Six Macrogovernors

Five of the six macrogovernors are domain-specific. Each watches a single domain signal and responds with a domain-specific instrument inside a corridor legislated by Congress. They fire on different signals, with different instruments, independently and simultaneously. None requires a congressional vote to act — the rules are written once, then the system executes. The sixth macrogovernor, Debt Sunset, is cause-agnostic and is covered below.

Each has historical precedent: a discretionary tool that worked when politics aligned, or a standing rule that already operates inside corridors abroad. The Accord innovation is making them automatic.

The five above each contain a domain. Debt Sunset contains the system. It watches the projected fiscal trajectory four years ahead and adjusts the income-tax top rate and payroll tax together within a narrow corridor. If the five above keep their domains in check and the fiscal trajectory stays clean, Debt Sunset stays inactive. When drift accumulates anywhere in the system — from one domain breaking out, from several drifting at once, or from a cause none of the five can address — Debt Sunset catches it.

Same card format as the five, so the basic mechanism reads in the same shape. The expanded sections below describe what makes Debt Sunset different.

Congress has failed to retire the federal debt for 70 years because the mechanism has always been political. Voters bear the cost of discipline and reap the benefit of indiscipline — a structural asymmetry that no legislature can close by willpower. The Fiscal Debt Sunset Governor removes the decision from politics entirely.

Each year, Treasury publishes the following year's payroll tax and top income tax rate by October 1, based on a forward-looking 4-year projection of the deployable balance. The adjustment is a narrow, coupled increment — either up or down, 0.25pp on both instruments together, within corridors that preserve the progressive burden distribution. No congressional vote. No executive order. Mechanical.

Both instruments move together. Every coupled upward trigger raises payroll tax 0.25pp and the top rate 0.25pp simultaneously. Every coupled downward trigger lowers both by 0.25pp. Coupling preserves the progressive distribution across the corridor — neither labor nor capital absorbs the adjustment alone.

Asymmetric: up to 6 coupled reductions (−1.5pp floor) but only 4 coupled increases (+1.0pp ceiling). More generous rate-cut potential than rate-hike ceiling — the governor is biased toward lowering rates when debt is falling ahead of schedule.

• Upward trigger (coupled +0.25pp): Year N+4 projected deployable balance below $0. First check occurs at the end of Year 6 (2036), projecting Year 10 (2040).
• Downward trigger (coupled −0.25pp): Year N+4 projected deployable balance above $1.5T for 3 consecutive years. This prevents premature rate cuts from a single good year.
• Annual publication: Treasury publishes the following year's rates by October 1. Effective January 1. 90+ day notice for payroll systems and taxpayers. Governor calculations are published quarterly for transparency.
• Post-retirement behavior: After debt retires, the governor continues downward triggers to return value to taxpayers. Both instruments reach their floors together (payroll tax 26.5%, top rate 53.5%), then the governor goes dormant. Further reductions require congressional action.

Debt retires within 50 years in every scenario. What varies is the payroll tax and top-rate path the governor follows to get there. The Year-10 deployable column shows the pre-governor fiscal gap; the rightmost columns show what the governor does in response.

Net fiscal magnitude at corridor extremes: up to +$200B/year (max +4 coupled) or −$280B/year (max −6 coupled). The envelope covers all realistic scenario drift, which is why the 50-year retirement promise is architectural rather than scenario-dependent.

The Debt Sunset Governor is the 6th macrogovernor in the Accord architecture (replacing the retired Solvency Governor). Its job is not to be active constantly — in the Central scenario it stays near dormant — but to guarantee that the debt retirement trajectory cannot drift out of the 50-year window without a mechanical correction in response.

Debt Sunset is cause-agnostic. It responds to the symptom (projected fiscal drift), not to any particular source. The other five governors address specific domain signals — productivity, speculation, energy, healthcare costs, financial stability — each with a domain-specific instrument. If a domain response is sufficient to keep fiscal trajectory on track, Debt Sunset stays inactive and no tax adjustment occurs. Only when domain responses fail to contain the drift does Debt Sunset fire, raising payroll tax and the top rate together within its corridor.

This produces the layered response that good utility architecture requires: domain-specific response first, system-level response only if the domain response is insufficient. Debt Sunset is the fiscal backstop. The other five handle their domains; Debt Sunset catches whatever they miss, and ensures 50-year debt retirement regardless of cause.

• Debt — names what is being governed: the outstanding federal obligation.
• Sunset — the end-state the governor guarantees: the debt sets to zero on a fixed 50-year arc.
• Governor — consistent with the other macrogovernor naming (Productivity Turbo, Speculation Brake, Input Shield, Healthcare Cost Brake, Financial Stability).

Debt Sunset is the only macrogovernor whose trigger is cause-agnostic. The other five each respond to a single domain signal (productivity, asset surges, energy prices, Distributed Healthcare GDP share, interbank stress) with a domain-specific instrument. Debt Sunset responds to the symptom — projected fiscal drift — regardless of source. It catches anything the five miss: demographic drag, rate spikes, multiple small drifts accumulating, or domain responses that were insufficient. Debt Sunset replaces the retired Solvency Macrogovernor (retired in v9.1a when the Social Security shortfall was absorbed into the General Fund). Macrogovernor count: 6.

Worked example. If Distributed Healthcare spikes to 16.8% of GDP, the Healthcare Cost Brake fires first: American Healthcare Quality Board clawback cuts fees up to 2%. If that clawback keeps the fiscal trajectory on track, Debt Sunset stays inactive — the cost problem was contained inside healthcare and no tax adjustment occurs. If the clawback is insufficient and the projected deployable balance still drifts below threshold, Debt Sunset fires. Taxes then respond to the fiscal problem, not the healthcare problem per se — because the healthcare problem has become a fiscal problem.

That layering is the architectural choice: domain-specific response first; system-level response only if the domain response is insufficient. Five domain governors handle their domains; Debt Sunset catches whatever they miss.

The five peer governors all have at least partial historical analogs — discretionary precedents that worked, or standing corridor-bound rules that operate today in some jurisdiction. The Accord innovation for those five is making them automatic.

Debt Sunset has no real precedent. The closest comparisons are spending-side debt brakes (Switzerland 2003, Germany’s Schuldenbremse 2009) and monetary policy rules (the Taylor Rule). Spending brakes constrain outlays; Debt Sunset adjusts revenue. Monetary rules adjust short rates within a mandate; Debt Sunset couples the income-tax top rate with payroll (payroll tax) to preserve the progressive distribution as it moves. No country has codified an automatic, forward-looking, symmetric tax-rate corridor tied to a multi-decade debt-retirement target.

That’s why Debt Sunset gets the longest treatment on this page and why the other five fit into shorter cards: the others can point to lived precedent and just need to be made automatic. Debt Sunset needs the architecture explained because nothing exactly like it has been tried before.