The New American Accord

A new accord for the nation

An accord is reached together: the country requires stewardship, and stewardship must return more than it costs. One legislative window — the 2029 Congress — to reach it.

A $1,150 Dignity Floor.

A minimum Social Security benefit for 30-year contributors. Recognition for the caregiving years that never accrued SS credit.

Upgrade your money.

FedCard: a Treasury-backed benefits-and-payment rail in every wallet. Every benefit arrives automatically, no application, no middleman.

One federal payer. Three delivery lanes.

Medicare-for-all fee-for-service, integrated managed care, and an expanded Veterans Health system — with optional private coverage outside the floor.

Federal debt retires within 50 years.

An architectural commitment, not a forecast. Congress sets corridors in statute; Treasury applies the scheduled adjustments.

Child poverty cut six-fold.

Universal Child Allowance starting at $800/month per child — over $1,000/month in high-cost regions. No application, no means-test.

A home within reach again.

A land-value charge plus the end of the mortgage-interest deduction stop the use of homes as appreciating investments — pushing housing back toward shelter and opening 250K–400K units per year.

A 200-year climate reserve.

A ring-fenced trust accumulates carbon revenue, disbursed across the ~200-year arc of climate impacts. Capitalized once.

Out-compete China.

A $55T allied bloc with coordinated industrial capacity, and a Genius Track that keeps the world’s PhDs here.

Fix immigration.

Localities and businesses thrive from essential immigration — without suppressing domestic wages or jobs.

Restore the original tax progressivity.

A century of accumulated workarounds eroded what Congress originally wrote. Effective rates align with statutory rates again.

Measure quality of life, locally.

Every American tract scored across eight quality-of-life domains, quarterly. Investment triggers automatically when a tract crosses threshold.

A $1,150 Dignity Floor.

A minimum Social Security benefit for 30-year contributors. Recognition for the caregiving years that never accrued SS credit.

Upgrade your money.

FedCard: a Treasury-backed benefits-and-payment rail in every wallet. Every benefit arrives automatically, no application, no middleman.

One federal payer. Three delivery lanes.

Medicare-for-all fee-for-service, integrated managed care, and an expanded Veterans Health system — with optional private coverage outside the floor.

Federal debt retires within 50 years.

An architectural commitment, not a forecast. Congress sets corridors in statute; Treasury applies the scheduled adjustments.

Child poverty cut six-fold.

Universal Child Allowance starting at $800/month per child — over $1,000/month in high-cost regions. No application, no means-test.

A home within reach again.

A land-value charge plus the end of the mortgage-interest deduction stop the use of homes as appreciating investments — pushing housing back toward shelter and opening 250K–400K units per year.

The Philosophy

Steward America as a shared, intergenerational portfolio

The only system designed as a portfolio of investments, with expenditures optimized to yield maximum returns in national productivity, security, efficiency, durability, and sustainability. It invests in its people, its built and natural world, and the institutions that hold them together, wherever the returns are highest; prices every harm honestly; collects obligations long deferred; and retires the debt on a statutory schedule. Each goal below names the engine built to deliver it.

The Portfolio Statement

America’s portfolio holds four asset classes — human, built, natural, and institutional. Every American is a steward of all four, and every American collects the returns: productivity, security, efficiency, durability, sustainability. The Accord is the management discipline — invest where the returns are highest, price every harm honestly, settle obligations long deferred, and publish the results so any steward can check them.

Found only here

Mechanisms that exist nowhere else in the 2029 field.

Each program is admitted and measured by its rate of return in national productivity, security, and durability — investments we cannot afford not to make. Delivery is direct and automatic — without means-testing, edge cases, or expanded bureaucracy.

Advisor disclosure & promoter liability
The avoidance industry reports its own schemes within 30 days of marketing them — penalties on the advisor, every structure pre-registered before a dollar moves. Fielded by the UK and EU; never in the US.
Employer surcharge with community rebate
Employer pays the same as for a domestic hire; a formula-scored surcharge is withheld from the worker's wage at payroll and routed to host communities, phasing down as the worker integrates.
Annual estate-tax prepayment during life
Large estates pay the same bill early, in today’s dollars — the time value passes to the public. A substitute for a standing wealth tax.
Veterans Health Administration as a delivery lane in healthcare deserts
Single-payer financing, three delivery models — including the Veterans Health Administration expanded to reach rural areas the market won’t.
FedCard — a Treasury benefits-and-payment rail
The public payment utility behind the rails — no interchange skim.
COMPASS — tract-level quality-of-life sensing with auto investment
Every census tract scored quarterly; place-based investment triggered by formula, not appropriation.
Macrogovernors with the Debt Sunset Governor
Automatic fiscal stabilizers in statutory corridors. Monetary policy works this way; fiscal policy never has.
Civil Service academies
A West Point for the civilian federal workforce — constitutional loyalty, professional standards, leadership from unprivileged backgrounds.
Corporation for Public Broadcasting expansion
Broader viewpoints on public media — independent center-right and Spanish-language programming, children’s educational access — through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s existing firewall to independent producers.
Democracy vouchers at federal scale
Equal campaign vouchers for every voter — the post–Citizens United counterweight, Seattle generalized to federal scale.
Five central-bank-style independent expert panels
Federal-Reserve-style independence extended to healthcare quality, statistics, housing, financial stability, and digital safety.
Pre-funded, ring-fenced Financial Stability Reserve
A risk-scored levy on systemically important institutions, capitalized into a segregated fund deployable only on pre-authorized triggers — banks pre-pay their own systemic risk.
The terms of the Accord

Pay our own bills. Clean our own waste.

Demanding for some, better for most, owed either way — every year of delay compounds the bill and hands it to the grandchildren. Who gains, who carries more, who has to change:

Who benefits most
Children — the fifty-year inheritance.
A debt-free nation, a hardened grid, a funded climate trust, institutions that held — an inheritance written into law and funded on schedule.
Who comes out ahead now
Most working households.
One payroll tax replaces FICA plus the employer premium, so paychecks land larger. Healthcare without premiums or bankruptcy. A child allowance on a card, no forms. Change is universal; net loss is not.
Who carries more
Large fortunes — from a near-zero effective share to a real one.
Obligations deferred for decades, settled at last — the steward’s share of the country that built the conditions for every fortune.
Who has to change
Business models built on someone else’s bill.
Polluters, gatekeepers to basic services, outrage-for-profit: costs priced at the source instead of the ER, the coastline, and the grandchildren. Displaced workers get the bridge — the model retires, not the people.
Where the new revenue comes from
Large estates
Prepayment during life smooths the transition at death.
Annual estate-tax prepayment on wealth above $10M; estate-tax brackets restored.
Avoidance retired
The escape routes, closed: step-up, carried interest, buy-borrow-die, discounts.
Carried interest, stepped-up basis, the employer-premium exclusion, pass-through games, the tax-free "swap" doors — all collected at the source.
Priced harms
The actor causing the harm pays the cost.
Methane leakage (satellite-verified), financial speculation, pavement damage by axle weight, attention extraction — charged where they originate.
Private tolls reclaimed
The skims, bypassed: card interchange, drug-price middlemen, too-big-to-fail subsidies.
FedCard's public rail carries payments without the swipe fee; transparent pricing unwinds the pharmacy middleman's (PBM's) spread; the biggest banks' implicit funding advantage is charged back through the systemic-risk levy.
What was deleted — and what replaced it

We deleted the tax-deferred alphabet — the 401(k), the IRA, and the hundreds of pages that police them. Forty years of evidence shows the subsidy paid people for saving they would have done anyway, paid most to those who needed it least, and built an industry around the paperwork. What actually creates saving is automatic enrollment, so the Accord keeps that: every worker is enrolled by default in the public account, with near-zero fees, portable across every job, and a guaranteed floor underneath so no retirement falls through. Gains are taxed when taken. Withdrawal is free at any time, because it is your money. The deletion is one instance of a larger rule: the Accord ends tax deferral everywhere, and any delay the law still allows carries interest.

Where the money goes

Follow every dollar

Closing the escape routes →

Today’s law on the left, the Accord on the right. Revenue flows into the General Fund and two ring-fenced trusts, then out to coverage, the family floor, infrastructure, and debt retirement. Toggle Top 2% or Top 0.2% to see what the very top actually pays after avoidance — a thin sliver under today’s rules, a far wider band once the escape routes close.

Year2039
CBO: Deficit $1.79T
Accord: Deficit $517B
Income TaxCorporateVATWealth+EstateFinancial Transactions Tax+too-big-to-fail bankPayroll taxCarbon / ClimateSurplusClimate Trust
Year 10, central scenario. Ring-fenced pools cannot be raided by Congress; the surplus retires the debt within the fifty-year corridor. Top-cohort shares reflect collection after avoidance — modeled from published effective-rate studies, not a microsimulation. Open the full interactive model (with sliders) →
Nine engines · Six rails · Panels · Governors

How it works: nine engines that raise revenue and deliver benefits, five governors that hold the system solvent by law, two trusts that spend only what harm pricing collects

Engines of transformation
Capture revenue
Lifecycle revenue at every stage of value.
Distribute Healthcare to all
A premium-free universal floor; a federal board holds the cost.
Help kids succeed
Child allowance, Baby Bonds, Skills Wallet, Social Security 2.0.
Augment the workforce
A payroll surcharge levels immigrant pay without undercutting wages.
Help struggling communities
County-by-county need scores trigger automatic investment.
Tax pollution and harm
Ten priced harms at the source.
Strengthen democracy
Ranked-choice, fair maps, 18-yr SCOTUS.
Incentivize alliances
102-nation governance index sets tariffs.
Maximize livability
Annual wealth contribution; estate at exit.
Delivery rails, expert panels, and the sensor network
FedCard
Treasury-backed rail in every wallet.
Post Office 2.0
31,000 federal locations, repurposed.
Five Expert Panels
Senate-confirmed, methodology-audited.
Census Tract Sensors
Every US tract scored quarterly.
Automatic stabilizers — Congress sets the corridors, Treasury applies adjustments
Speculation Brake
Slows housing / equity surges.
Input Shield
Pauses carbon escalator on energy shock.
Healthcare Cost Brake
Holds healthcare at 16.8% of GDP.
Financial Stability
Auto secured lending on stress.
Debt Sunset
Couples payroll + top rate to debt path.
Where to start

Pick the door that matches your role.

For households
Personalized AI answers, cited.
For candidates
Eight-page briefing PDF — aspiration, three commitments, how it pays.
For office holders
Full architecture — mechanisms, scoring, chapter cites.
Policy wonks
Six structural differences from current proposals.
Calculators · household · business · wealth · immigration
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Family Calculator
Per-household impact under the Accord
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Business Calculator
Employer cost impact: payroll tax vs FICA + premiums
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Wealth Calculator
High-net-worth scenario analysis
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Immigrant Calculator
Employer Parity Surcharge rates and community revenue

All of this asks America to be shrewd — and shrewdness, compounding for fifty years, turns out to be the most generous thing a nation can do.

The best future — promised in law, earned by design.

A new democracy for a new century — capable, fair, and built to earn its place in every generation.