Documented outcomes at scale
Each Version 2 policy is drawn from a specific national or subnational program whose results are published in official or peer-reviewed sources — not from a theoretical model.
Method and neutrality
Built in four passes. Scored in ranges. Sourced to primary documents.
A twenty-year fiscal framework that hid its uncertainty would not deserve a hearing. This one publishes confidence labels, names trade-offs where they arise, and treats CBO, Treasury, and IRS baselines as the shared starting point — not as talking points.
How it was developed
Synthesis, validation, reconciliation, then the Version 2 expansion.
Pass 1
Strategic synthesis
An initial framework drawing on documented sovereign consolidations — Canada and Sweden in the 1990s, Norway across multiple decades — and on mechanisms tested at scale in Germany, Singapore, Finland, New Zealand, British Columbia, and Estonia, mapped onto current U.S. baseline data.
Pass 2
Structured validation
A pass against primary sources: CBO, Treasury, IRS, IMF, OECD, peer-reviewed research, and official reports of the named foreign jurisdictions. Where a claim could not be sourced, it was removed or restated as a range with a confidence label.
Pass 3
Reconciliation
A compilation pass reconciling synthesis and validation, applying corrections, and logging remaining uncertainties. A reconciliation log is provided in Appendix F of the working draft.
Pass 4
Version 2 expansion
After publication of Version 1, a follow-on pass asked the framing question Version 1 left open — fiscal balance for what? — and added ten policies addressing documented U.S. gaps versus peer democracies. Each candidate had to meet three country-precedent tests before it entered Pillar D.
Country-precedent selection
Version 2 policies had to clear three tests before they entered the catalog.
Pillar D is not a wish list. Each of D1–D10 is drawn from a specific country program and had to satisfy documented outcomes at scale, at least one U.S. cross-party endorsement precedent, and replicability under American federalism.
At least one U.S. cross-party endorsement
Every Pillar D mechanism has a documented U.S. endorsement, pilot, or analogue advanced by analysts or elected officials on more than one side of the aisle.
Replicability under American federalism
Policies are structured as matching grants, state partnerships, or federal floors that states can exceed — not as wholesale preemption of state authority.
Scoring rules
Conventional budget-window logic first. Dynamic effects second, and labeled as such.
Every projection carries a range
Point estimates are central cases with implicit ±10–15 percent uncertainty bands unless a wider range is stated. Best-case, base-case, and stress-case columns are published side by side.
Conventional scoring, then a qualitative dynamic note
Pillar C investments are scored as costs under CBO-style rules, which generally exclude macroeconomic feedback. Independent dynamic models (Penn Wharton, Moody’s, Tax Policy Center) typically find positive fiscal feedback from infrastructure, education, and clean-energy investment over ten-year-plus horizons. Those effects are described, not added into the $7.0 trillion Version 2 base-case total (Version 1 was $7.1 trillion; Pillar D’s net cost of about $130 billion is absorbed inside the same stress-case bands).
Trade-offs are named in place
Intergenerational distribution, regional effects, and the political feasibility of specific revenue measures are discussed in the section where they arise — not buried in footnotes or omitted.
Partisan associations are disclosed, not concealed
Where a proposal carries a visible partisan association in current U.S. politics, that association is noted in the political-viability discussion. Mechanisms are drawn from across the spectrum.
Nonpartisan approach
Mechanisms from across the spectrum. Associations disclosed, not concealed.
No party owns fiscal arithmetic
Debt, interest, and the tax gap are not partisan facts. They are published by CBO, Treasury, and IRS under both parties. This site reports those baselines and a framework for changing them.
Each pillar has a conservative and a progressive case
Enforcing existing tax law, paying less for identical hospital services, and restoring Social Security solvency can be argued from more than one tradition. The framework records both framings rather than picking a tribe.
Hold harmless is a design constraint, not a slogan
If a measure would impose a net cost on households between $40,000 and $150,000, it must carry a costed mitigation in the same package. That rule is what keeps consolidation from becoming an austerity program aimed at the middle.
Uncertainty is shown, not smoothed away
Policymakers and journalists should be able to see where confidence is high (IRS modernization, site-neutral Medicare) and where it is not (land-value incentives, some revenue elasticities).
Primary sources
What the numbers rest on
U.S. government and institutional
- — Congressional Budget Office, Long-Term Budget Outlook (March 2025) and Budget and Economic Outlook (February 2026)
- — U.S. Department of the Treasury, FY2025 final data
- — Internal Revenue Service, tax-gap estimates (tax year 2022)
- — Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, adjusted baseline (August 2025)
- — Government Accountability Office high-risk and improper-payment reports
International institutions
- — International Monetary Fund Article IV and fiscal-monitor series
- — OECD revenue statistics, health expenditure, Better Life Index, and Inclusive Framework
- — Bank for International Settlements work on sovereign-debt and financial-stability risk
Comparative consolidations
- — Canada Program Review (1990s)
- — Sweden fiscal framework and pension reform (1990s)
- — Norway Government Pension Fund Global
- — New Zealand Wellbeing Budget
- — Finland Committee for the Future
- — British Columbia carbon tax (2008– )
- — Estonia digital government (X-Road)
- — Germany GKV / Netherlands Zvw / Australia Medicare (D1)
- — Sweden Föräldrapenning and Germany Elterngeld (D2)
- — Finland and Singapore teacher education (D3)
- — Switzerland dual VET and Australia HECS-HELP (D4)
- — Vienna social housing; Singapore HDB; Finland Housing First (D5)
- — UK NHS Talking Therapies; Australia Better Access (D6)
- — Netherlands and Germany sentencing; Norway Halden (D7)
- — Australia 1996 National Firearms Agreement; U.S. CVI models (D8)
- — Canada Express Entry; Australia SkillSelect (D9)
Full citations appear in Section 16 of the working draft. Appendix A states modeling assumptions; Appendix B is the sensitivity analysis; Appendix F is the reconciliation log.
Figures in this framework are illustrative directional estimates derived from publicly available data and conventional Congressional Budget Office budget-window logic. They are not official CBO scores. Any provision adopted from this framework would require formal CBO scoring before legislative consideration. This document is a policy white paper, not an introduced bill.