Methodology

Canonical parameters

Every parameter displayed on this site originates in the canonical parameters document (published in full at /canonical-parameters, v11.0 current canon) and is executed by the fiscal engine (lib/fiscal-engine.ts), which generates every projection at every build. The plan is scored end to end: every revenue and obligation line by formula in the master tables; healthcare on the mechanism ledger; Social Security on the CBO long-term shape; the child allowance indexed; non-defence discretionary held at its 2036 share of GDP with an account crosswalk; defence floored at 3.0% of GDP; the infrastructure floor at 0.45% of GDP for the horizon. Every AI-assisted response carries a version footer (— Based on NAA DNA v11.0) so drift between site canon and AI responses can be detected.

Master tables. Every revenue and expenditure category, every year 2030–2079, in dollars and as % of GDP, computed live from the fiscal engine with formula and assumptions annotated per line, and asserted against the site's charts at every build. See /methodology/master-tables →.

What changed in v11.0 — plain English

The health path is now executed, not held flat. Until this version the engine scored a federal medical share held constant from FY2036 while canon ruled convergence. The engine now runs the mechanism ledger — billing release, site-neutral payment, the reference schedule disciplined by the public arm, the drug chassis, the physician-work freeze with medical education funded — on the ruled whole-floor convergence in two phases: national health spending grows one point below nominal GDP to 2050, while prices converge from an outlier, then half a point below, toward a 13.0% system share. Public health, research and structures investment, and home health are protected from the rule; the Medicaid-retained lanes stay on their current-law path.

The revenue bases were verified before any rate moved.The VAT base share of GDP, unsourced at 0.52, is derived at 0.42 (band 0.38–0.46) from the national accounts. The prebate is paid per person from an envelope fixed at the HHS household-schedule total. The Land-Value Surcharge is canon at a recommended 0.75%, adjustable to revenue requirements; a charitable bequest is an ordinary succession. Defence is floored at 3.0% of GDP for the horizon, because the unfloored extension of the CBO series had been financing part of the closure by eroding to 1.3%. The calibration residual — a frozen 1.2%-of-GDP reduction of receipts the v10.8 calibration imposed — is retired only against each named stream’s derived yield, never by deletion.

The governor watches a date. Each year the Statistics Board projects, under the enacted rates, the year debt held by the public reaches zero. If that date has moved two or more years beyond, or ahead of, the most recent retirement date, the payroll rate and the top income rate move together in 0.25-point steps by the amount that brings it back to within one year, and the new projection becomes the most recent date. Automatic moves stop at a net one point of payroll either way; beyond that Congress must act. The Board sets the launch rates in Year 1 so the path is on track for 2080 from day one. This replaces the Year N+4 balance trigger and the fixed-tick response.

Two retirement dates, and a boundary instead of a pessimist.“Retired” is published as two named dates, never one word for both: “no external debt,” the year net borrowing from outside the government reaches zero, with the Climate Trust’s and the Financial Stability Reserve’s Treasury holdings stated beside it; and “General Fund debt-free,” the year the fund owes nothing to the public or to the trusts. The debt rises during the transition by design, above the current-law path, and the chart says so. The former conservative scenario — a fixed pessimistic economy that never closed — is kept as the stress case beyond the boundary, and the conservative case itself is now the boundary: the deterioration in growth, health cost and the interest premium, after the launch rates are set, that the governor’s four steps still absorb. Its numbers live in the methodology artifact and move with every run.

What the executed engine says at the published 10% VAT.Central is General Fund debt-free in 2071 and has no external debt in 2070, with no governor step. The published rate is a planning figure [BILL 2026-09-09: 10% is OK]: the Statistics Board’s rule (retirement by 2080 with no governor trip, one leg; the transition rise is design) solves lower on this engine (7.075%, executed step 7.25%), and every solve stays in the methodology artifact until each stream cell behind it is copied at source. The top income rate is paired to the VAT and is 52% at 10%. Optimistic 2056; the stress case spends the whole band and does not retire inside the horizon, and is reported. Three corrections sit behind those dates: Social Security now plateaus on the CBO long-term shape near 6.2% of GDP (the extension had compounded to 9.4% by 2079); the child allowance is indexed to the constant-tax CPI; non-defence discretionary is held at its 2036 share of GDP. There is one VAT rate. The calibration residual — a frozen reduction of receipts of about 1.2% of GDP a year that stood in for four instruments the plan had ruled but never derived — is retired against those instruments’ derived yields, each net of what the score already books: the tax expenditures the plan closes, the ended charitable deduction with the donor-entity block, and the Land-Value Surcharge above its old sizing (the accession register was already booked from the wealth model and retires nothing). The four retire 85% of the residual at 2036 and all of it by 2079; the derivations are the advisor’s readings of the public tables and are marked pending verification at source. The same pass built the account crosswalk for non-defence discretionary spending — veterans’ care paid by the single payer with the VA hospitals unchanged, the existing federal infrastructure base counted toward the 0.45% floor, childcare and training grants folded into the programmes that replace them — and booked the public-health, research and administration lanes the health ledger had left with no carrier. The site publishes the executed rate only.

The debt as three scenario pairs. For the optimistic, central and conservative cases the chart draws the enacted rates with the governor idle and with it live, in percent of GDP beside CBO’s current-law path, and marks three milestones: debt at 20% of GDP, no external debt with the trusts’ holdings beside it, and General Fund debt-free. The conservative case is the boundary: the deterioration in growth, health cost and the interest premium the automatic steps still absorb. The Accord’s assumptions sit beside Medicare for All, the public option and the other comprehensive fiscal plans at /scoring/compared, with a source at each claim. The obligation table by line, with each line’s return class and ROI-gate status, is obligation-roi-table.json.

Replicate it. The executed commit is stamped in replication.json; the boundary sweep is conservative-boundary.json and the lever sizing v11-package-sizing-3.json, each regenerated by a script in the repository. A self-scored plan earns its comparisons by offering the engine.

Still open. The central VAT rate as canon; the line-by-line derivation of the VAT base and of the four streams that retire the calibration residual; whether the infrastructure floor runs for the horizon; the top-rate corridor as stated in canon (49–53) against the 49–57 the engine has run since the 55% baseline; and sourcing every chart from the engine rather than the display model.

Three scenarios

The fiscal engine runs three scenarios, all with the Debt Sunset Governor on (the published mode), so what varies is the economic path and the steps the governor takes. The conservative boundary is generated from central at every build and listed with them:

• Optimistic: Distributed Healthcare basis $5,010B; revenue runs above central in the transition years. Assumes 25% admin savings and drug pricing held at 120% of the OECD median for 15 years. It closes earlier than central, with no automatic step.
• Central: Distributed Healthcare basis $6,300B. Success is the central case closing: the launch rates are set so it retires the debt by the statutory 2080 with no automatic step (0 of 8 coupled steps fire). Year-10 balance after debt service −$2.04T: the debt rises through the transition by design, to about 110% of GDP in the late 2030s, then falls.
• Conservative, the boundary: the deterioration in growth, health cost and the interest premium, after the launch rates are set, that the governor's 8 automatic steps still absorb; it closes with all of them. Its numbers are generated at every build and published in the boundary artifact.
• Stress, beyond boundary: the deterioration past that boundary, run on the same engine. It spends the whole band and is reported as measured, never suppressed.

Canon fixes the governor's method (triggers, evidence, step size and automatic band), never its outcome. Every fiscal outcome is calculated by the executed engine from the policies in canon (2030 Year 1 through 2079 Year 50). Retirement is published as two dates with two names: no external debt, when net borrowing from outside the government reaches zero with the two trusts' Treasury holdings stated beside it; and General Fund debt-free, when the fund owes nothing to the public or to the trusts. The charts carry the years.

Known sensitivities

• Wealth & institutional excise erosion: European experience shows 30–40% behavioral erosion of estate-prepayment bases within five years via valuation disputes and mobility. The estate-prepayment stream carries a two-layer compliance model (registry visibility times legal avoidance on the visible base), calibrated to the ruled Year-10 captures per scenario, and bypasses the aggregate calibration.
• VAT base vs. Pre-bate cost: the Pre-bate is paid per person (about $95/adult and $34/child per month) from an envelope of ≈ $323B/yr, fixed at the HHS household-schedule total and scaling with the rate. The prebate is a scheduled commitment: a cyclical shortfall in collections never cuts it; the General Fund absorbs the gap. The gross VAT base is 42% of GDP, derived from the national accounts.
• Carbon revenue decay: The fee escalator reaches its statutory ceiling and emissions fall over the horizon. By the late 2040s, carbon receipts fund the Energy Stipend and little else, and the Stipend itself is transitional, ending as households convert. Revenue above the rebate cap accrues to the Climate Adaptation Trust, never to the General Fund, so the decay touches no permanent spending.
• Interest-rate path: interest on the debt carries the executed symmetric feedback, 3bp on the marginal rate per point of debt-to-GDP above the scenario's own 2030 ratio, a tailwind below it, bounded at ±200bp. The +50bp flat rate premium is published as a stress, and the Stress Lab runs the labor-share and growth stresses on the same engine.

External scoring

External scoring is being pursued through the Penn-Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), Resources for the Future (RFF) for carbon and externality components, and the Brookings Hamilton Project for distributional analysis. The calibration residual is retired against the four derived instruments (the tax expenditures the plan closes, the ended charitable deduction with the donor-entity block, and the Land-Value Surcharge; the accession register was already booked); the remaining verification step is to copy their source cells (JCT, CRS, the Fed's Z.1, Giving USA, NPT, OMB) at source.

Outside the score by design

• Alliance Incentive, scored at $0 net: Layer-B compact revenue is negotiated, never pre-scored; Layer-A border adjustments are inside the carbon border adjustments
• State-level rollout schedules: state delivery decisions, not a federal cost line
• Behavioral elasticity for household carbon response: published as a band (ε = 20–80%, see the Climate tab), not a point

Sensitivity bands vs. point estimates

Every numeric claim on the site carries one of these labels:

• [ARCHITECTURAL] — architectural commitment, not a point estimate (e.g., the Debt Sunset Governor's method and automatic band)
• [POINT] — canonical point estimate from DNA v11.0 (payroll tax 28%, Universal Child Allowance beginning at $800/mo, carbon fee $80/ton Year 1)
• [BAND] — central estimate within a published range (household carbon-response elasticity ε = 20–80%)
• [HISTORICAL] — based on a specific historical datum (CBO 2025 LTBO, NHE 2024)

Two composite scores: a testable architecture

COMPASS splits quality-of-life measurement into two composite scores because they are hypothesized to respond to different remedy types at different speeds. Individual scores measure outcomes that travel with people: health, education, income, victimization. Place-based scores measure structural conditions of the tract: infrastructure proximity, housing stock, environmental exposure, local crime rate. A third Balanced composite is the geometric mean across all eight domains, preserved for continuity.

The split tells which remedy to reach for. If a tract's individual score is low but its place-based score is moderate, remedies that deliver cash and services to individuals (Universal Child Allowance, Pre-bate, Skills Wallet, SUD treatment) are expected to lift that score faster. If place-based score is low but individual score is moderate, remedies that build infrastructure (FQHC construction, mobile health, broadband, school investment) are expected to lift faster.

The closest academic counterpart is Chetty's Opportunity Atlas; Chetty, Hendren & Katz (AER 2016) showed that place itself changes children's outcomes, the evidentiary basis for tract-level triggers, and Lost Einsteins (QJE 2019) estimates the cost of talent that is never found. Metric additions adopted with credit: Chetty's economic-connectedness index, a Case–Deaton despair-mortality sentinel (CDC WONDER), and a Cost-of-Thriving companion (Cass).

This architecture is validated only to the extent that the two scores do diverge, and that different remedies produce the predicted differential lifts. Quarterly regeneration publishes the measurements; annual analysis (starting Year 2) tests whether elasticity coefficients match the two-composite hypothesis. If the composites move in lockstep regardless of remedy type across two years of data, the architecture collapses to a single score and the site simplifies.

Elasticity model — first-cut and how it updates

All lift estimates on this site (the fields carrying a gold ⁂) come from the first-cut elasticity model derived from pre-launch parameters. Empirical coefficients replace these estimates after the first annual analysis, published Year 2 of deployment. The analysis regresses quarterly score changes on intervention amounts per tract, separately for individual and place-based composites, and publishes the delta between predicted and observed lift per remedy type. The model changelog (date, what changed, and why) lives on this page.

Domain weights (first cut)

Each domain contributes to both composites with different weights; weights sum to 1.0 per domain.

• Health & Longevity: 55 individual / 45 place-based
• Education & Skills: 45 / 55
• Economic Security: 65 / 35
• Housing & Infrastructure: 30 / 70
• Safety & Justice: 40 / 60 (individual-side data is sparse; see note below)
• Environment & Climate: 25 / 75
• Civic Engagement: 55 / 45
• Child & Family Wellbeing: 50 / 50

Safety & Justice data gap

Safety & Justice is the most data-challenged of the eight for this split. Place-based crime data (FBI UCR, state crime registries) is available at tract or small-area resolution. Individual-side crime data (victimization and incarceration by resident) is sparse: NCVS reports regionally. Tract pages in this domain display a data-quality indicator (🟢 full / 🟡 partial / 🔴 gap). The National Statistics Board roadmap commits to improving individual-side data collection as part of the measurement buildout.

How the two place-based metrics are computed

The Accord displays two tract-level metrics, both pre-computed to the tract centroid. QOL Composite (0–10) collapses the eight COMPASS domains (Health, Education, Economic, Housing, Safety, Environment, Civic, Child/Family — see Ch 15) via geometric mean. Equal domain weighting; geometric mean penalizes weak links so that one catastrophic domain is not masked by a strong one.

Critical Access Proximity (0–10) measures drive-time to six life-threatening-service facility types: Level II+ trauma, OB-GYN, specialty care (cardiology/oncology/neurology), dialysis, mental-health crisis, and FQHC. Each type scored 0–10 against published clinical thresholds (e.g., Level II: 10 at ≤30 min, 0 at ≥120 min). Six sub-scores combined via geometric mean.

Why two. Earlier drafts carried a separate layer per facility type. Two composites are clearer: one measures everyday living conditions in the tract, the other measures how fast emergency care can be reached. Sub-scores remain visible on tract click-through.

Pre-computation is from tract centroid (not county centroid) to the nearest facility point. ~73,000 tracts × 6 facility types ≈ 438,000 distance computations, haversine with urbanicity-adjusted drive-time multipliers. Regenerated quarterly by scripts/proximity_compute.py.

Anticipated delivery mix

Healthcare access is delivered through three tiers with different clinical capabilities and deployment ramps. The map reports Critical Access in both Physical (brick-only drive-time) and Effective (best across all available tiers) forms.

• Tier 1 · Telehealth (Y1-3, universal). Post Office 2.0 booth at every site. Capital ~$1.55B (50K/booth × 31K sites), operating $155M/yr. No substitute for acute surgery, labor & delivery, or dialysis sessions.
• Tier 2 · Mobile (Y1-5, targeted). Scheduled mobile units for OB-GYN, dialysis, specialty care, crisis response, FQHC circuits. ~$1.1B capital over 5 years; $550M/yr operating at maturity; ~18M residents served.
• Tier 3 · Brick-and-mortar (Y3-20, plausibility-gated). VHA expansion > hospital upgrade > integrated-care anchor > county-seat addition > greenfield. Only tier for 24/7 surgical and inpatient acute care.

Tier capability matrix

Each tier delivers a different share of each facility type's value. Tele-psychiatry is standard of care (75% of brick value); dialysis via telehealth is clinically impossible (0%). The matrix:

Effective vs physical Critical Access

The map reports both versions. Physical captures time-to-brick-and-mortar, the residual gap Tier 3 must close over 20 years. Effective captures best available time-to-care across whichever tiers are deployed in that tract at that year. Physical is what matters for acute trauma; effective for mental-health crisis, specialty consult and routine primary care.

Tier 3 plausibility gate + site preference

The 20-year schedule ranks tracts by composite deficit (drive-time excess × log-population × adjacency bonus × access-urgency) and selects each facility's site through the plausibility gate: VHA expansion > hospital upgrade (Critical Access Hospital → Level III → Level II) > integrated-care anchor (Kaiser-model) > county-seat addition > greenfield (only if catchment ≥150K and no upgradable anchor within 60-120 min). Capacity constraints reflect workforce pipelines, not capital: Level II trauma is limited to ~7 new facilities/year by the 5-year-lag surgeon residency pipeline.

Operating subsidy for security capacity. Per Blueprint Ch 20, Level II trauma centers, OB-GYN outreach, specialty care, and mental-health crisis facilities in small catchments receive permanent operating subsidy above fee revenue. Their value is standing capability, like a fire station's. It is a permanent line in Distributed Healthcare's budget.

Replication package

Everything needed to reproduce the headline table is published as a single JSON bundle: every canonical parameter (the full CFG export), scenario definitions, calibration constants and phase curves, the avoidance-haircut citation list, and the current headline figures. The bundle is regenerated from the fiscal engine at every build.

Download replication.json →  To verify: clone the repository, run npm install, then npx tsx scripts/generate-derived-fiscal.ts. Your output must match the bundle's scenarioHeadlines block exactly.

Red-team process

The document has been red-teamed continuously in structured conversations with multiple AI systems (Claude, ChatGPT). External validator engagement with the institutions listed above is ongoing. When errors are identified, corrections are posted publicly to the updates log with the prior value, the correction, and the source. The standing invitation lives at /red-team, seeded with the flaws already found and fixed: find a flaw we haven't listed and we canonize the fix and credit you.

Earlier methodology versions

This page always describes the current model. Earlier versions keep their own URLs and figures, frozen as they stood, so a superseded number stays findable as history and is never served as current.

• Methodology v10.16 (2026-08-26) — Correspondence audit closed against CBO current-law series; healthcare booked gross after a double-subtraction was found; healthcare calibration reopened and still open.
• Methodology v10.10 (2026-07-09) — Wealth-transfer revenue rebuilt from the registry base rather than hand-seeded from IRS-visible wealth.

Authored by Bill Hersman, LiDAR Space LLC · DNA v11.0