Make the books honest and give everyone a stake

What It Changes

5 changes. Anything underneath one of them is supporting detail, not another change.

1. 01

   The debt cannot grow faster than the country does

   Outside defined emergencies, federal debt may not grow faster than the economy, judged over a rolling period — the working default compares debt held by the public with the economy over five years — so a recession does not force cuts at the worst moment. CBO keeps the official score and GAO audits the process. Break the rule, and Congress must vote on a correction, on the record, by name — not automatic across-the-board cuts. Real emergencies get real borrowing, but the authority expires after two years unless three-fifths of each chamber extends it, and the excess returns to the normal rule on a published ten-year path so an emergency ceiling cannot become the new floor.

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2. 02

   Tax a dollar the same no matter how it is earned

   Wages, realized capital gains, and carried interest face the same rate schedule. And income should not escape tax forever because someone borrows against stock rather than selling it: once personal borrowing against appreciated financial assets crosses a $1 million cumulative threshold, the untaxed gain behind it becomes taxable. Ordinary mortgages and genuine business credit are untouched, a later sale gets a credit so nothing is taxed twice, and remaining gain is settled at death with protection for spouses, charities, and continuing family businesses and farms.

3. 03

   An investment account for every American, beginning at birth

   Every child starts life with a $10,000 investment account, seeded with new money — never by diverting payroll taxes that pay current retirees. The default is a low-cost, diversified fund whose risk adjusts automatically with age and funded status, with published rebalancing rules that prevent dumping assets after a crash. Roughly 3.6 million births a year at $10,000 each is about $36 billion a year — rounded to about $40 billion with administration — and $10,000 compounding at historical returns becomes something like $800,000 by age 65. That figure is an assumption about the future, not a promise.

4. 04

   A limited insurance floor under the account

   If low lifetime earnings or poor markets under the published default path still leave a full-career worker short, the government fills only the gap, up to a floor of about $1,700 a month — 125% of the poverty line, about $1,660 in 2026. The full floor applies after 35 credited years and is prorated below that rather than vanishing at a cliff, with caregiving, military service, and disability counting toward it. At retirement, enough of the balance converts into a payment that lasts for life. Disability and survivor insurance remain, because they cover risks no account balance solves.

   GOVERNMENT INSURES THE SENSIBLE PATH, NOT EVERY BET

   Take more risk and win, and you keep the upside. Take more risk and lose, and the extra loss is yours: the guarantee is calculated against what the published default strategy would have produced, not the portfolio you chose instead.

   WHAT THE FLOOR COSTS, HONESTLY LABELED

   A comparable minimum benefit (SSA actuaries' provision B5.2) has been estimated at 0.10–0.17% of taxable payroll across the 2022–2025 Trustees Reports — roughly $11–19 billion a year on the 2026 payroll base, rounded to roughly $20 billion at the high end in public copy. That is a benchmark for a comparable provision, not an actuarial score of this design. Source record S22.

5. 05

   A transition that breaks no promises

   Everyone 45 or older when the law takes effect keeps full Social Security, unchanged and on schedule. Workers under 45 receive a catch-up investment account, funded by new appropriation, plus a Social Security share scaled to their age: the younger the worker, the more the account carries; the older, the larger the retained share. The two together are guaranteed to at least equal what current law promises — nobody's retirement goes down. The old program's funding gap is closed by lifting the payroll cap so high earners pay the retirement tax on all of their pay. The retirement age does not rise.

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   THE TRANSITION PRICE, PUBLISHED RATHER THAN PROMISED

   The catch-up accounts are illustrated at roughly $140 billion a year for ten years, by explicit appropriation. As the old rolls decline, the retirement payroll tax is illustrated as falling from 10.6 cents of every earned dollar toward about 2 cents, with the transition bill closing around 2110. Every figure is an unscored author illustration; actuarial scoring is required before any legislative proposal.

   NO SEPARATE TRILLION-DOLLAR CATCH-UP FUND

   An older design proposed a roughly $1 trillion catch-up fund partly financed by philanthropy. That design is superseded and is not part of the proposal; the under-45 catch-up accounts are a distinct, publicly appropriated proposal with a stated illustrative cost. No payroll tax is diverted from benefits owed today, and past payroll taxes do not convert into cash balances.