The American Stability and Long-Term Prosperity Act

Contents

1. 01Preamble
2. 02Executive Summary
3. 03Current State Analysis: Ten Measurable Gaps
4. 04Core Strategy: Four Pillars and a Foundation Layer
5. 05Fiscal Arithmetic and Middle-Class Balance Sheet
6. 06Well-Being and Quality-of-Life Framework
7. 07Political Viability Strategy
8. 08Twenty-Year Implementation Roadmap
9. 09Risk Analysis and Stress Tests
10. 10Foreign Policy and International Considerations
11. 11Planetary Stewardship and Civilizational Resilience
12. 12Post-Debt Surplus Strategy
13. 13Future Impact Analysis
14. 14Metrics and Twenty-Year Success Criteria
15. 15Legislative Architecture: Title-by-Title Outline
16. 16Appendix
17. 17References

63 pages, Comprehensive Edition. Policy white paper, not statutory text ready for floor consideration. Version 1 remains available as an archive.

Executive summary

The strategic logic

The framework is a five-part mechanism designed to bend federal debt from a projected 107 percent of GDP by 2029 toward 70 percent or below by the mid-2040s, without imposing net costs on middle-income households, without sacrificing the federal investment capacity required for climate, infrastructure, and human capital, and while closing ten measurable outcome gaps between the United States and peer democracies.

• Fiscal sustainability and middle-class security are not in tension.

  Countries that protect household demand and social insurance during consolidation — Canada and Sweden in the 1990s are the clearest cases — achieve more durable results than countries that front-load contraction. This framework is built around an explicit hold-harmless mandate for households earning $40,000–$150,000.

• Fiscal sustainability and climate stability are interdependent.

  Disaster response, agricultural disruption, infrastructure replacement, and public-health costs are already showing up as fiscal liabilities. A budget that treats climate as someone else’s problem will be invalidated by the budget itself within twenty years.

• Fiscal sustainability depends on functional institutions.

  OECD history is unambiguous: consolidations succeed when governments have independent analysis and durable rules. They fail when they do not. The Foundation Layer exists for that reason.

• Fiscal sustainability is the enabler of human flourishing, not a substitute for it.

  Version 1 answered how the United States stops accumulating debt without hurting the middle class. Version 2 answers the follow-on question: fiscal balance for what? Every dollar saved on interest is a dollar available for the health, education, housing, safety, and civic infrastructure that peer democracies already deliver at lower cost.

Ten-year fiscal effect

Twenty-year markers

A household at $75,000

Estimated present-value household balance-sheet improvement over twenty years, Version 1 plus Version 2 — driven mainly by lower healthcare costs, housing-cost stabilization, student-debt restructuring, less energy-price volatility, and expanded human-capital support. Version 1 modeled $40,000–$70,000. Modeled present-value improvement: $70,000–$125,000.

• Carbon dividend. About $1,200–$1,800 a year per household, designed to more than offset energy-price pass-through for most families, with a rural multiplier.
• Healthcare costs. Out-of-pocket health spending $1,800–$3,200 a year lower within ten years as universal primary care (D1), drug negotiation, and site-neutral payment take hold.
• Skills account. A federal workforce account with a $5,000 opening deposit and $1,000 a year thereafter — portable, individual-directed, modeled on Singapore’s SkillsFuture.
• Early childhood and family leave. Subsidized care worth about $8,000–$12,000 a year for households with children under five, plus 12 weeks of paid family leave at 80 percent of wages — about $8,000–$14,000 per birth or serious medical event.
• Housing and student debt. In participating metros, $6,000–$18,000 a year in avoided rent premium within seven years, and income-contingent repayment that removes catastrophic student-debt exposure.
• Retirement programs. Social Security and Medicare benefits for current retirees are not reduced. Solvency is restored through high-earner contributions and gradual parametric reform for younger workers.

What success looks like

• Debt ratio bent downward. From a projected 107 percent of GDP by 2029 toward 70 percent or below by the mid-2040s in the base case, conditional on substantially full enactment and macroeconomic conditions consistent with the CBO baseline.
• Deficit closed, then surplus. Annual deficit from $1.8 trillion today toward roughly $0.6 trillion at Year 10 and surplus near Year 20 in the central estimate.
• Middle-class balance sheet improved. A $75,000 household is modeled to see $70,000–$125,000 in present-value gains over twenty years (Version 1 plus Version 2) from healthcare, energy, skills, childcare, paid family leave, housing-cost stabilization, and student-debt restructuring — not from a tax cut financed with more debt.
• Interest no longer the tail that wags the budget. Lower debt service restores room for defense, infrastructure, research, and education that interest is currently crowding out.

The ask

1. 1 — Establish an Independent Fiscal Council. Place it in the legislative branch, with statutory analytical authority and a mandate for long-horizon scenario reporting. This is the precondition for any 20-year program.
2. 2 — Enact the highest-confidence revenue and efficiency package. IRS modernization, prescription-drug negotiation expansion, defense procurement reform, and a border-adjusted carbon fee with dividend — through the FY2027 reconciliation process or an equivalent vehicle.
3. 3 — Authorize growth investments on regular order. Sequence infrastructure, skills, early childhood, and research over five to seven years, with explicit sunset and review triggers at Years 5 and 10.
4. 4 — Authorize Pillar D as a separately scored title. Enact Title VIII (Human Flourishing and Societal Infrastructure) with independent CBO scoring for each of D1–D10, state-partnership provisions where appropriate, and a five-year statutory review.
5. 5 — Adopt the Well-Being Impact Standard. Require any legislation with a ten-year fiscal impact above $10 billion to carry a well-being impact statement — analogous to a fiscal note — modeled on New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget and reviewed by the Independent Fiscal Council.

For the title-by-title bill outline, see Legislative architecture.