common Cents, Common Dreams (Wash. DC: 1998), both presenting the case for a private option to Social Security.

From 1993 to 1994, Mr. Ferrara was a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., a leading conservative think tank. He specialized in health care, tax reform, labor law and other domestic policy issues. He wrote Issues ’94, a book covering all major public policy issues for candidates in the 1994 campaign, which was published by Heritage.

As Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States from 1992 to 1993, Mr. Ferrara served as a policy advisor to the Attorney General, headed departmental working groups on various policy issues, and represented the Department in federal appellate litigation.

Mr. Ferrara served as counsel at Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge in Washington, D.C., from 1983 to 1992. From 1988 to 1991, he was a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Mr. Ferrara was an Associate Professor of Law at George Mason School of Law from 1987 to 1991 and 2000-2001.

Mr. Ferrara also served in the White House Office of Policy Development for President Reagan.

Mr. Ferrara received his Juris Doctor Cum Laude from Harvard Law School in 1979. Mr. Ferrara holds a B.A. in economics from Harvard University, where graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1976.