Owns the rails, the floor, the measurement, and the prices
Authority. The federal government builds and operates the infrastructure no state can build alone: the payment rail (FedCard), the funding rail (Skills Wallet), the universal floor every American is enrolled in automatically (Distributed Healthcare, Universal Child Allowance, SS 2.0), the measurement system (COMPASS indicators published quarterly by the National Statistics Board), and externality pricing at the source — carbon, methane, and the rest of the levy architecture that no single state can price without leaking across its borders.
Constraint. The federal layer does not set wages, does not prescribe curricula, does not run local delivery, and does not mandate occupational requirements. Where the Accord delegates to an expert body, the statute states the body's authority, budget, and process — not its conclusions.
Own delivery models, licensure, and everything above the floor
Authority. States decide how services are delivered inside their borders: delivery models, provider licensure, professional standards, and public-sector wages. They may layer optional add-ons above the federal floor — funded by their own taxes, designed by their own legislatures. The freed state Medicaid share returns to states unconditioned, including for state tax cuts.
Constraint. The universal floor is national: a state cannot opt its residents out of coverage or delivery the floor guarantees, and state add-ons ride on top of the federal rails rather than replacing them.
The Medicaid windfall. At each state's absorption date — the quarter its population enrolls at capacity-gate clearance — its share of the roughly $300B/yr states now spend on Medicaid becomes the state's to keep, in full, with no clawback and no federal condition (a declining 75/50/25 recapture was modeled and forgone: it moved no headline metric while souring fifty capitals). The Accord's stated expectation — doctrine, not condition — is that states redirect the windfall toward their lane: delivery add-ons, wages, siting.
Own siting, zoning, operation, and ground truth
Authority. Municipalities control where things go — siting for anchor sites, housing, and civic infrastructure — and how zoning shapes supply. They operate the Civic Response layer on the ground, and they are the source of COMPASS ground truth: the tract-level conditions the indicators measure are local facts only local institutions can verify.
Constraint. Federal transportation, infrastructure, and housing grants condition on locality-level supply reforms, and COMPASS measurement is statutory — a locality can shape its response, not switch off the sensor.
Where the layers meet in practice: childcare · housing · Civic Response