The nation’s fiscal policy is increasingly dominated by fiscal cliffs – several temporary tax and spending provisions applied to major, substantive and often important programs, which expire nearly simultaneously. Fiscal cliffs can be chaotic due to plausible threats of large tax increases or the elimination of valuable benefits if one party or the other does not get its way. This process makes sustainable progress on deficit reduction and entitlement reform much more difficult.

A fiscal cliff is a date established by current law on which taxes or government spending change abruptly unless Congress intervenes. It is not simply a large deficit. A structural deficit develops over time because recurring spending exceeds recurring revenue. A fiscal cliff concentrates important changes around a particular deadline and forces elected officials to decide whether current law should take effect.

A fiscal cliff also differs from a government shutdown or a debt-limit confrontation. A shutdown occurs when appropriations lapse and agencies lose authority to continue many operations. A debt-limit crisis occurs when the Treasury approaches the limit on authorized federal borrowing. A tax-policy cliff occurs because a deduction, credit, rate or other rule has been written to expire or change on a specified date.

If Congress does nothing, previous law takes effect automatically, often producing a large and abrupt tax increase for affected households. That was the threat at the end of 2025, when many of the individual provisions of the 2017 tax law were scheduled to expire. Congress ultimately prevented most of those increases by making the provisions permanent in the 2025 reconciliation law.

But Congress does not always defuse the time bomb. The enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits also expired at the end of 2025. Their lapse caused substantial increases in net premiums, disrupted household budgets and left some families reconsidering whether they could afford coverage.

Fiscal cliffs therefore create two unattractive possibilities: a hurried agreement that extends popular benefits without sustainable financing, or political deadlock that allows abrupt tax increases or benefit losses to occur. Either outcome encourages chaos rather than deliberate fiscal policy.

The modern history of fiscal-cliff budgeting begins in earnest with the 2001 Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. Temporary tax provisions had existed long before George W. Bush became president. Congress had used them for surcharges, investment incentives, emergency relief and targeted credits. The 2001 law was different because it placed most of a major individual tax overhaul on a single expiration schedule.

The institutional background was the Byrd Rule, which originated in 1985 and was later incorporated into the Congressional Budget Act. Reconciliation allows qualifying tax and spending legislation to pass the Senate without the ordinary 60 votes needed to end debate. The Byrd Rule, however, allows senators to challenge provisions that increase deficits beyond the period covered by the reconciliation measure.

Congress could have responded by reducing the size of the Bush tax cuts, financing them with permanent offsets, or obtaining 60 votes to waive the objection. Instead, it used a sunset. The tax reductions would formally disappear before they produced deficits outside the applicable budget window.

The 2001 law reduced individual tax rates, enlarged the child credit, addressed marriage penalties, expanded retirement incentives and changed the estate tax. Yet these provisions were generally scheduled to expire after 2010. Supporters of the law did not necessarily expect or desire the pre-2001 tax code to return. The sunset made it possible to enact a broad tax program through reconciliation while limiting the long-term deficit officially attributed to the legislation.

The estate tax provided the clearest illustration of the resulting policy incoherence. It was gradually reduced, repealed for 2010 and scheduled to return in 2011. That sequence was not a plausible permanent tax policy. It was the product of fitting the legislation within a limited budget window.

There is considerable irony in this result. The Byrd Rule was intended in part to protect the long-term budget from deficit-increasing legislation passed through a simple-majority process. The response was not to finance the legislation permanently. Congress instead complied formally by writing an expiration date into the law while creating benefits that supporters expected future Congresses to continue. A rule intended to encourage fiscal discipline helped produce a new source of fiscal instability.

The law also demonstrated the political power of temporary tax relief. Once taxpayers adjusted to lower rates and larger credits, expiration could be portrayed as a tax increase, even though the return to prior law had been written into the original legislation. The statutory burden remained on supporters to enact an extension. The political burden shifted toward those prepared to allow the tax reductions to expire.

When the original deadline approached, Congress did not permit the full tax law to revert. In 2010, it extended the Bush tax provisions for two more years. That moved the deadline to the end of 2012.

The new deadline then converged with the expiration of temporary payroll-tax relief and emergency unemployment benefits, the scheduled onset of automatic spending reductions and other changes. The combination became known as the “fiscal cliff.” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress in 2012 that allowing all the scheduled tax increases and spending cuts to take effect at once would threaten the still-fragile economic recovery.

Congress again declined to allow current law to operate fully. The American Taxpayer Relief Act, enacted at the beginning of 2013, made most of the Bush tax changes permanent for taxpayers below specified high-income thresholds while allowing the top income-tax rate to rise.

The sequence established the modern fiscal-cliff pattern: enact tax benefits temporarily, allow taxpayers to become accustomed to them, extend them as the deadline approaches and eventually make many of them permanent. What appears temporary in the statute can become presumptively permanent in political practice. The expiration date postpones the fiscal decision without necessarily changing its ultimate outcome.

Republicans did not remain the only party willing to use temporary provisions. Democrats employed them for pandemic-era expansions of the Child Tax Credit, the child and dependent care credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit and Affordable Care Act premium assistance. Republicans again made extensive use of sunsets in the 2017 tax law and the 2025 reconciliation law. Both parties have also supported recurring packages of narrower business and individual tax extenders.

The motivations are not always identical. A provision enacted during an emergency may reasonably be temporary because the emergency is expected to end. A narrowly targeted credit may be structured as a trial. Reconciliation provisions may expire because their sponsors cannot assemble the revenue offsets or Senate votes required for permanence. Temporary provisions can also reflect choices among competing priorities within a limited budget package: shortening the duration of several programs allows lawmakers to include more of them while recording only the costs incurred before they expire. Those differences matter when judging the underlying policies.

Nevertheless, both parties have learned the same legislative technique: offer a visible benefit now, record only its cost through the expiration date and leave a future Congress to determine whether the benefit should continue. That can make a policy easier to enact, but it can also conceal its longer-run cost and encourage households and businesses to organize their affairs around a supposedly temporary provision. Neither party has developed a reliable process for financing, evaluating, extending or terminating these policies when the deadline arrives.

The ACA episode shows both the attraction and the danger of this approach. Democrats initially expanded the premium tax credits for 2021 and 2022 as part of the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan. The Inflation Reduction Act subsequently extended them for only three more years, through 2025. At the same time, Democrats chose to devote substantial budgetary resources to climate and clean-energy incentives, prescription-drug changes and other priorities while also presenting the legislation as reducing the deficit.

Democrats therefore made a consequential choice. They could have made permanent premium assistance a higher priority by reducing other parts of the package, raising additional revenue or accepting less deficit reduction. Instead, Democrats extended the credits for only three years while devoting substantial resources to climate and clean-energy incentives and other priorities.

In hindsight, that choice was a serious mistake. A party cannot design major social policy on the assumption that it will remain in power when the expiration date arrives. Making the credits permanent would not have made them impossible to repeal, but it would have changed the political and legislative burden. Opponents would have had to assemble the votes to take an existing benefit away. Because the credits were temporary, opponents needed only to do nothing.

The ACA episode consequently shows that a sunset is not merely an accounting device. It is a transfer of power to a future Congress. Democrats created a benefit on which millions of households came to depend, but they also created the mechanism by which that benefit could disappear automatically. After control of Congress changed, they could not compel another extension. The party that creates a temporary benefit is betting that a future Congress—possibly controlled by its opponents—will agree to continue it. Both parties understand the immediate legislative advantage of that wager. Neither has adequately confronted its fiscal and human consequences when the wager fails.

The 2025 reconciliation law, commonly called the One Big Beautiful Bill, removed much of the uncertainty surrounding the scheduled expiration of the 2017 individual tax provisions. It permanently extended the lower individual income-tax rates and many other features of the 2017 law. But it combined those permanent changes with another collection of temporary benefits.

The law also demonstrated how vulnerable temporary provisions become after political control changes. It terminated or accelerated the expiration of numerous clean-energy incentives created, expanded or extended during the Biden administration. The IRS identified eight consumer, vehicle and building provisions scheduled to end between September 2025 and June 2026, including credits for new and used electric vehicles, residential clean-energy investments and energy-efficient home improvements. Other business and energy incentives were shortened or subjected to earlier phaseouts. Republicans did not have to repeal a permanent Biden-era settlement all at once; they could dismantle policies that already carried expiration dates or whose durability had never become politically established.

Yet the bill created a new set of Republican provisions scheduled to sunset. Most expire after 2028, followed by another significant change in 2030:

· The deduction for qualified tips expires after 2028. This is an income-tax deduction subject to eligibility rules and limits, not a universal exemption of tips from all federal taxes.

· The deduction for qualified overtime compensation expires after 2028. It does not cover every dollar earned by someone who works additional hours; its operation depends on the statutory definition of qualifying overtime compensation.

· The deduction for interest on qualifying car loans expires after 2028. Eligibility depends on the vehicle, final assembly, loan, income and personal-use requirements.

· The additional deduction for eligible taxpayers age 65 and older expires after 2028. Although promoted as relief from taxes on Social Security, it is a separate deduction rather than a repeal of the rules taxing Social Security benefits.

· The federal Trump Account pilot contribution is limited to eligible children born from 2025 through 2028. The underlying account structure is separate from this temporary $1,000 federal deposit.

· The temporarily increased cap on the state and local tax deduction applies through 2029 and is then scheduled generally to return to $10,000 in 2030. Its benefits are geographically concentrated and available only to households that itemize deductions. Its supporters in high-tax states, however, have already demonstrated that they can make the SALT limit central to negotiations over a broader tax package.

The IRS provides additional details on the effective periods and eligibility restrictions for the temporary deductions. IRS: Working Families Tax Cuts—Individuals and Workers

These provisions differ in size, distribution and economic justification. Some may deserve extension; others may not. But each creates a constituency that can describe expiration as a tax increase or a withdrawn benefit: a penalty on tipped or overtime work, a burden on seniors or car buyers, the loss of a financial start for newborn children, or a major tax increase in high-tax states. Current budget projections assume that the provisions will end as scheduled, while political debate is likely to proceed as though allowing them to end would be unacceptable. The argument will therefore focus less on whether each provision is the best use of limited federal resources than on who should be blamed for its expiration.

The timing is particularly unfortunate. Under the 2026 Trustees’ intermediate projections, the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund will deplete its reserves in the fourth quarter of 2032. Continuing income would then cover about 78 percent of scheduled benefits. The combined retirement and disability funds are projected to deplete their reserves in 2034, although combining their finances would itself require legislation. Medicare’s Hospital Insurance fund is projected to deplete its reserves in the second quarter of 2033, after which dedicated revenue would cover about 89 percent of scheduled expenditures.

Avoiding abrupt reductions will require Congress to increase dedicated revenue, reduce the growth of benefits or provider payments, transfer general revenue, authorize additional borrowing, or adopt some combination of those approaches.

Congress will also face significant procedural obstacles. Social Security cannot be changed through reconciliation because Section 310(g) of the Congressional Budget Act specifically excludes it. A Social Security agreement would therefore ordinarily have to pass through the regular legislative process and attract the 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Medicare is not categorically excluded from reconciliation, although the Byrd Rule can prevent the inclusion of provisions whose budgetary effects are merely incidental to their broader policy purposes. A comprehensive solution involving both programs will almost certainly require bipartisan support.

The outcome of failing to reach such an agreement is difficult to predict. Congress could permit severe benefit or provider-payment reductions, with potentially serious consequences for poverty, access to medical care and economic growth. Alternatively, it could rely heavily on general revenue and additional borrowing, increasing interest costs and the risk of bond-market disruption. The temporary tax provisions are small compared with these entitlement shortfalls, but their expirations will consume revenue, political attention and negotiating capacity just as the much larger Social Security and Medicare decisions become unavoidable.

Both parties rely on sunsets because they make present legislation easier, but an expiration date neither finances a permanent policy nor provides a credible plan for ending it. It merely transfers the decision—and its political and fiscal risks—to future taxpayers, beneficiaries and members of Congress. The convergence of the 2028–2030 tax expirations with the approaching Social Security and Medicare shortfalls will test how long Washington can continue treating a deadline as a substitute for a decision.

Some background material:

Joint Committee on Taxation, List of Expiring Federal Tax Provisions, 2025–2035:

https://www.jct.gov/

Social Security Administration, 2026 Trustees Report materials: https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2026 Medicare Trustees Report materials: https://www.cms.gov/oact/tr/

Internal Revenue Service, Working Families Tax Cuts guidance: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/one-big-beautiful-bill-provisions

U.S. Senate Budget Committee, explanation of the Byrd Rule:https://www.budget.senate.gov/about/budget-process

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Abstract: The need for a different economic agenda is already clear; what may be less obvious is how soon the political opportunity to enact one could arrive. This paper outlines a tax-reconciliation agenda built around four areas:

• Health care: lower premiums through subsidized reinsurance, improve portability, and make public and private coverage work together more efficiently.

• Student debt: provide greater help early in repayment while simplifying and improving the long-term repayment system.

• Capital gains: make realization less punitive while making permanent avoidance harder.

• Retirement: broaden access, portability, and effective saving incentives, particularly for ordinary workers.

These proposals illustrate how a future governing coalition could pursue structural economic reform rather than another temporary collection of tax cuts, subsidies, and expiring provisions.

Preamble: The Constitution does not expressly require the Speaker of the House to be a member of the House. That creates an intriguing constitutional thought experiment: what would I do if a closely divided House, unable to organize around a Democrat or a Republican, somehow decided that a former Treasury economist writing policy papers from Denver was the answer?

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It is not quite as impossible as it sounds. In a narrowly divided House, a bloc of perhaps 10, 20, or 40 members unwilling to support either party’s leadership could become decisive. A centrist coalition might conceivably find it easier to agree on an outside Speaker than one inside the chamber.

This is a governing thought experiment, not a candidacy announcement. My wife nevertheless thinks she has devised the more effective campaign slogan: rather than my asking people to buy $1 million worth of my books so I can run for Speaker, she proposes that unless they buy $1 million worth of books, I will run.

But the policy exercise is serious.

The memorandum below asks what a new Speaker could realistically enact through budget reconciliation—the principal route for major fiscal legislation that cannot command 60 votes in the Senate. It begins with four areas in which I have already developed substantial proposals: health care, student debt, capital gains, and retirement policy. Additional work should eventually address the recurring federal fiscal cliffs, Social Security reform, and energy and environmental policy.

This memorandum and 95 percent of the material on this site are free. One recent exception behind the paywall is this assessment of the 2026 race for control of the House of Representatives.

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Readers who want more detail on these proposals and who want to support my policy work can purchase the detailed papers on Kindle, but there is no pressure to do so; there is already plenty to read and think about here on www.economicmemos.com.

Memorandum from the Speaker of the House

From: Speaker David Bernstein

To: Appropriate House Committee Chairs

Subject: Development of a Comprehensive Tax Reconciliation Bill

As the newly elected Speaker of the House, I am directing the relevant committee chairs to begin work immediately on a single tax reconciliation bill built around the health care, student debt, capital gains, and retirement reforms developed in the policy papers summarized below, together with related legislative extensions of those ideas.

The objective is not simply to assemble another collection of tax cuts, spending increases, temporary subsidies, and expiring provisions. It is to construct a durable package of structural reforms that improves economic incentives, strengthens household financial security, uses federal resources more efficiently, simplifies unnecessarily complicated programs, and places federal policy on a more sustainable fiscal path.

These four titles should be treated as the first stage of a broader governing agenda. Separate policy work should proceed on the recurring federal fiscal cliffs, Social Security reform, and energy and environmental policy.

The provisions below are legislative starting points, with committee staff expected to preserve their policy objectives while refining the details through scoring, analysis, and negotiation.

I. Health Care

My paper, A Third-Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Health Care, starts from the premise that health care reform need not require either dismantling the existing system or simply pouring more federal money into it. The better approach is to change the structure of the individual market, employer assistance, public coverage, and health savings so that the pieces work together more efficiently.

The central objectives are to reduce the cost of catastrophic claims through federal reinsurance, make individually owned insurance genuinely portable, use Medicaid and CHIP where public coverage is more economical, redesign tax subsidies around that structure, and give households better tools for meeting out-of-pocket expenses.

1. Federal catastrophic health reinsurance. Establish a permanent federal program assuming a specified share of exceptionally high individual medical claims, thereby reducing underlying premiums and federal premium-tax-credit expenditures.

2. Portable individual health insurance. Allow workers to retain individually owned qualified coverage as they move among employers rather than requiring insurance to remain tied to a particular job.

3. Tax-free employer contributions to individual coverage. Give employer contributions toward qualified individual or Marketplace coverage tax treatment comparable to contributions for conventional employer-sponsored insurance.

4. Revised large-employer health contribution requirement. Require large employers to make a minimum contribution toward employees’ qualified health coverage while permitting workers to own and select their policies.

5. Expanded CHIP coverage. Expand CHIP as a pediatric coverage option and consider using it as a reinsurance backstop for high-cost pediatric claims, with income-related premiums or buy-ins for higher-income families.

6. Medicaid expansion to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Establish a nationally available Medicaid option through 200 percent of FPL with an adequate permanent federal match where public coverage is more economical than heavily subsidized private insurance.

7. Redesign the Premium Tax Credit. Coordinate Marketplace subsidies with Medicaid, CHIP, and federal reinsurance, concentrating assistance where it remains necessary and reducing sharp subsidy cliffs.

8. Individual-market health-insurance deduction. Provide an above-the-line deduction for qualified premiums paid by people who do not receive equivalent tax-free employer assistance, particularly self-employed and gig workers.

9. End FSA “use-it-or-lose-it.” Permit unused Flexible Spending Account balances to remain available for future health expenses or transfer into an eligible retirement account rather than being forfeited.

10. Modernize HSA and FSA rules. Expand the ability to use health-savings vehicles with portable individual-market insurance and eliminate artificial distinctions based on where coverage is obtained.

11. Health-savings assistance for lower- and middle-income households. Develop a refundable credit or direct federal contribution to help households accumulate funds for deductibles, copayments, and other medical expenses.

II. Student Debt

A Third-Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Student Debt rejects the choice between indiscriminate loan forgiveness and a repayment system that can leave borrowers trapped for decades in complicated programs.

The objective should be to provide the greatest assistance when borrowers are young and financially constrained, preserve conventional repayment for borrowers able to repay their debts, repair structural defects in income-driven repayment, and create a much simpler way to resolve balances that remain after many years.

12. Introductory zero-interest period. Provide a temporary zero-percent interest period during the first years of federal student-loan repayment so early payments reduce principal when borrowers are generally most financially constrained.

13. Repeal the student-loan-interest deduction. Replace or phase out the existing deduction and use the savings to help finance more effective front-loaded interest relief.

14. Make conventional repayment the presumptive starting point. Encourage borrowers able to make conventional amortizing payments to reduce principal early while preserving immediate access to income-driven repayment for borrowers facing genuine financial difficulty.

15. Private-refinancing incentive. After a sustained period of successful repayment, provide a modest one-time principal reduction for borrowers refinancing qualified federal loans into private credit, thereby reducing long-term federal exposure.

16. Eliminate the RAP marriage penalty. Redesign Repayment Assistance Plan rules so marriage does not arbitrarily increase obligations for similarly situated borrowers.

17. Use marginal RAP payment brackets. Apply higher repayment percentages only to income falling within the relevant bracket rather than applying the higher percentage to all applicable income once a threshold is crossed.

18. Index RAP parameters. Automatically index income thresholds, protected amounts, dependent allowances, and related parameters so inflation does not quietly increase real repayment burdens.

19. Stabilize federal student-loan interest rates. Replace unnecessary annual interest-rate volatility with a predictable federal rate that appropriately balancing borrower costs and taxpayer protection.

20. Twenty-year Treasury resolution account. Transfer qualifying balances remaining after twenty years into a simplified zero- or very-low-interest Treasury repayment account rather than leaving older borrowers indefinitely inside complicated Education Department programs.

21. Improve student-loan treatment in Chapter 13. Develop rules ensuring that federal student debt receives an appropriate share of available bankruptcy-plan payments while maintaining necessary protection for financially distressed borrowers.

III. Capital Gains and Inherited Wealth

Tax Reconciliation and Capital Gains Taxes begins with a simple principle: lower rates should be paired with a broader, more coherent tax base.

Current law can discourage economically sensible sales by imposing substantial tax costs on realization, particularly for long-held real estate and other appreciated assets. The proposal therefore seeks to reduce tax-induced lock-in—including housing lock-in—through lower positive capital-gains rates and more consistent treatment of real property, while broadening the base by limiting open-ended deferral, reforming basis rules at death, and rationalizing the taxation of inherited wealth.

22. Reduce positive long-term capital-gains rates. Retain the zero-percent bracket while using 12.5 percent and 17.5 percent as starting points for replacing the existing 15-percent and 20-percent rates.

23. Increase and index the Net Investment Income Tax. Increase the Net Investment Income Tax to 6.0 percent but index the applicable income threshold for inflation.

24. Apply a unified capital-gains structure to real property. Subject taxable real-estate gains to the revised rate structure while reducing the principal-residence protections and tax-induced housing lock-in.

25. Phase out Section 1031 exchanges. End new open-ended like-kind-exchange deferrals while providing an orderly transition for existing investments.

26. Replace full step-up in basis with a partial adjustment. Preserve only part of unrealized appreciation at death rather than eliminating the entire accrued gain, while postponing taxation until the heir sells the asset.

27. Preserve basis on lifetime gifts. Ensure that changes to transfer taxes cannot be used to eliminate embedded capital gains through lifetime transfers.

28. Simplify inherited traditional retirement accounts. Require most nonspouse beneficiaries to distribute the account’s value at the time of inheritance in equal installments over 10 years, with each distribution taxed under the normal rules for traditional retirement accounts. Investment gains may remain in the account during the 10-year period; at the end of the period, any remaining balance would transfer in kind to a taxable account, with normal income tax due on the transfer but no penalty or forced sale.

29. Five-year transition for inherited Roth accounts. Permit inherited Roth assets to remain tax-free for a limited period before automatically converting remaining assets into ordinary taxable investments without requiring a forced sale.

30. Mega-Roth excise tax. Impose a modest tax at death on Roth balances above a very high, indexed threshold, leaving ordinary retirement savers entirely unaffected. Unlike earlier proposals prompted by Peter Thiel’s multibillion-dollar Roth IRA, this approach would not force lifetime distributions or cap successful investment growth; it would simply recapture part of the tax benefit when an extraordinary retirement account becomes inherited wealth.

31. Replace estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes with the new inherited-basis system. Coordinate repeal of the existing transfer-tax regime with strong basis reporting, carryover-basis rules for gifts, valuation requirements, and anti-abuse protections.

32. Prepare a companion capital-gains contribution for Social Security. Develop separately a capped contribution on a limited amount of capital gains accompanied by an actuarially appropriate Social Security benefit credit. Because direct Social Security changes cannot be enacted through reconciliation, prepare this provision as companion legislation.

IV. Retirement and Household Saving

Tax Reconciliation and Retirement Policy seeks to move retirement policy away from a system whose largest tax incentives frequently flow to households already able to save substantial amounts.

The goal should instead be universal access, portability, stronger protection of retirement assets, better treatment of spouses and caregivers, more effective incentives for lower-income workers, and simpler movement of savings from job to job.

33. Universal Auto-IRA. Establish a nationwide portable IRA default for workers without employer-sponsored plans, using automatic payroll enrollment with an employee opt-out.

34. IRA–401(k) parity. Increase IRA contribution capacity and permit employers, particularly small employers, to make matching contributions directly into employees’ individually owned IRAs.

35. Automatic rollover of stranded retirement accounts. Move small or dormant 401(k) balances automatically into low-cost portable IRAs after job changes unless workers affirmatively select another destination.

36. Automatic spousal and caregiver retirement saving. Modernize spousal IRA rules and create simple payroll or tax-return mechanisms allowing retirement contributions to flow automatically to a non-working spouse or caregiver.

37. Protect core retirement savings while permitting emergency access. Replace excessive reliance on early-withdrawal penalties with rules that protect a core portion of retirement assets from pre-retirement depletion while allowing reasonable access to a separate emergency-savings component in cases of genuine financial need.

38. Direct savings incentives toward lower-income workers. Rely more heavily on refundable matches or direct federal contributions whose value does not disappear when a worker owes little or no federal income tax.

39. Add a retirement-saving incentive for workers with tax-exempt tips and overtime. Allow workers who contribute qualifying tip or overtime income to a retirement account to receive a modest additional tax benefit—for example, a higher ceiling on the amount of tip or overtime income eligible for tax-free treatment. This would reward retirement saving without giving workers both tax-free income and a federal matching contribution on the same dollars. The Current no tax on tips can discourage retirement savings because a low or zero marginal tax rate reduces the incentive to contribute to a retirement account.

40. Safer and lower-cost default retirement investments. Strengthen standards governing automatically selected retirement investments, including safeguards concerning fees, illiquidity, private credit, and inflation risk. Specifically, allow the purchase of Series I bonds inside retirement accounts.

V. Instructions to Committee Staff

These 40 provisions reflect my best judgment about the direction of reform. I do not assume that every mechanism proposed here is the best possible one. Staff should recommend better approaches where they can achieve the same objectives more effectively, simply, or economically.

Committee staff should develop appropriate legislative language and alternatives; obtain conventional budget estimates and, where useful, dynamic analysis; identify Byrd Rule problems; recommend transition and grandfather rules; evaluate distributional effects; and look for opportunities to simplify administration or reduce federal costs.

The committees should also examine how the proposals interact across household saving, federal finances, and future Social Security reform. Stronger personal balance sheets can reduce financial vulnerability and dependence on public programs, while better retirement saving and household liquidity may make otherwise difficult Social Security reforms more politically and economically feasible. The bill should therefore be evaluated not only provision by provision, but also for how its combined effects strengthen both household finances and the federal budget.

Finally, the bill should acknowledge fiscal trade-offs openly. Tax reductions do not automatically pay for themselves, and new spending does not automatically generate offsetting savings. The objective is an integrated economic reform bill that improves incentives and household economic security while remaining attentive to long-term fiscal sustainability.

The Four Policy Papers

Health Care — A Third-Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Health Care
Read the health-care paper

Student Debt — A Third-Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Student Debt
Read the student-debt paper

Capital Gains — Tax Reconciliation and Capital Gains Taxes
Read the capital-gains paper

Retirement — Tax Reconciliation and Retirement Policy
Read the retirement-policy paper

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That led me to a different question. If Powell’s guideposts provide a useful discipline before undertaking a drastic change in foreign policy, could a similar set of guideposts help us evaluate drastic changes in domestic economic policy?

Admittedly, naming the result the Bernstein Doctrine takes considerable chutzpah: Colin Powell was a four-star general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; I am an economist with a keyboard.

But here we go.

The Powell Doctrine is often presented as eight questions that policymakers should force themselves to answer before undertaking something as consequential and difficult to reverse as war:

The Eight Guideposts of the Powell Doctrine:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?

2. Do we have a clear and attainable objective?

3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

4. Have all reasonable nonmilitary alternatives been exhausted?

5. Is there a plausible exit strategy that avoids an open-ended commitment?

6. Have the likely consequences of military action been fully considered?

7. Does the action have the support of the American people?

8. Is there broad international support?

Powell explicitly warned against treating these questions as an inflexible checklist. Every crisis is different, and policymakers inevitably must exercise judgment. Powell’s questions were designed to be guideposts -- a disciplined way of forcing decision-makers to confront objectives, costs, alternatives, unintended consequences, public support, and the path out before taking an enormously consequential step.

The goal of the Bernstein Doctrine is to create a similar framework for major domestic economic reforms. Bernstein proposes five guideposts designed to determine whether a major proposed upheaval of an existing domestic economic program or system is justified, feasible, sustainable, and economically efficient.

The Five Guideposts of the Bernstein Doctrine for Domestic Economic Reform:

1. Are the problems serious enough to justify major reform?

2. Can the reform avoid substantial harm to major groups?

3. Is there a feasible transition to the new system?

4. Is the reform economically and politically sustainable?

5. Is there a more efficient way to achieve the objective?

The remainder of the essay applies these guideposts to health-care reform. Health care provides a useful test because there is broad agreement that the existing system has serious problems, but much less agreement about how radically it should be changed. I consider two very different approaches: Medicare for All, which would fundamentally restructure the existing system, and a more incremental package of reforms designed to improve it.

Do the five guideposts of the Bernstein Doctrine provide adequate justification for the adoption of Medicare for All as described here?

Guidepost 1: Is Reform Justified?

Answer Yes. The current U.S. health-care system has serious problems involving coverage, portability, affordability, and access that justify substantial reform.

Guidepost 2: Is Major Harm Avoided?

Answer No. Medicare for All would create substantial economic losses for important groups, including some providers, insurers, employees, and households satisfied with existing coverage.

Guidepost 3: Is the Transition Path Feasible?

Answer No. Replacing the existing employer-sponsored, private, Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP systems within a short transition period would create substantial risks of economic and health-care disruption.

Guidepost 4: Is the Program Sustainable in the Long Term?

Answer Maybe, but probably no. A universal federal system could be financially sustainable, but its dependence on future congressional funding, provider-payment decisions, and changing political control creates significant long-run risks.

Guidepost 5: Is the Program Economically Efficient?

Answer No. Many of Medicare for All’s objectives can likely be achieved through less costly and less disruptive reforms that preserve useful parts of the existing system.

The transition problem also reinforces the sustainability problem. The United States is not starting with a blank sheet of paper. It has a massive private health-insurance industry, an employer-sponsored coverage system, and provider networks built around existing payment arrangements. Medicare for All would largely dismantle that structure and replace it with a system whose financing and provider payments would depend heavily on future federal budget decisions. Whatever the merits of the proposed destination, the path from here to there is unusually difficult—and the resulting system could remain vulnerable to recurring political and fiscal conflict.

Do the five guideposts of the Bernstein Doctrine provide adequate justification for the adoption of Bernstein’s durable path forward on health care involving subsidized reinsurance, portable health coverage with employer subsidies, modernized savings accounts and a more efficient expanded role for Medicaid?

Guidepost 1: Is Reform Justified?

Answer Yes. The current U.S. health-care system has serious problems involving affordability, portability, coverage gaps, and inefficient public subsidies that justify substantial reform.

Guidepost 2: Is Major Harm Avoided?

Answer Yes. The reforms build on existing insurance arrangements rather than eliminating them, allowing substantial improvements while avoiding large losses for providers, insurers, employers, or households with coverage they wish to retain.

Guidepost 3: Is the Transition Path Feasible?

Answer Yes. Subsidized reinsurance, portable employer-supported coverage, modernized savings accounts, and expanded use of Medicaid can be introduced incrementally without dismantling the existing health-care financing system.

Guidepost 4: Is the Program Sustainable in the Long-term?

Answer Yes. The reforms retain a mixed public-private system, limit fiscal exposure, and can be adjusted over time as economic, budgetary, and political conditions change.

Guidepost 5: Is the Program Economically Efficient?

Answer Yes. The package seeks many of the principal objectives of more sweeping health-care reforms—broader coverage, greater portability, improved affordability, and greater security—at substantially lower economic and transition costs.

The durable-path approach begins from the premise that successful reform should work with the institutions that already exist whenever doing so is economically sensible. Private insurers, employers, Medicaid, and individual coverage would continue to play important roles while federal policy addresses catastrophic costs, portability, savings, and coverage gaps. That makes the transition substantially easier and improves long-run sustainability because the reform does not require the federal government to replace and continuously finance nearly the entire existing health-insurance system.

Conclusion

The Bernstein Doctrine provides a framework for determining whether a major domestic policy reform is justified and whether the proposed change is feasible, sustainable, and economically efficient. A successful reform need not be Pareto improving—that is, it may make some people worse off. Modest losses to one group may be acceptable when the overall gains are substantial, but large losses imposed on identifiable groups are much more difficult to justify.

Economic efficiency deserves particular emphasis. Governments face many competing problems and necessarily limited fiscal resources. A reform that achieves nearly the same objective at substantially lower economic and fiscal cost should generally be preferred because the resources saved remain available for other priorities.

Applied to health care, the doctrine points in two different directions. Medicare for All addresses genuine problems but fails important tests of transition, sustainability, and economic efficiency. A more durable path—one that preserves useful parts of the existing system while reforming those that do not work—offers a more viable, sustainable, and economically efficient route to substantially better health-care outcomes.

Author’s Note

In A Durable Path Forward on American Health Care, I propose four reforms: subsidized catastrophic reinsurance, portable employee-owned coverage with employer support, modernized health savings arrangements, and a more efficient expanded role for Medicaid. The goal is to achieve broader coverage, greater portability, improved affordability, and greater security without the disruption and transition risks of Medicare for All.

Readers interested in the full proposal can find A Durable Path Forward on American Health Care here.

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I have written extensively—and critically—about the student-loan changes enacted in 2025, including RAP’s payment structure, marriage penalties, lack of inflation indexing, and the increased financing burden placed on some professional students.

BUT two wrongs do not make a right.

The Student Loan Interest Elimination Act of 2026 (H.R. 8045/S. 4169), introduced in the House by Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT) and in the Senate by Senator Peter Welch (D-VT), would make federal student loans permanently interest-free.

The bill would apply zero interest to existing and future federal Direct Loans, allow certain older loans to be refinanced at zero percent, preserve access to RAP, and increase and eventually index federal borrowing limits.

It would also create an Education Affordability Trust Fund, into which federal student-loan repayments would flow. The fund would invest those resources and use the earnings to help finance student lending and potentially other higher-education programs.

Student borrowers are not a homogeneous group. Some genuinely struggle to make their payments; others have ample ability to repay. A universal zero-percent rate gives the same subsidy to both. With enormous federal borrowing and many competing public needs, why subsidize borrowers who do not need the assistance?

More importantly, zero interest changes behavior. It encourages borrowers to borrow more, borrow even when they could use their own resources, and repay as slowly as permitted. Under RAP, borrowers may also have incentives to reduce AGI, lower required payments, and keep debt outstanding for decades, potentially ending in discharge. These actions are rational responses to the incentives the legislation creates.

The Trust Fund raises a broader problem. Money is fungible and federal resources are scarce. Yet the bill would earmark all student-loan repayments for higher education and contemplates a fund that could eventually exceed $500 billion. Those resources would therefore receive special protection rather than compete with health care, climate change, hunger, deficit reduction, and other public priorities.

That choice is especially difficult to justify when the underlying program provides unlimited zero-interest lending over the life of the loan, weakening borrowers’ incentives to borrow cautiously or repay quickly. Good public policy should address genuine problems at the lowest reasonable cost. This proposal instead combines an enormous earmark with a student-loan policy that largely removes incentives to economize.

I have proposed a different approach in my Kindle paper, A Third-Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Student Debt: Front-Loaded Relief, Faster Principal Reduction, Fairer RAP Rules, and a Durable Endpoint for Long-Term Debt. The basic principle is to provide the most help when borrowers are most likely to need it—at the beginning of their careers.My proposal provides a temporary period of zero interest, so early payments go entirely toward reducing principal, while preserving the incentive to borrow less and repay faster because a smaller balance always means lower future payments.

The proposal also rewards successful repayment. Borrowers who make payments on time for several years and refinance into the private market would receive a reduction in their remaining federal balance. RAP would remain available as a safety net for borrowers who genuinely need income-based repayment, but the system would not encourage borrowers to enter RAP unnecessarily or remain in federal debt for decades.

Finally, I would not simply discharge unpaid balances after 20 or 30 years. After 20 years, qualifying long-term debt would instead become interest-free and be administered through the IRS rather than the Department of Education. The objective is straightforward: help borrowers when help is most valuable, reward repayment, preserve incentives to borrow carefully, and provide a humane endpoint for borrowers who still have debt after many years.

Congress already has a less extreme alternative. The bipartisan Lawler-Luna-Moskowitz bill would reduce federal student-loan interest to 2 percent rather than zero. I prefer that approach to permanent zero-interest lending because it provides substantial relief while preserving some incentive to borrow less and repay faster.

I would go further toward targeted relief. My proposal provides zero interest when borrowers are starting their careers, rewards successful repayment, preserves principal repayment rather than forgiveness, and provides limited long-term protection after 20 years. My proposal has not received a budget score from the Congressional Budget Office, but I believe this approach creates strong incentives for quick repayment and will prove less costly to taxpayers. The principle is simple: help borrowers when they need it most while limiting costs to taxpayers.

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• Policies allowing thinner coverage and expanding access to catastrophic and bronze plans on state exchanges;

• Policies affecting prescription-drug prices, Medicare drug subsidies, pharmaceutical tariffs and the future domestic supply of pharmaceuticals;

• Policies affecting Medicaid eligibility and financing and providing temporary support for rural hospitals; and

• Policies affecting provider compensation, insurance payments, prior authorization and price transparency.

This analysis reflects policies enacted, announced or issued through August 6, 2026.

Expanded Access to Catastrophic and Higher-Cost-Sharing Bronze Coverage

The 2025 reconciliation law makes bronze and catastrophic plans offered through the health-insurance exchanges eligible for health savings account contributions beginning January 1, 2026. This expands access to HSAs, although many lower-income households purchasing bronze coverage may have little money available to contribute after paying premiums and other living expenses.

A previous memo on this blog examined separate regulatory changes, which are now finalized and will take effect in 2027 and 2028. Beginning with the 2027 plan year, HHS will give insurers greater flexibility in setting cost sharing for bronze plans, permit additional non-network plan designs, allow catastrophic plans to have multiyear terms of up to ten years and discontinue federal requirements that insurers offer standardized plans or limit the number of nonstandard plans. Changes to the permissible cost-sharing requirements for catastrophic plans will begin in 2028. Together, these policies expand the availability of thinner coverage and give insurers more flexibility in plan design, while potentially exposing some households to greater out-of-pocket costs.

President Trump has asked Congress to enact a broader plan that would send some federal health-insurance assistance directly to eligible individuals, fund cost-sharing reductions, restrict certain pharmacy-benefit-manager and broker payments, and require insurers to disclose denial rates, administrative expenses and profits. It remains a legislative proposal rather than an operating replacement for the existing premium tax-credit system.

Prescription Drug Prices, Subsidies and Tariffs

The administration’s prescription-drug policies move in several different directions. It is trying to reduce selected drug prices through Medicare negotiations and voluntary agreements with manufacturers, while also ending a temporary Medicare premium subsidy and pursuing tariffs that could increase the cost of imported pharmaceuticals.

CMS has announced that the Medicare Part D Premium Stabilization Demonstration will end after 2026. In 2026, the demonstration reduced the base-premium calculation by $10 for participating stand-alone prescription-drug plans and limited their year-to-year premium increases. Ending the demonstration removes that additional premium support beginning in 2027 and could contribute to higher premiums for some plans. However, the effect will vary by plan, and final average Medicare Advantage and Part D premiums for 2027 will not be released until September 2026.

In April 2026, President Trump imposed tariffs on imported patented pharmaceuticals and associated pharmaceutical ingredients, but the policy does not apply one uniform rate to all pharmaceutical imports. The standard tariff is 100 percent, while a 20 percent rate applies to products from companies with approved plans to expand production in the United States. Imports from the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and Liechtenstein generally face a 15 percent rate, and imports from the United Kingdom face a 10 percent rate. Companies entering both most-favored-nation pricing agreements and domestic-production agreements may receive temporary exemptions. Generic drugs, biosimilars and their associated ingredients are exempt for now, although the administration is required to reconsider their treatment within one year. The tariffs took effect on July 31, 2026, for companies identified in the proclamation and are scheduled to take effect on September 29, 2026, for other covered companies.

TrumpRx directs cash-paying consumers toward discounted prices offered by participating manufacturers and pharmacy services. The administration has also negotiated voluntary most-favored-nation arrangements with major drug companies, although these agreements apply only to selected products and purchasing arrangements rather than establishing a universal limit on American drug prices.

At the same time, the administration is continuing the Medicare drug-price negotiation program created under President Biden. Republicans opposed the initiative during the Biden administration, but President Trump has retained it, and CMS has selected additional Part B and Part D drugs for negotiation. Its continuation is consistent with other parts of the Trump health-care agenda that use aggressive federal intervention to reduce pharmaceutical and provider prices.

This approach also reflects Trump’s broader preference for negotiating company-specific deals rather than relying entirely on uniform legislation or regulation. The administration has exchanged pricing, tariff and regulatory concessions with individual corporations and, in strategic industries outside health care, has sometimes taken federal equity stakes. No comparable government purchase of stock in a health-care company has yet been announced.

The clearest health-care example is the administration’s November 2025 agreements with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk covering GLP-1 drugs. The companies agreed to offer reduced prices for Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound and related products through TrumpRx and participating public programs, while also making commitments to expand domestic manufacturing. Medicare access to GLP-1 drugs for weight management is not yet a universal permanent benefit.

Medicaid Regulations and Rural Hospitals

The administration’s Medicaid agenda began with the substantial eligibility and financing changes enacted in the 2025 reconciliation law, but it has since continued through a series of CMS regulations and administrative actions. These measures implement the law’s work requirements and financing restrictions while also imposing tighter federal controls on provider taxes, state-directed payments and Medicaid demonstration spending.

In June 2026, CMS issued an interim final rule implementing the new Medicaid work and community-engagement requirement. Beginning no later than January 2027, many nondisabled, nonpregnant adults ages 19 through 64 must document at least 80 hours a month of employment, education, training or community service. The regulation specifies how states must verify compliance, identify exemptions, notify beneficiaries and terminate coverage when the required information is not supplied.

CMS has also issued new regulations governing the provider taxes states use to finance their share of Medicaid. A January 2026 final rule closed arrangements under which states imposed disproportionately high taxes on Medicaid-related business and then used the revenue to obtain additional federal matching funds. A separate proposed rule issued in July would implement the reconciliation law’s new limits on provider taxes and gradually reduce the permissible tax thresholds in states that expanded Medicaid.

A May 2026 proposed rule would impose additional restrictions on state-directed payments made through Medicaid managed-care plans and on certain targeted payments in fee-for-service Medicaid. Among other changes, it would generally limit covered payments to Medicare rates in expansion states and 110 percent of Medicare rates in non-expansion states. If finalized, the rule could substantially reduce payments to hospitals, physicians and other providers beyond the reductions already required by the reconciliation law.

CMS is also tightening its oversight of Section 1115 Medicaid demonstrations. The agency has announced plans for stricter budget-neutrality standards intended to limit how much federal spending states can obtain through demonstration projects, although the detailed regulation has not yet been proposed.

At the same time, the reconciliation law created the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, distributed over five years, to support rural health-care access, workforce development, technology and alternative delivery models. The program may help some rural hospitals and providers adjust to the broader Medicaid changes, but it is temporary and considerably smaller than the projected long-term reductions in Medicaid financing.

Provider Compensation, Insurance Payments and Prior Authorization

The administration’s policies affecting providers and insurers demonstrate that its health-care agenda is not simply deregulatory. In several areas, it involves greater federal intervention in provider compensation, surprise-billing arbitration, prior authorization and price disclosure.

The bipartisan No Surprises Act, enacted during Trump’s first term, has substantially reduced unexpected out-of-network billing, although its provider-payment arbitration system has developed significant operational problems. An HHS evaluation found that out-of-network bills declined by 15 percent for emergency services and 11 percent for nonemergency services at in-network facilities during the law’s first year. A separate study estimated that the law reduced annual out-of-pocket spending by about $567 among directly insured adults who gained new protections, although it found no measurable reduction in premiums.

The Trump administration’s May 2026 changes to the law’s arbitration system are meaningful but mostly procedural. The final rule reduced the administrative fee from $115 to $15 per party, expanded the batching of similar claims and limited batches to 50 claim items. These changes may make arbitration faster and less expensive, but they do not directly limit the amounts arbitrators can award.

The larger unresolved issue is the extraordinary growth in disputes under the arbitration system. CMS has reported millions of disputes since the federal portal opened, far more than originally anticipated. The administration is considering additional changes intended to reduce administrative burdens and address concerns about unusually high payment demands. Depending on their design, such changes could place greater weight on insurers’ median in-network prices, narrow the claims eligible for arbitration or otherwise limit exceptionally high awards. No new reimbursement standard has yet been adopted.

In its proposed 2027 hospital outpatient payment rule, CMS would pay for specified imaging services provided by off-campus hospital outpatient departments at the lower rates paid to physicians’ offices. The direct financial loss would therefore fall on hospitals and hospital-owned outpatient facilities, not on independent physician offices. Patients would generally benefit from lower cost sharing, while the policy would reduce the financial advantage hospitals obtain by purchasing physician practices and billing the same services at hospital rates.

In the same proposed 2027 hospital outpatient payment rule, CMS would substantially reduce Medicare payments for drugs purchased through the 340B program. Eligible hospitals and clinics buy these drugs at steep discounts but may receive the normal Medicare or private-insurance reimbursement, retaining the difference to support their operations. CMS proposes paying average sales price minus 33.4 percent, which it estimates would reduce Medicare drug payments by $4.55 billion and beneficiary cost sharing by $1.15 billion during the first year. Because the change must be budget-neutral, much of the federal savings would be redistributed through higher Medicare payments for other hospital outpatient services.

Criticism of 340B “abuse” generally concerns the rapid expansion of participating hospital sites and contract pharmacies, weak verification that every hospital and patient is eligible, the possibility of duplicate Medicaid discounts and the absence of a federal requirement that hospitals pass the drug discount directly to patients or document precisely how the retained revenue is used. GAO has repeatedly found weaknesses in federal oversight, although participating hospitals argue that the revenue finances uncompensated care and other safety-net services. The CMS proposal addresses the size of Medicare’s payment relative to hospitals’ acquisition costs, but it does not by itself resolve the broader debate over eligibility, contract pharmacies or the use of 340B revenue.

Prior-authorization policy is moving in two directions. A Biden-era rule retained by the Trump administration requires Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and CHIP plans to decide urgent requests within 72 hours and standard requests within seven days and to provide a specific reason for denials. The administration has also proposed extending electronic prior authorization, decision deadlines and denial disclosures to prescription drugs beginning in 2027.

At the same time, the WISeR demonstration introduces private prior-authorization contractors into selected parts of Original Medicare. The companies use artificial intelligence and other technology to review designated services and receive a share of the Medicare savings attributed to care they prevent. This creates a financial incentive to deny or redirect services, although CMS adjusts compensation for performance and can recover payments when a denied claim is successfully appealed.

WISeR includes a model-specific safeguard: a recommendation not to approve care cannot be made solely by an algorithm and must be reviewed by an appropriately licensed human clinician. Providers may resubmit a request without limit, but a non-affirmation does not immediately trigger the formal Medicare appeals process. To obtain a formal appeal, the provider must generally perform the service, submit the claim and receive an actual Medicare denial—potentially leaving the provider or patient exposed to financial risk while the dispute proceeds.

That safeguard does not amount to a general federal prohibition on AI-based insurance decisions. The Biden administration proposed broader guardrails for Medicare Advantage plans’ use of artificial intelligence, but CMS declined to finalize them in 2025. The Trump administration instead secured a voluntary commitment from major insurers to have medical professionals review clinical denials. WISeR therefore has an enforceable human-review condition within that demonstration, while the broader insurance market remains governed by existing coverage rules and a voluntary industry pledge rather than a comprehensive new AI regulation.

Finally, the administration is strengthening hospital price-transparency requirements already in effect. Hospitals must provide more useful information about negotiated prices and actual allowed amounts, use standardized machine-readable files and attest that their reported data are accurate. Separately, the administration has proposed broader disclosure requirements that would make insurer denial rates, administrative expenses, profits and prior-authorization outcomes more visible to consumers, employers and researchers. Those broader insurer-disclosure requirements have not all been finalized.

Conclusion:

The Trump health-care agenda begins with an ideological choice: restrain federal health spending even if that slows movement toward more universal coverage. Cost reduction is the constant theme running through all the administration’s health care proposals. The administration’s policies address Medicaid and insurance coverage, prescription-drug prices, hospital payments, billing disputes, prior authorization and other technical features of the health-care system.

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• Nine broad statewide programs have subsidized approximately 17,000 to 19,000 e-bike purchases since 2022.

• These incentives covered less than 1 percent of national e-bike purchases, although they represented a meaningful share of sales in several participating states.

• The number of subsidized purchases overstates the programs’ effect because some recipients would have bought an e-bike without government assistance.

• States generally do not measure automobile travel displaced, emissions avoided, continued e-bike use or safety effects, making it impossible to determine whether the subsidies outperform investments in protected bicycle routes or public transit.

Since 2022, nine states have operated broad statewide consumer incentives for electric bicycles: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Some inventories also include Maine, but its program was a limited pilot for organizations serving lower-income residents rather than a broad consumer purchase subsidy.

Most programs use capped vouchers or rebates, frequently delivered at the point of sale. Hawaii and Rhode Island generally reimburse purchasers afterward. As of July 2026, incentives remain available in some form in Colorado, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Washington. Connecticut has completed two rounds but does not currently advertise a new application period. California, Massachusetts and Minnesota have closed their programs, while Vermont’s earlier program is not currently funded. This review excludes local, utility, employer and proposed programs.

• California: The state offered capped point-of-sale vouchers of up to $2,000. The program distributed 2,246 incentives before concluding in December 2025. Of the $12.97 million allocated or committed, approximately $8.47 million went directly to incentives, with the remainder supporting administration and outreach.

• Colorado: An income-tested rebate program recorded more than 6,700 redemptions by September 2024, after which the state added enough funding for an estimated 1,300 to 1,500 additional rebates. A separate retailer tax credit began in April 2024 and is scheduled to continue through 2032. Retailers received a $500 credit for qualifying sales in 2024 and 2025 while providing purchasers a $450 discount. In 2026, the credit fell to $250 and the required purchaser discount to $225. The state has not published a comprehensive count of qualifying tax-credit sales.

• Connecticut: The state uses capped point-of-sale vouchers. Of 468 vouchers issued during the first round, 422 were redeemed at a cost of $621,128. A second round allocated $750,000 and was expected to support approximately 600 additional income-qualified purchasers. The state has posted second-round information through an interactive dashboard, but its public summary does not provide a simple final statewide redemption total.

• Hawaii: Purchasers can receive a post-purchase rebate equal to 20 percent of the retail price, up to $500. The statutory program cap is $700,000 per fiscal year, but published totals combine electric bicycles and electric mopeds, making the number of subsidized e-bikes difficult to determine.

• Massachusetts: A capped $5 million point-of-sale program offered income-based vouchers of up to $1,200. More than 3,000 lower- and moderate-income residents purchased e-bikes through the program in 2025. The program is closed and is not expected to reopen in 2026.

• Minnesota: The state funded its certificate program at $2 million in both 2024 and 2025. Approximately 1,300 certificates were expected to be issued during the first year, but the state has not published a final combined redemption count for both years. The program has ended.

• Rhode Island: The state offers post-purchase rebates financed from a limited appropriation. It had awarded 1,680 rebates as of July 21, 2025, up from 1,380 through the end of 2024. The program continues to accept applications while appropriated funding remains available, although a more recent cumulative total is not prominently published.

• Vermont: The state offered capped incentives of $400 for standard e-bikes and as much as $800 for cargo or adaptive models. The program served 606 purchasers before its funds were exhausted and is not currently accepting purchases.

• Washington: The first point-of-sale rebate round was funded with $5 million, followed by $7 million for the current round. Nearly 3,000 purchasers used rebates during the 2025 pilot, although the state made 6,861 offers after receiving 37,751 applications. The second round opened in March 2026 and is scheduled to continue through March 2027, subject to available funding.

How Much of the Market Did the Programs Reach?

Adding the published state figures produces approximately 17,000 completed or awarded purchases. This excludes Minnesota’s incompletely reported certificates, Hawaii’s combined e-bike and moped program, some later Connecticut activity and sales made through Colorado’s uncapped retailer tax credit. Allowing for those partially reported programs raises a reasonable estimate toward 19,000, although the true number cannot be established from current state reporting.

Approximately 1.1 million e-bikes were sold nationally in 2022. More recent industry research indicates that nearly one million new and used e-bikes changed hands in 2024, including approximately 80,000 used units sold through peer-to-peer marketplaces.

Using approximately one million annual transactions as a rough benchmark suggests about four million e-bike purchases from 2022 through 2025. On that basis, documented statewide subsidies covered approximately 0.4 to 0.5 percent of national transactions. Even after generously allowing for unreported purchases, their share was probably no more than 1 percent.

The proportion of purchases actually caused by the incentives was smaller because some recipients would have bought an e-bike without government assistance.

States generally do not publish total e-bike sales, so state-level market shares must be estimated. Allocating national purchases according to population, I estimate that subsidized purchases represented roughly 2 percent of the market in California and as much as 35 percent in Colorado, with a median of approximately 12 percent among states with usable participation figures. Excluding Colorado’s unusually large rebate program, the estimates range from about 2 to 14 percent and generally cluster between 5 and 15 percent.

These are rough benchmarks, not measured market shares. States with unusually strong cycling markets probably sell more e-bikes per resident than the national average, which would reduce their estimated subsidized shares. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that statewide incentives affected less than 1 percent of the national market while accounting for a meaningful share of purchases in several individual states.

The failure to publish total state sales, final redemption figures and Colorado tax-credit transactions remains a major obstacle to evaluating these programs.

Five Questions Policymakers Should Ask

1. Would the Purchase Have Occurred Anyway?

The central question in evaluating any tax credit or subsidy is whether it changes behavior. When a recipient would have bought the e-bike without assistance, the government has not created an additional purchase. It has transferred money to someone who was already planning to buy.

The relevant measure is therefore not the total number of subsidized purchases but the number caused by the subsidy. Programs should survey applicants about their prior intentions and compare successful recipients with similar unsuccessful applicants. Without such evidence, voucher redemptions cannot be treated as proof that a program expanded the market.

2. Would Safe Bicycle Routes Be a Better Investment?

Protected bicycle lanes may be a better public investment than rebates or tax credits for selected purchasers. A safe route benefits both conventional cyclists and e-bike riders and may encourage people who already own bicycles to use them more frequently.

Federal transportation research reports that converting an ordinary bicycle lane into a separated lane with low-cost delineators can reduce bicycle–vehicle crashes by as much as 53 percent.

Taking street space from automobiles is not costless. Protected lanes can reduce parking, loading space or vehicle capacity. Those costs may fall disproportionately on small businesses, delivery drivers, older customers, people with disabilities and residents without garages.

I have sympathy for both sides. Cyclists need safer streets, but nearby parking and loading access have genuine economic and practical value. Cities should preserve loading zones, short-term parking and disabled access where feasible and modify designs when actual problems emerge. Safe infrastructure generally deserves priority over purchase subsidies, but every parking space should not automatically be treated as expendable.

3. How Efficiently Does the Subsidy Reduce Emissions?

When emissions reduction is the principal objective, the number of subsidized e-bikes is not the relevant measure. The important question is how much fossil-fuel use and how many emissions are avoided for each public dollar spent.

Six factors largely determine the answer:

1. Whether the e-bike would have been purchased without the subsidy.

2. Whether it replaces automobile travel or is used primarily for recreation.

3. The transportation mode it replaces.

4. How frequently it is used.

5. The emissions associated with manufacturing the bicycle and battery.

6. How many years the e-bike remains in use.

The environmental effectiveness of a subsidy therefore depends on the automobile mileage and emissions it displaces, net of manufacturing and charging emissions. Programs that do not measure prior travel mode, vehicle miles replaced, frequency of use and continued ownership cannot establish that they meaningfully reduce emissions.

A voucher that helps replace a daily automobile commute may produce substantial benefits. A voucher for an e-bike that is ridden recreationally a few times each month may produce very little.

4. Do E-Bike Subsidies Create Safety Costs?

Safety belongs in the cost-benefit analysis. Moving a traveler from an automobile to an e-bike may reduce emissions, but an e-bike provides far less physical protection from motor vehicles, road hazards and falls. Faster and heavier e-bikes may also impose risks on pedestrians, conventional cyclists and passengers.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that e-bike injuries resulted in approximately 155,200 emergency-department visits from 2017 through 2024. The agency also received reports of 310 e-bike-related fatalities, including 97 in 2024. These totals increased as e-bike use expanded, although the injury estimates do not establish comparative risk per mile and the reported fatality data are incomplete.

Motor-vehicle collisions accounted for 170 reported deaths, or about 55 percent of the total. Another 61 involved riders losing control, while 35 involved unspecified falls. Nineteen deaths were associated with battery fires. Another 19 fell within the agency’s pedestrian-accident category, including 13 pedestrians struck and killed by e-bikes.

These figures support investment in safe routes, helmet and lighting requirements, appropriate speed and age restrictions, product-certification standards, battery-safety rules and enforcement of sidewalk and impaired-riding laws.

The history of automobile fuel-economy regulation provides a useful analogy. Robert Crandall and John Graham’s influential 1989 study argued that early Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards encouraged vehicle downsizing and associated the resulting weight reduction with approximately a 20 percent increase in occupant fatalities. Later researchers challenged both the methodology and the magnitude of the estimate.

Subsequent fuel-economy standards adopted vehicle-footprint-based requirements that reduced manufacturers’ incentive to comply simply by making vehicles smaller.

The broader lesson is that environmental policy should not count lower emissions while disregarding injuries created by an induced change in transportation. Any increase in injury risk associated with an e-bike program should be counted explicitly as a program cost rather than treated as unrelated to the environmental benefit.

5. Is This the Best Way to Help Lower-Income People Travel?

Helping lower-income households obtain reliable transportation is a legitimate public objective, but e-bike subsidies are an unusually narrow way to pursue it. Most programs are capped, oversubscribed and available to only a few hundred or a few thousand successful applicants. A lottery may provide a substantial benefit to one worker while offering nothing to an otherwise similar neighbor.

Public buses and rail systems serve many travelers who cannot use a bicycle because of age, disability, weather, distance, child-care responsibilities or unsafe roads. The same public funds might finance reduced fares, more frequent service, longer operating hours, safer stops or better connections to employment centers. Such investments benefit many riders repeatedly rather than providing a large one-time subsidy to a relatively small number of purchasers.

E-bikes may nevertheless be valuable in places with weak transit service or for workers whose schedules do not match available bus routes. That case supports a tightly targeted transportation program directed toward households without reliable cars and workers with demonstrated commuting needs—not necessarily a broad consumer subsidy.

When assistance to lower-income households is the objective, policymakers should compare the cost per person served and the resulting improvement in transportation access with conventional transit subsidies before concluding that e-bike vouchers are the best use of limited funds.

Conclusion: Measure the Benefit, Not the Vouchers

State e-bike incentives are neither transformative climate policy nor necessarily wasteful. They have helped thousands of people purchase a useful form of transportation and, in several states, may have supported a meaningful share of e-bike sales. Nationally, however, their reach has been well below 1 percent of the market—and reach is not the same as causation.

The next generation of programs should be smaller, better targeted and more rigorously evaluated. Assistance could focus on households without reliable automobiles, workers with demonstrated commuting needs and communities with inadequate transit service. States should publish redemption and sales data, conduct follow-up travel surveys, measure automobile mileage displaced, require certified batteries and pair purchase assistance with safe routes.

Policymakers should also compare e-bike incentives with protected infrastructure, transit improvements and other uses of the same public funds. The number of vouchers issued is not proof of success. The proper question is what public benefit those purchases produced—and whether another use of the money would have produced more.

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That creates a possible coalition of conventional Democrats, unaffiliated voters, moderates and Republicans—but only if an independent candidate gets on the general election ballot and offers a viable economic agenda which makes people better off.

Opposition to the movement left is not enough. An independent candidate must first demonstrate that the economic approaches offered by both major parties are failing and then present a practical alternative grounded in fiscal reality, economic efficiency and household financial security.

How the Two Parties Govern

Republicans approach economic policy primarily through tax reductions, deregulation and limits on government spending. They raise legitimate concerns about costs, bureaucracy and poorly designed Democratic programs, but they too often ignore household needs, environmental costs and the risks created when government assistance is abruptly withdrawn without a workable replacement. Their policies may reduce the government’s obligations on paper while transferring medical, educational and retirement risks to households least able to bear them.

The Democratic economic agenda is increasingly shaped by an unbridgeable ideological dispute between progressive activists and more conventional party centrists.

Centrist Democrats often respond with milquetoast, temporary compromises designed to hold the coalition together rather than durable reforms capable of surviving a change in party control.

Progressives, meanwhile, advocate Medicare for All without providing a credible transition from the existing system. On student debt and energy policy, they often gravitate toward the most expensive and sweeping solutions. Too often, they fail to recognize that public resources are limited even as social needs are effectively unlimited.

The result is a party that alternates between proposals that are politically or fiscally unrealistic and centrist substitutes too weak or temporary to solve the underlying problems.

The result is policy whiplash:

· Health-insurance assistance is expanded and then allowed to lapse.

· Student-loan rules are rewritten by one administration and dismantled by the next.

· Tax provisions are enacted temporarily and then allowed to expire.

· Retirement reforms fail to reach many households unable to save.

· Social Security remains headed toward automatic benefit cuts.

· Clean-energy policy alternates between subsidies and restrictions depending on which party controls the government.

A Six-Part Independent Economic Agenda

Health Care

An independent health-care program should reject both the progressive demand for an immediate transition to Medicare for All and the Republican willingness to allow coverage to decline. It should combine four practical reforms:

• Establish federal catastrophic reinsurance to absorb a substantial share of exceptionally large medical claims and reduce premiums on the state exchange markets.

• Expand portable, employee-owned but employer-subsidized coverage that can follow workers when they change jobs.

• Modernize health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts, including eliminating the wasteful FSA “use it or lose it” rule and allowing households to preserve unused funds.

• Make greater use of Medicaid when it can provide adequate coverage more efficiently than heavily subsidized private insurance.

The objective is not to favor government or private insurance ideologically. It is to protect people against catastrophic risk, improve portability, encourage saving and direct public resources toward the arrangements that provide the greatest benefit at a reasonable cost.

Student Debt

An independent student-debt program should reject both indiscriminate loan forgiveness and Republican repayment rules that can leave borrowers making burdensome payments for decades. It should:

• Shift assistance away from a general tax deduction that provides its largest benefits to households with relatively high incomes and instead concentrate assistance during the early years of a borrower’s career, when income is generally lowest and competing financial demands are greatest.

• Reduce reliance on income-driven repayment programs that permit balances to remain outstanding for decades and leave borrowers uncertain about when or whether their debts will finally be resolved.

• Index the Repayment Assistance Plan’s (RAP) income thresholds and payment parameters to inflation so borrowers do not face automatic payment increases merely because nominal wages rise.

• Eliminate RAP related marriage penalties and de facto marginal tax-rate increases that can sharply increase payments when borrowers marry, earn additional income or cross arbitrary repayment thresholds.

• Replace uncertain end-of-term loan discharges with a clearly defined conversion of remaining balances into zero-interest obligations, coupled with appropriate Internal Revenue Service collection and enforcement authority.

• Establish a credible path for borrowers to eliminate all remaining student debt before reaching Social Security retirement age.

The goal is to prevent student loans from obstructing household formation, homeownership, retirement saving and productive risk-taking without providing enormous untargeted benefits to high-income borrowers or shifting unlimited costs to taxpayers.

Retirement Security

Recent bipartisan retirement legislation has expanded access to tax-favored accounts, but it has done too little for households that lack the financial margin to contribute. An independent agenda should target saving incentives toward households that are not currently saving enough.

It should:

· Put individual retirement accounts on greater parity with 401(k) plans, including providing comparable protection against creditors and bankruptcy claims.

· Facilitate the transfer of high-fee 401(k) assets into a low-cost IRA when workers change jobs.

· Improve and expand investment options across retirement accounts, including allowing direct purchases of Series I bonds within both 401(k) plans and IRAs.

· Establish a protected core of retirement savings that generally cannot be used before retirement, except in cases of catastrophic hardship.

· Permit employer contributions to individual retirement accounts, particularly for part-time workers, contractors and workers without access to a 401(k).

· Expand retirement assistance for caregivers and spouses with limited access to the workforce.

Retirement policy should help households accumulate and preserve actual assets—not merely enlarge tax advantages for people already capable of maximizing every available account. These reforms are also necessary preparation for any future Social Security agreement that requires households to bear a modestly larger share of their retirement needs.

Taxes

An independent tax program should reject the Republican fixation on lower taxes over all other priorities and the Democratic reflex to spend and tax in response to every dilemma. These tendencies have shaped current capital-gains policies and proposals. A better approach would:

• Reduce long-term capital-gains tax rates while broadening the tax base, encouraging investment and the realization of gains without simply increasing the deficit.

• End most new real-estate exchanges under Section 1031 prospectively, while protecting completed transactions and providing reasonable transition rules for gains already deferred under existing law.

• Replace the complete step-up in basis at death with a partial basis adjustment, while retaining carryover basis for lifetime gifts.

• Replace the estate and gift tax system with a more coherent realization-based approach to inherited wealth, supported by substantially stronger basis reporting.

The objective is a stable tax system with lower rates, fewer arbitrary distinctions, less economic lock-in, stronger reporting and a broader base—not a succession of temporary provisions that change whenever control of government changes.

As one might expect from a former Treasury official, my companion LinkedIn paper on taxation gets just a smidge more technical.

Social Security

An independent approach must acknowledge that restoring Social Security’s finances will require adjustments on both the benefit and tax sides. Republicans cannot plausibly solve the problem through benefit reductions alone, while Democrats cannot indefinitely promise that every scheduled benefit can be maintained solely by taxing a small number of affluent households.

Benefit adjustments become economically and politically possible only after government alleviates the financial stress caused by medical and student debt and creates effective incentives that allow households at every income level to accumulate private retirement savings. Healthcare, student-debt and retirement reforms are therefore not separate from Social Security reform. They are preconditions for a balanced agreement that protects vulnerable retirees while gradually restoring long-term solvency.

Energy and the Environment

A pragmatic independent should seek to restore the bipartisan environmental consensus that once emphasized cost-benefit analysis, measurable results and flexibility rather than revolutionary changes in society. See the essay Ideology and the Environment.

Environmental harms are real, but the economic response is to identify the externality, place an appropriate price on it and allow households and businesses to find the least costly way to respond. Policy should rely on modest, selective taxes and tax credits—not enormous subsidy packages, blanket prohibitions or government selection of favored technologies.

When a modest increase in a tax on pollution can be offset by a reduction in another tax, government can improve incentives without worsening the household balance sheet or increasing the deficit. Subsidies should be reserved for cases in which markets clearly underinvest, such as basic research, early-stage technology, transmission infrastructure or projects that generate broad public benefits. It is difficult to justify large tax credits for expensive electric vehicles when many households still cannot afford health insurance, and the enhanced premium tax credits remain temporary.

Climate change illustrates more clearly than almost any other issue that public resources are limited while the challenges facing society are effectively unlimited. A serious environmental policy must reduce pollution and encourage cleaner energy, but it must do so without pretending that every worthwhile objective can receive an unlimited subsidy. The independent approach is therefore economic rather than ideological: correct externalities, protect reliability, measure results and use scarce public resources where they produce the greatest benefit.

Conclusion

A pragmatic independent should offer neither austerity without protection nor public benefits without financial limits. The governing objective should be to insure households against risks they cannot reasonably bear, preserve individual choice where markets can work, concentrate assistance where it produces the greatest benefit, encourage saving and eliminate economically unjustified preferences.

The six parts of this agenda reinforce one another. Reducing medical and student debt makes it possible for households to save; stronger retirement saving makes balanced Social Security reform more feasible; tax reform can improve incentives while raising necessary revenue; and a technology-neutral environmental policy can reduce emissions without sacrificing affordable and reliable energy. That is the constructive economic program capable of turning dissatisfaction with both parties into a viable governing movement.

Further Reading: Four Kindle Policy Papers

• Health Care Reform — Reinsurance, portable coverage, modernized savings accounts and a more efficient role for Medicaid
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H89VPTF7

• Student Debt Reform — A sustainable alternative to broad loan cancellation and decades-long income-driven repayment
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H8QHK626

• Retirement Security Reform — Expanding saving opportunities and protecting retirement assets
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H962VJKZ

• Capital-Gains and Tax Reform — Lower rates, a broader tax base and more consistent treatment of inherited wealth
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H9P3Z5BX

Also, for constant updates on the politics and economics of 2026 go to www.economicmemos.com.

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Many Democratic proposals promise benefits that cannot realistically be enacted, financed, or sustained. Many Republican proposals respond to genuine fiscal problems with policies that are unnecessarily harsh, particularly toward households already struggling with medical expenses, student loans, or inadequate retirement savings. A credible third-party candidate should recognize both problems.

Economic efficiency is not an abstraction. Problems are unlimited, resources are scarce, and money is fungible. A dollar spent providing free college tuition to a family that can comfortably afford it is a dollar unavailable to help someone who lacks health insurance, cannot pay a medical bill, or reaches retirement with almost no savings.

These problems also interact. Medical debt and excessive student-loan payments prevent people from saving for retirement. Inadequate private savings then make Social Security reform politically more difficult because even modest benefit adjustments become threatening to households with no financial cushion. Policy cannot treat health care, education debt, retirement, and taxation as unrelated subjects.

The four papers propose reforms designed to make markets work better, concentrate public resources where they are most valuable, and protect people against risks they cannot reasonably bear themselves.

1. A Durable Path Forward on American Health Care

A Durable Path Forward on American Health Care proposes four reforms intended to improve coverage without attempting another politically impossible reconstruction of the entire health-care system.

The first is federal catastrophic reinsurance. The government would assume a large share of exceptionally high medical claims, reducing the risk borne by private insurers and lowering premiums throughout the individual market. The approach preserves private coverage while recognizing that rare, extraordinarily expensive cases are difficult for any private insurance pool to absorb.

The paper also proposes expanding portable, employee-owned health insurance. Employers could contribute toward coverage selected by the worker rather than requiring the worker to remain in a particular employer plan. Coverage could follow people between jobs, reducing the disruption caused by job changes, self-employment, or periods outside the conventional workforce.

A third reform would modernize health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts. Tax assistance would be made more useful to middle- and lower-income households, while the wasteful “use it or lose it” rule for flexible spending accounts would be eliminated.

Finally, the paper argues that Medicaid should be used where it provides coverage more efficiently than heavily subsidized private insurance. The objective is not to favor either public or private insurance ideologically, but to determine which arrangement delivers adequate coverage at the lowest reasonable cost.

The result is a health-care program that strengthens insurance against catastrophic risk, improves portability, encourages saving, and directs public subsidies where they accomplish the most.

2. A Better Approach to Student Debt

The student-debt policy paper rejects both indiscriminate loan forgiveness and repayment rules that can impose excessive burdens for decades.

Blanket forgiveness is poorly targeted. It provides large benefits to some borrowers with high incomes or valuable professional degrees while doing nothing for people who avoided college, repaid their loans, or need help with medical bills, housing, or retirement savings instead.

But the alternative cannot simply be to demand full payment regardless of circumstances. Poorly designed repayment systems can impose high marriage penalties, penalize additional work, and leave borrowers making payments for decades without substantially reducing principal.

The paper proposes a more balanced income-based repayment system. Payments would rise gradually with income, protections would be indexed rather than allowed to erode with inflation, and married couples would not face arbitrary penalties simply because they file jointly or combine their finances.

Borrowers who make sustained payments should also see meaningful progress toward eliminating principal. Long-term repayment should not become a permanent financial holding pattern in which borrowers pay year after year without a realistic route out of debt.

Targeted discharge protections should remain available for disability, school fraud, and other exceptional circumstances. The purpose is to distinguish between borrowers who can reasonably repay, borrowers who need more time, and borrowers whose debts cannot realistically be collected.

The broader objective is to prevent student debt from blocking household formation, homeownership, retirement saving, and productive risk-taking—without sending enormous untargeted checks to everyone who attended college.

3. Expanding Retirement Saving Without Abandoning Social Security

The retirement-savings policy paper begins with an uncomfortable reality: many households approach retirement with inadequate private savings and depend almost entirely on Social Security.

That makes Social Security reform more difficult. Changes that might be manageable for a household with substantial retirement assets can be devastating for someone with no savings at all. Strengthening private retirement security is therefore not a substitute for Social Security reform; it is one of the conditions necessary to make reform politically and economically possible.

The paper proposes broader access to retirement accounts, stronger protections for retirement assets, and simpler rules governing contributions and conversions. Workers should have access to low-cost investment choices rather than being trapped in expensive or poorly designed plans.

It also proposes a protected core of retirement savings that generally could not be withdrawn for ordinary pre-retirement spending. Current policy frequently describes accounts as retirement vehicles while allowing balances to be drained through loans, hardship withdrawals, and other exceptions. Some flexibility is necessary, but an account that is repeatedly emptied cannot provide retirement security.

Special assistance would be available for caregivers and spouses with limited earnings, who often lose both current income and future retirement benefits while providing socially valuable care.

The central principle is straightforward: government should encourage saving, make retirement accounts easier to use, protect accumulated assets, and target assistance toward households that otherwise would save too little—not merely provide larger tax advantages to people already capable of maximizing every available account.

4. Reforming Capital Gains, Inheritance, and Real-Estate Taxation

The capital-gains and tax-reconciliation paper addresses one of the most difficult areas of federal taxation: how to tax investment gains without discouraging realizations, rewarding avoidance, or allowing accumulated gains to disappear permanently.

The paper proposes lower statutory capital-gains rates combined with a broader and more consistent tax base. Lower rates would reduce the incentive to hold assets solely to avoid taxation, while base-broadening provisions would limit special rules that allow economically similar gains to receive very different treatment.

The proposal would prospectively end most new like-kind exchanges under Section 1031, which permit selected real-estate investors to defer gains repeatedly while other investors pay tax when they sell appreciated assets. Appropriate transition rules would protect existing arrangements while gradually moving toward uniform treatment.

At death, the proposal would replace the complete basis step-up with a partial adjustment. This would prevent all previously untaxed appreciation from disappearing while avoiding the liquidity and valuation problems created by taxing every unrealized gain immediately at death.

Lifetime gifts would retain the donor’s basis so that giving an appreciated asset to another person would not erase the gain. Improved basis reporting would make the system administrable and reduce disputes years after the original transfer.

The paper also proposes better treatment of inherited retirement accounts and a coordinated approach to the estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes. These rules should be evaluated as a single system rather than as unrelated provisions added at different times for different political reasons.

The objective is not simply to raise or cut taxes. It is to produce a system with lower rates, fewer arbitrary distinctions, less lock-in, stronger reporting, and a broader tax base.

Why a Third Party Is Needed

The four papers do not fit comfortably within either party’s current platform.

Democrats too often begin by promising a universal benefit—free tuition, complete debt cancellation, larger subsidies, or another entitlement—and only later consider the cost or whether the assistance is reaching the people who most need it.

Republicans correctly criticize the cost and inefficiency of many Democratic proposals but frequently offer withdrawal, repeal, or abrupt benefit reductions instead of a workable replacement. Fiscal discipline is necessary, but simply transferring more risk to households that cannot bear it is not a sustainable governing philosophy.

A serious third party would begin somewhere else. It would insure people against catastrophic risks, preserve individual choice where markets can work, target assistance according to need, encourage work and saving, eliminate unjustified tax preferences, and acknowledge that every public dollar has an alternative use.

Each paper costs $5.99 on Kindle. Together, they offer the beginnings of an economic platform for a third-party candidate—or at least for voters who would like the existing parties to behave more responsibly.

And should these papers somehow generate $10 million in revenue, I will run for office.

That is, of course, a joke, a joke that was probably funnier prior to 2016. At $5.99 per paper, even economic policy has limits.

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Most economically efficient

• Methane emissions charge: Directly priced excessive releases from major oil and gas facilities—the provision closest to conventional “polluter pays” policy.

• Technology-neutral clean-electricity credits: Rewarded very low-emission electricity rather than permanently selecting wind, solar or another technology.

• Targeted nuclear support: Potentially efficient when it prevented a viable zero-carbon plant from closing and being replaced by fossil generation.

• Research, demonstrations and transmission: Addressed innovation spillovers, coordination failures and infrastructure bottlenecks.

Defensible only with strict limits

• Hydrogen and carbon capture: Worth retaining for difficult industrial uses only when payments reflected verified lifecycle emissions reductions.

• Targeted residential solar, battery and efficiency incentives: Smaller credits could help lower- and middle-income households overcome financing barriers and support useful battery storage.

• Charging infrastructure: Networks may require initial support, but subsidies should decline as use increases.

Least economically efficient

• Broad EV purchase credits: Paid many affluent households that would have bought an EV anyway and ignored mileage, vehicle weight and the vehicle replaced.

• Broad, untargeted homeowner credits: Rewarded installation costs regardless of household income, whether the investment was additional, electricity produced or grid value.

• Advanced-manufacturing credits: Pursued industrial or national-security objectives without tying benefits closely to emissions reductions.

• Domestic-content, wage and location bonuses: Pursued separate political goals while increasing the cost of emissions reductions. CBO concluded that such conditions can raise project costs and alter investment decisions.

• Poorly measured fuel subsidies: These included incentives for sustainable aviation fuel, ethanol-based aviation fuel, biodiesel, renewable diesel and fuels made from corn, soybeans, animal fats or waste products. Depending on feedstock and production, a nominally renewable fuel may provide only modest emissions savings. Credits are defensible only when lifecycle calculations capture fertilizer, processing energy, land conversion and diversion of feedstocks from other uses.

What Republicans Repealed—and What Should Have Survived

The 2025 Republican reconciliation law ended the new, used and commercial clean-vehicle credits; terminated residential clean-energy and efficiency credits; and restricted clean-hydrogen, clean-electricity and advanced-manufacturing credits. It also delayed the methane emissions charge until emissions reported for 2034.

Provisions that deserved reduction or repeal

• Large EV credits, particularly subsidies for affluent purchasers of expensive new vehicles.

• Open-ended manufacturing credits insufficiently tied to measurable environmental benefits.

• Overlapping domestic-content, wage and location bonuses that increased the cost of meeting climate goals.

• Fuel credits based on questionable lifecycle-emissions estimates.

Provisions the law cut too aggressively

• Residential solar, battery and efficiency credits: These should have been reduced, income-targeted and tied more closely to household or grid benefits—not abolished.

• Used-EV credits: A smaller credit for lower-priced used EVs purchased by low- and middle-income households could have survived.

• Technology-neutral clean-electricity credits: These deserved a gradual phaseout rather than abrupt restrictions.

• Research, demonstration and infrastructure programs: These can address genuine innovation and coordination failures.

Provisions that should have been preserved

• The methane emissions charge, because it directly priced a harmful externality.

• Targeted nuclear support for plants genuinely at risk of being replaced by fossil generation.

• Low-income energy assistance where financing barriers prevent otherwise worthwhile investments.

The law also extended and modified the Section 45Z clean-fuel credit through 2029 while repealing other climate incentives. Republicans therefore preserved a questionable fuel subsidy while weakening more economically defensible policies.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the energy-tax changes would increase federal revenue by about $499 billion over 2025–2034. Those savings were not used primarily for deficit reduction or a revenue-neutral environmental reform; they helped finance a much larger package of tax cuts.

Redesigning the Weakest Provisions

The weakest Biden provisions could have been replaced by revenue-neutral changes in relative prices:

• Electric vehicles: Eliminate large credits for affluent purchasers and luxury vehicles. Retain a modest credit for lower-priced used EVs bought by low- and middle-income households, financed by fees on unusually heavy or high-emission new vehicles. EV owners already avoid gasoline taxes, reducing the need for a large purchase credit.

• Residential solar and batteries: Replace the broad 30 percent installation credit with smaller, income-limited assistance. Utilities could receive tax credits or direct-payment equivalents for rebates, leases and performance payments tied to verified battery availability or peak-period discharge.

• Solar buybacks: Compensate households according to when electricity is exported and the value it provides to the grid—not automatically at the full retail price, which also finances transmission, distribution and other system costs.

• Clean fuels: Replace fixed subsidies with a feebate. Fuels with high verified lifecycle emissions would pay a fee, while genuinely cleaner fuels would receive credits financed by those payments.

• Home efficiency: Fees on unusually inefficient furnaces, water heaters and appliances could finance targeted rebates for efficient replacements, particularly in lower-income households and rental properties.

• Broader carbon pricing: Carbon fees could be returned through payroll-tax reductions, refundable credits or equal dividends. Most low- and middle-income households could remain financially whole while retaining incentives to choose cleaner products.

Conclusion

The Biden program should have been trimmed and redesigned rather than broadly repealed. Republicans eliminated some poor subsidies but also weakened efficient provisions and used the savings to help finance tax cuts. The larger problem is that Congress appears to contain no organized constituency for the economically preferable middle course: pricing environmental costs, returning the revenue to households, and limiting subsidies to genuine market failures.

A separate memo should examine utility resistance to rooftop buybacks, appropriate export prices, battery subsidies, virtual power plants, utility ownership or leasing, and federal-state regulatory responsibilities.

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This is the first in a series on how energy and environmental policy moved away from economic principles and toward partisan warfare.

A Problem Economists Thought They Understood

Environmental policy once rested on a broadly shared economic principle: when an activity imposes uncompensated costs on others, policy should seek to make those costs part of the decision. Economists and political leaders could disagree over taxes, tradable permits, standards, liability rules, or public investment while accepting that common approach.

That consensus has collapsed. Republicans increasingly treat climate action as an ideological threat, while Democrats too often invoke environmental urgency to justify costly subsidies, mandates, and deadlines without sufficient economic scrutiny. How did a field once organized around externalities, incentives, and comparative costs become another arena of partisan identity?

The Bipartisan Environmental Settlement

Republicans and Democrats have long disagreed profoundly over the proper role of government. Historically, however, they often worked together to improve the environment using a shared framework: identify the harm, compare the costs of alternative remedies, and seek practical results.

• EPA and clean air. In 1970, Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and selected William Ruckelshaus as its first administrator. Nixon also signed the modern Clean Air Act after it passed the Senate 73–0 and the House 375–1.

• Clean water. Nixon vetoed the 1972 Clean Water Act largely because of its cost, but Congress overrode him with bipartisan supermajorities. Bipartisanship did not eliminate disagreement; it preserved a common commitment to cleaner air and water.

• Hazardous waste. Jimmy Carter signed the Superfund law in 1980, establishing federal authority to clean up contaminated sites and require responsible parties to pay. Ronald Reagan signed major amendments strengthening the program in 1986.

• EPA credibility. After an early Reagan-era scandal weakened confidence in the agency, Reagan brought Ruckelshaus back in 1983 to restore its independence and credibility.

• Ozone protection. Reagan’s administration helped negotiate the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which phased out chemicals that damaged the stratospheric ozone layer. The agreement became one of the most successful examples of international environmental cooperation.

• Lead reduction. During the Reagan administration, the EPA also accelerated the phaseout of lead from gasoline, producing major public-health benefits.

• Acid-rain trading. President George H. W. Bush and EPA Administrator William K. Reilly secured the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments with overwhelming bipartisan support. Its acid-rain program capped sulfur-dioxide emissions while allowing companies to trade permits, combining an environmental limit with market flexibility.

• Brownfields. Under George W. Bush, EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman helped advance bipartisan legislation encouraging the cleanup and redevelopment of contaminated industrial properties.

• Climate policy. The shared framework extended into the climate debate. John McCain and Democrat Joseph Lieberman introduced a market-based cap-and-trade proposal in 2003, and McCain campaigned for greenhouse-gas limits in 2008.

These policies were contested, and their results were not uniformly successful. But mainstream Republicans and Democrats generally agreed that environmental harms required action and that the debate should focus on which remedy worked best—not on whether the problem deserved a response.

That consensus—and the ability to work together—has collapsed. Several forces may explain why.

1. Climate change is a harder environmental problem. Smog, sewage, lead, acid rain, and toxic waste produced visible and often local harm. Carbon dioxide has global, cumulative, and delayed effects. Its costs are harder to observe, and the benefits of reducing emissions are dispersed across countries and generations.

That difference does not change the economics. Greenhouse-gas emissions impose costs that emitters do not fully bear. They remain negative externalities, and the proper debate should concern how to price or regulate those costs.

2. The parties no longer describe the same problem. Many Democrats call climate change an existential emergency, making delay or compromise appear morally unacceptable. Many Republicans argue that carbon dioxide is not pollution, that the threat is exaggerated, or that government should do little about it. A debate over how to correct an externality becomes a clash between catastrophe and denial.

3. Energy policy became part of political identity. Climate policies impose different costs on oil-producing regions, farming communities, industrial areas, rural drivers, and affluent cities. Electric vehicles, pickup trucks, gas stoves, pipelines, wind turbines, and solar panels have also become partisan symbols. Once technologies signal political allegiance, evidence about where they work and what they cost becomes less influential.

4. Democratic policies became larger and more prescriptive. The emphasis shifted from changing relative prices toward subsidies, mandates, and deadlines intended to transform entire industries. California’s vehicle rules and the Inflation Reduction Act illustrate an approach that often selects preferred technologies rather than allowing consumers and businesses to find the least costly way to reduce emissions.

5. Republican opposition became more categorical. Republicans have legitimate concerns about regulatory costs, reliability, rural burdens, permitting, and excessive administrative power. But the Trump administration has gone beyond challenging poorly designed policies by obstructing wind and solar projects even when they may provide economically competitive power and environmental benefits.

6. Economic interests now reinforce the divide. Traditional energy producers defend existing markets, while clean-energy companies defend subsidies, tax credits, mandates, and regulations that expand their own. Automakers, utilities, fossil-fuel companies, renewable-energy developers, and environmental organizations all use the political process to protect or enlarge their positions.

7. The political process itself may have deteriorated. We should not romanticize the past, but leaders such as Henry Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, Jacob Javits, Clifford Case, Howard Baker, John Chafee, Mark Hatfield, and Richard Lugar often combined strong convictions with policy expertise, cross-party negotiation, and a willingness to accept partial victories.

Today, Congress legislates less, presidents rely more heavily on executive action, and each administration attempts to reverse the last. The political system increasingly rewards loyalty, confrontation, and ideological certainty rather than technical competence and durable compromise.

These forces reinforce one another. Democratic claims of impending catastrophe encourage sweeping programs, while Republican denial and obstruction reduce the incentive to design more disciplined alternatives. The result is no longer a competition between two economically coherent approaches, but a choice between expansive mandates and subsidies on one side and broad resistance to climate action on the other.

Today, Congress legislates less, presidents rely more heavily on executive action, and each administration attempts to reverse the last. Donald Trump’s personal hostility toward wind and solar is unusually explicit, but the deterioration is broader than one president. The political system increasingly rewards loyalty, confrontation, and ideological certainty rather than technical competence and durable compromise.

Missing from this debate is the approach economists once expected the parties to debate -- identify the external cost, place a price or limit on it, give households and businesses flexibility in responding, and assist workers and communities bearing disproportionate costs.

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My new Kindle book, A Third-Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Student Debt: Front-Loaded Relief, Faster Principal Reduction, Fairer RAP Rules, and a Durable Endpoint for Long-Term Debt, offers a third path. It provides substantial assistance when borrowers need it most, accelerates principal reduction, corrects serious flaws in the new Repayment Assistance Plan, and creates a manageable endpoint for debt that remains after twenty years.

The objective is neither indiscriminate cancellation nor decades of punitive collection. Student debt should be a temporary financial obligation—not a claim on a borrower’s earnings that persists into middle age or retirement.

Here are ten features of the book.

1. It breaks out of the forgiveness-versus-punishment debate.

Borrowers do not need a choice between having nearly everything canceled and remaining indebted for thirty years. The book develops a middle course that provides meaningful relief while preserving a real obligation to repay. Borrowers receive help eliminating debt, while taxpayers are protected from open-ended subsidies and indiscriminate cancellation.

2. It concentrates assistance when borrowers need it most.

The proposal provides zero interest during the first twenty-four months of required repayment, with the possibility of a thirty-six-month period if budget scoring permits. Recent graduates are often earning less, establishing households, paying high housing costs, beginning families, or completing professional training. Assistance delivered during these years can prevent financial trouble before interest and missed payments begin to compound.

3. It makes every early payment reduce principal.

A zero-interest starting period does more than temporarily reduce monthly costs. It allows every scheduled payment to reduce the amount owed.

A borrower with $35,000 of debt at 6.5 percent who continues making a normal ten-year payment during a two-year zero-interest period could finish repayment approximately seventeen months earlier and save roughly $6,795 in lifetime interest. A three-year period could shorten repayment by about twenty-two months and reduce interest by approximately $9,007.

4. It redirects an inefficient tax preference toward direct debt reduction.

The existing student-loan-interest deduction provides relief only after interest has been paid. Its value is limited for borrowers with low incomes or little income-tax liability, and it does nothing directly to accelerate principal reduction.

The book proposes repealing or phasing out the deduction and using the revenue to help finance the introductory zero-interest period. Instead of modestly subsidizing the cost of carrying debt, federal policy would help borrowers eliminate the debt sooner.

5. It creates a more predictable conventional repayment system.

Federal student-loan interest rates should not depend heavily on the Treasury-market conditions prevailing during one annual pricing window. Students who happen to enter school when interest rates are high should not be locked into substantially higher borrowing costs for years.

The book proposes a stable federal rate—approximately 4.5 percent as a starting point for analysis—so that students can better understand and compare their future obligations before borrowing.

6. It rewards borrowers who establish strong repayment records.

Borrowers who make sixty months of on-time payments would become eligible for a one-time principal reduction equal to 5 percent of the remaining federal balance when refinancing into a qualifying private loan.

This would reward responsible repayment, help borrowers move into ordinary amortizing loans, and remove seasoned performing debt from the federal balance sheet. The proposal also requires clear disclosures and consumer protections so borrowers understand which federal benefits they surrender when refinancing.

7. It repairs RAP’s abrupt payment cliffs.

Under the new Repayment Assistance Plan, the applicable percentage can be imposed on a borrower’s entire adjusted gross income. Crossing an income threshold can therefore cause a surprisingly large increase in the required payment.

The book replaces these whole-income bands with marginal brackets. A higher percentage would apply only to income within the higher bracket. Borrowers would still pay more as their income rises, but a modest raise or promotion would no longer trigger a disproportionate jump in the entire payment.

8. It reduces RAP’s penalties on marriage, work, and inflation.

RAP can sharply increase payments when a borrower marries, particularly when only one spouse has student debt. Filing separately may lower the loan payment but produce a larger income-tax bill and interfere with other household benefits.

The proposal creates wider married thresholds and permits a separate-income calculation without requiring married couples to file separate tax returns. It also indexes RAP’s brackets, minimum payments, and dependent allowances so ordinary inflation does not raise payments when real purchasing power has not increased.

9. It provides a durable endpoint without automatically erasing principal.

After twenty years, any remaining federal balance would transfer to a zero-interest Treasury resolution account. Interest would stop accruing, the repayment process would become simpler, and basic Social Security and retirement income would be protected.

This is not automatic forgiveness. Borrowers with substantial income or liquid assets would continue paying principal. The compromise is straightforward: debt should not continue compounding after two decades, but borrowers who retain the ability to pay should remain responsible for what they owe.

10. It provides an implementable legislative roadmap.

The book does not stop with four general reforms. Its appendix translates the framework into twenty-two specific provisions for a possible tax-reconciliation bill.

These provisions cover front-loaded interest relief, hardship payments, a stable federal rate, responsible private refinancing, RAP marriage and inflation reforms, transparent principal accounting, long-term resolution, retirement protections, and federal budgeting. Most have a direct relationship to spending, tax revenue, loan-subsidy costs, interest receipts, or federal collections.

The result is a practical legislative program rather than another declaration that the current system is unfair. It seeks to make relief earlier, repayment faster, RAP fairer, and the endpoint more manageable—while preserving fiscal discipline and a meaningful obligation to repay.

View the book on Amazon, read a sample, or purchase the Kindle edition here.

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None of the existing partisan approaches is working. Centrist Democrats continue to patch the Affordable Care Act with temporary subsidies rather than establish durable, adequate coverage. The enhanced Premium Tax Credits were enacted temporarily and extended only through 2025, making them exceptionally easy for a later Congress to allow to expire. Whatever the political rationale, temporary benefits turn health coverage into a recurring election issue rather than a stable national commitment. Progressive Democrats answer with Medicare for All, while Republicans largely respond with eligibility restrictions and spending cuts that make existing coverage problems worse.

This instability has consequences beyond health care. Many Americans cannot accumulate sufficient retirement savings when premiums, deductibles, and medical bills repeatedly drain household finances. Without greater private savings, it will be much harder to make the adjustments eventually required to stabilize Social Security and the nation’s finances.

Here are ten features of the new approach:

1. It focuses on lowering the actual cost of insurance.

Instead of relying exclusively on ever-larger premium subsidies, federal reinsurance would pay part of exceptionally expensive claims before those costs are incorporated into premiums.

2. It could expand coverage at a relatively low net federal cost.

Reinsurance requires federal spending, but it lowers the underlying premiums used to calculate Premium Tax Credits, so part of its cost is automatically offset by smaller subsidy payments. Medicaid may also cover some low-income households more cheaply than heavily subsidized private plans that pay higher provider prices, while portable employer contributions could reduce coverage losses and recession-related Medicaid enrollment when workers lose or change jobs. The proposal is therefore less fiscally expensive than its individual spending provisions might initially appear: several reforms replace or reduce existing federal costs rather than simply adding new ones. These interactions must be incorporated into a dynamic, systemwide budget analysis that measures net costs across reinsurance, Premium Tax Credits, Medicaid, CHIP, and employer-financed coverage.

3. It protects families with seriously ill children.

A separate pediatric reinsurance program would help finance neonatal intensive care, childhood cancer, rare diseases, organ transplants, complex disabilities, and extremely expensive new treatments without loading the entire cost into family premiums.

4. It makes health coverage portable from job to job.

Workers could own their Marketplace policies while employers contribute toward the premiums. Changing jobs, starting a business, reducing hours, or retiring before Medicare would no longer automatically require changing insurance.

5. It reduces job lock and coverage interruptions.

After a layoff, the employer contribution could end and the federal subsidy could be recalculated, but the worker’s underlying insurance policy could remain in place.

6. It protects household savings as well as health coverage.

The book recognizes that insurance is inadequate when families cannot afford their deductibles. It proposes targeted assistance through Health Savings Accounts and would end the wasteful FSA use-it-or-lose-it rule, allowing workers to preserve unused medical savings or transfer excess balances into retirement accounts under carefully designed rules.

7. It reduces penalties on work, raises, and marriage.

A smoother Premium Tax Credit formula would prevent modest increases in earnings from causing abrupt losses of assistance. It would also reduce the marriage penalties that can arise when two incomes are combined and a household suddenly loses a large subsidy.

8. It uses Medicaid where Medicaid works better.

For many lower-income households, Medicaid can provide more comprehensive protection at lower public and household cost than a private policy with a large deductible. The objective is not to maximize government coverage, but to use the most efficient system for each population.

9. It combines private choice with public responsibility and better insurer incentives.

Consumers would continue choosing among privately administered health plans, but a federally sponsored reinsurance program would assume part of the cost of exceptionally expensive claims. Insurers would still negotiate prices, manage care, and bear substantial financial risk, while public rules would determine which high-cost claims qualify for reimbursement and require the resulting savings to reduce premiums. By sharing catastrophic risk, the system would reduce insurers’ incentives to avoid high-cost patients, deny legitimate claims, or impose overly aggressive utilization controls without turning every coverage decision over to the federal government.

10. It provides an implementable legislative roadmap.

The book identifies 25 specific provisions that could translate the four reforms into law. Most operate through taxes, mandatory spending, Medicaid financing, Premium Tax Credits, or employer-benefit rules and therefore appear suitable for the budget-reconciliation process.

The result is not a promise that health care can be made free. It is a serious strategy for making affordable and continuous coverage available to almost everyone while preserving private choice, encouraging work and mobility, protecting household savings, and obtaining better value from public spending.

A Durable Path Forward on American Health Care is for readers who believe the country needs something more ambitious than another temporary subsidy, but more practical, affordable, and politically durable than replacing the entire health-care system with a single federal program.

The Kindle edition costs $5.99. View the book on Amazon.

Most of the revenue from my Kindle publications and paid subscriptions supports economic research and the development of a third-party economic platform.

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A recent Wall Street Journal article should force a reassessment of one of the most celebrated development ideas of the last half century. Microfinance was once presented as capitalism with a conscience: tiny loans to poor entrepreneurs, often women, who were supposedly denied the chance to build businesses only because traditional banks would not serve them. Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank gave the idea moral authority, and foundations, development banks, celebrities, and political leaders turned it into a global cause, culminating in the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Journal’s reporting turns that origin story upside down, suggesting that an idea created to protect poor borrowers from loan sharks sometimes evolved into a more respectable version of the same debt trap.

The dark joke writes itself: What is the difference between microfinance and payday lending? Branding. Payday lenders smell blood in the water; microfinance lenders call it financial inclusion.

That joke is unfair to the best nonprofit lenders and to borrowers who genuinely use small loans productively. But it captures the danger of the industry’s evolution. Once borrower desperation becomes a scalable asset class, development language can become a disguise for debt extraction.

The Journal’s shorter companion piece makes three claims that are strongly supported by the academic and policy literature. First, microfinance has not delivered the broad anti-poverty gains its advocates promised. Second, the industry changed as microfinance became commercialized. Third, the worst outcomes appear where commercialization, weak regulation, competition among lenders, and borrower desperation interact. Those three claims are enough to support a reassessment of one of the most celebrated development ideas of the last half century.

The leading academic correction came in 2015, when the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics published six randomized evaluations of microcredit. The studies differed across countries and institutional settings, but the overall conclusion was sobering. Microcredit produced some modest changes in borrowing and business activity, but it did not transform income, consumption, business profits, or women’s empowerment for the average borrower.

A later meta-analysis by Rachael Meager reached a similar conclusion: the average effects on household business and consumption outcomes were unlikely to be transformative and might be negligible. The evidence does not prove that every microloan is harmful. It does show that microfinance was oversold as a general cure for poverty.

The second problem is that the industry’s incentives changed. What began as a development project increasingly became an investable financial product. For-profit lenders, development-bank capital, securitized microfinance debt, and private investors encouraged scale, portfolio growth, and high repayment rates. The Journal notes that global microfinance loans reached nearly $220 billion in 2025, covering more than 140 million borrowers, while average loan size increased sharply.

The 2007 Compartamos Banco IPO became an early symbol of the shift: a lender serving poor borrowers could generate large investor profits while charging very high interest rates. Muhammad Yunus, one of microfinance’s founders, warned that poor people’s willingness to pay high interest did not justify charging it; he described the Compartamos model as making money from poor people desperate for cash.

That does not mean for-profit firms caused every failure in microfinance. The more precise point is that commercialization magnified a preexisting weakness. Microfinance was always a narrow tool being asked to do too much. It might help some existing entrepreneurs expand a business, and it might help some households bridge short-term cash shortages. But once lenders, investors, and development banks treated loan growth as success, a disappointing anti-poverty tool became a more dangerous one. The metric quietly shifted from borrower welfare to portfolio expansion.

The third problem is the one that turns disappointment into something darker. In Cambodia, India, and other stressed markets, multiple lenders competed for poor borrowers, loans grew larger, repayment pressure intensified, and some households borrowed not to finance profitable investment but to repay old debts, cover medical bills, or survive income shocks. Human-rights groups in Cambodia have linked excessive microfinance debt to coerced land sales, migration, child labor, bonded labor, reduced food consumption, and suicides. Recent reporting on World Bank/IFC watchdog findings reinforces the central concern: lenders and their funders did not adequately protect borrowers from unaffordable debt and coercive repayment pressure.

The evidence therefore points to a two-part verdict. Microfinance was never the miracle its advocates claimed. But it was not necessarily rotten at birth. It became far more dangerous when a narrow financial tool was scaled into a global lending industry and judged by repayment, growth, and investor return rather than by borrower welfare. The problem was not simply lending to the poor. The problem was treating debt as development.

That is the process of enshittification. A useful or at least plausible service is built around a real need. It gains moral legitimacy, political support, and access to capital. Then the metric of success changes: not whether the user or borrower is better off, but whether the platform, lender, or investor can extract more value from the relationship. Microfinance is not the only industry to follow that path, but it is a particularly painful example because the people being monetized were among the least able to absorb the cost.

Further reading

1. Gabriele Steinhauser, The Wall Street Journal, “Hundreds of Billions in Loans Didn’t Make a Dent in Global Poverty.”
https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/poverty-microfinancing-loans-entrepreneurs-de458ee8

2. Abhijit Banerjee, Dean Karlan, and Jonathan Zinman, “Six Randomized Evaluations of Microcredit: Introduction and Further Steps,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2015.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20140287

3. Rachael Meager, “Understanding the Average Impact of Microcredit Expansions: A Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis of Seven Randomized Experiments,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2019.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20170299

4. Human Rights Watch, “Debt Traps: Predatory Microfinance Loans and the Exploitation of Cambodia’s Indigenous Peoples.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/24/cambodia-microfinance-lending-harming-indigenous-groups

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Introduction

Since 2017, federal health policy has alternated between expansions of public assistance and efforts to deregulate insurance markets and restrain federal spending. The first Trump administration reduced the individual-mandate penalty to zero, supported Medicaid work requirements, and expanded the availability of short-term insurance. The Biden administration moved in the other direction by expanding Marketplace Premium Tax Credits, simplifying Medicaid enrollment, and restricting short-term plans. Following the 2024 election, the enhanced Premium Tax Credits expired at the end of 2025, while the 2025 budget reconciliation law imposed new Medicaid eligibility and work-related requirements and expanded Health Savings Account eligibility.^[1]

The result has been instability rather than a durable settlement. KFF estimates that average monthly effectuated Marketplace enrollment could fall from 22.3 million in 2025 to about 17.5 million in 2026 and could be as low as 16.5 million. Average Marketplace deductibles also rose from $2,759 in 2025 to $3,786 in 2026 even though more consumers shifted into less expensive bronze plans. Separately, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Medicaid provisions of the 2025 reconciliation law will increase the number of uninsured people by 7.5 million in 2034. CBO also estimates that permanently restoring the expanded Premium Tax Credits would increase insurance coverage by 3.8 million in 2035. Those estimates use different baselines and years and should not simply be added together, but both indicate that recent policy changes will materially reduce coverage.^[2]

Households that retain insurance increasingly confront a second problem: coverage that does not provide adequate financial protection. High deductibles, coinsurance, prescription costs, and narrow provider networks can leave insured families postponing treatment, accumulating medical debt, or reducing retirement contributions to pay current medical bills.

Progressive lawmakers have often responded by proposing Medicare for All. Current legislation includes a phased transition rather than an immediate overnight conversion, but the economic and administrative challenge would remain extraordinary. Hospitals, physicians, insurers, employers, workers, and households would all face major changes in payment, employment, taxation, and compensation. Concentrating most health-care financing and benefit decisions in a single federal program would also magnify the consequences of changes in national political control. Decisions involving reproductive care, gender-related treatment, medical necessity, and other contested services would become more directly dependent on federal regulation and appropriations.^[3]

The United States therefore needs an alternative to the recurring choice between dismantling the Affordable Care Act and replacing nearly the entire financing system with a single federal program. The objective should be a durable structure that preserves private contracting and individual choice while using public resources where markets perform poorly.

The Path Forward

The proposed framework consists of four mutually reinforcing reforms: catastrophic reinsurance to lower underlying premiums; portable employer contributions toward employee-owned coverage; modernized Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Spending Accounts; and expanded use of Medicaid where public coverage is less expensive and more protective than heavily subsidized private insurance.

The current system suffers from four broad structural problems. First, premiums remain unaffordable for many households, while income-based Premium Tax Credits impose high implicit marginal tax rates as assistance declines. These subsidies help people purchase coverage but do too little to reduce the underlying cost of insurance.

Second, insurers remain exposed to highly concentrated catastrophic claims. This raises premiums and strengthens incentives to avoid high-risk enrollment. It may also contribute to aggressive utilization controls and administrative disputes, although reinsurance alone would not eliminate the need for consumer-protection and claims-review standards.

Third, the tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance still ties most coverage to a particular job. Workers can lose or disrupt their insurance when they change employers, are laid off, retire before Medicare eligibility, or move into self-employment. Small businesses also bear the financial and administrative burden of operating firm-specific group plans.

Fourth, high deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses leave many insured households unable to afford the care their policies technically cover. These costs increase medical debt, discourage necessary treatment, and reduce the liquid savings available for retirement and other long-term needs.

Each of the following reforms can be enacted independently. Their greatest value, however, comes from operating together: reinsurance lowers premiums, portable benefits make individual coverage more practical, modernized savings accounts protect households from unavoidable cost sharing, and Medicaid provides more appropriate coverage for families that cannot realistically absorb private-plan deductibles.

REFORM ONE: Shift Federal Assistance from Back-End Premium Tax Credits to Front-End Reinsurance

Premium Tax Credits have expanded coverage, but they do not directly reduce the underlying claims cost of insurance. Because the subsidy declines as income rises, the current system can also impose substantial implicit marginal tax rates on households that earn additional income. After the expiration of the enhanced credits, eligibility again ends abruptly at 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, recreating a sharp subsidy cliff.

A more efficient strategy would shift part of federal assistance from back-end premium subsidies to front-end catastrophic reinsurance. The federal government would reimburse insurers for a share of exceptionally high annual claims. An illustrative program might reimburse 50 percent of an enrollee’s annual claims above $50,000, subject to an annual cap. The attachment point, reimbursement percentage, cap, and treatment of prescription drugs would require actuarial modeling rather than being fixed by the example in this paper.

State reinsurance programs operating under Affordable Care Act Section 1332 waivers demonstrate the basic mechanism. By paying part of the highest-cost claims, reinsurance reduces the premiums insurers must collect from all enrollees. CMS has found substantial premium reductions across states operating these programs, although results vary with program size, market conditions, and design.^[4]

Reinsurance should also reduce some incentives to avoid high-risk enrollment. It may modestly reduce pressure for unusually aggressive utilization controls and could incentivize reduction in prior authorization and claim disputes.

Because reinsurance lowers benchmark premiums, it also lowers the amount of Premium Tax Credits required to make coverage affordable. That offset is central to the proposal: federal reinsurance is not free, but part of its gross cost would be recovered through lower premium subsidy payments.

The remaining Premium Tax Credits should be redesigned rather than eliminated. One illustrative target would limit household premium contributions to approximately six percent of income, with assistance declining through a smooth quadratic formula rather than through abrupt changes. The revised premium tax credit reduces the abrupt increase in premiums at 400 percent FPL under current law and would allow for elimination of the subsidy cliff because most subsidies will disappear because required household payments rise with income and the subsidy percent is a much lower percent of income.

REFORM TWO: Make Portable, Employee-Owned Coverage the Default Use of Employer Health Contributions

Most workers value employer contributions toward health insurance because those contributions receive favorable tax treatment. The problem is not the employer contribution itself; it is the connection between that contribution and a firm-specific insurance contract.

Federal regulations have permitted Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or ICHRAs, since 2020. ICHRAs allow employers to reimburse workers on a tax-preferred basis for individually purchased insurance. Yet they remain a secondary and administratively constrained alternative rather than the normal structure of employer health benefits.^[5]

Reform should build on the ICHRA framework by placing portable individual coverage on equal footing with traditional group insurance for purposes of the employer mandate, tax exclusions, small-business assistance, and enrollment administration. The employer mandate should be revised—not eliminated—so that large employers remain responsible for helping finance employee coverage, while allowing a qualifying contribution toward an employee-owned Marketplace policy to satisfy the mandate when the resulting coverage meets applicable affordability and minimum-value standards. The long-run objective should be to make a portable contribution toward employee-owned coverage the default use of employer health benefits. A politically feasible transition could preserve traditional group plans as an alternative while the portable market develops sufficient scale.

Under this approach, an employee would choose and own a state Marketplace policy. The employer would make a tax-advantaged contribution toward its cost. The contribution could vary by lawful employee categories and family status, but the rules should be simpler and more standardized than the current ICHRA structure. Small employers would gain a practical alternative to administering a group plan, while larger employers could continue offering traditional coverage when workers prefer it.

Employer contributions and Premium Tax Credits would need to be coordinated through a single affordability formula. Employer payments should reduce the worker’s required contribution, while federal assistance supplements rather than unnecessarily displaces qualifying employer support. The rules must prevent both gaps in assistance and duplicate subsidies.

The application of Reform One, exclusively to state exchange health insurance plans, makes this transition more practical. Reinsurance lowers the baseline cost of individual policies, allowing employer contributions and household payments to purchase more comprehensive coverage. A worker who changes jobs would keep the same policy and simply receive a contribution from a new employer, assuming the worker remains in the same service area.

A layoff would end the employer contribution, but it would not end the insurance policy. Loss of the contribution should trigger an automatic subsidy redetermination based on the worker’s expected annual income, together with temporary continuation assistance while the new Premium Tax Credit is calculated. Congress should also protect workers from unreasonable tax-reconciliation penalties when an unexpected layoff makes annual income difficult to predict.

Past proposals and temporary programs—including federal assistance with COBRA premiums and support connected to trade-adjustment programs—demonstrate that Congress can subsidize transitional coverage during periods of unemployment. Proposals to require large employers to help finance temporary COBRA coverage have also received attention, although debate over such mandates generally follows familiar partisan lines. These approaches are worth preserving as possible emergency tools, but they are not central to this reform. The principal advantage of employee-owned coverage is that a layoff would normally require only an automatic recalculation of the worker’s Premium Tax Credit, not enrollment in a new insurance policy. Reform One would make that response more affordable by lowering the underlying premium that federal assistance must support. During an unusually severe recession, Congress could supplement the recalculated tax credit with temporary premium assistance, but the existing individual policy would remain in place throughout the transition. By reducing coverage interruptions and job lock, portable benefits would allow workers to change jobs, start businesses, or retire early based more on economic opportunity and less on fear of losing insurance.

REFORM THREE: Modernize Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Spending Accounts

The substantial growth of deductibles has shifted more first-dollar medical costs onto households. In 2025, the average single deductible among covered workers with a general annual deductible was $1,886, and the average at firms with 10 to 199 workers was $2,631. In the individual Marketplace, the average deductible reached $3,786 in 2026. Cost exposure of this size can make insured families delay care or ration prescriptions.^[6]

Health Savings Accounts can help households prepare for these expenses, and the 2025 reconciliation law expanded HSA eligibility to bronze and catastrophic plans beginning in 2026. But the tax benefits are most valuable to households that already have enough disposable income to contribute. A deduction alone provides little help to a family that cannot spare the cash.^[7]

The federal government should therefore provide a refundable credit or direct matching contribution for moderate-income households enrolled in private high-deductible coverage. The match should be deposited directly into the HSA and should decline gradually with income. It should be concentrated above the Medicaid eligibility range proposed in Reform Four. For households eligible for comprehensive Medicaid with limited cost sharing, public coverage is generally more sensible than subsidizing a multi-thousand-dollar private deductible.

Flexible Spending Accounts present a different problem. Although employers may permit a limited carryover or grace period, many workers still forfeit unused balances. EBRI found that roughly half of FSA account holders forfeited money in 2023, with an average forfeiture of $436.^[8]

Congress should permit unused FSA balances to carry forward without an artificially low ceiling. As an alternative, balances above a reasonable health-care reserve could be transferred into a specially designated retirement account. Because FSA contributions are made with pre-tax dollars, the transfer rules must prevent a double tax benefit. Congress could treat transferred funds as pre-tax retirement money taxable upon withdrawal, impose an annual transfer limit, and restrict early nonmedical withdrawals.

This approach would end the unnecessary conflict between preparing for medical expenses and building retirement security. Workers would not have to spend balances merely to avoid forfeiture, nor would they need to reduce retirement contributions to maintain a health-care reserve. The objective is not to subsidize unlimited tax sheltering; it is to let households preserve savings that were set aside prudently but not needed immediately.

If policymakers must choose between these two proposals, FSA reform should take priority because high-deductible plans and HSAs are generally a poor vehicle for assisting lower-income households that lack both the disposable income to fund an account and the financial capacity to absorb a large deductible.

REFORM FOUR: Use Medicaid Where It Is Most Efficient While Preserving Private Choice Above Moderate Incomes

Health policy should match the financing mechanism to household resources rather than treating either public or private insurance as an end in itself. For many lower-income adults, Medicaid can provide more comprehensive financial protection at a lower total cost than purchasing private coverage through large Premium Tax Credits.

National research has generally found that private coverage costs more than Medicaid for comparable lower-income adults, although the precise difference varies by population and state. More direct evidence comes from a matched study of Colorado adults immediately above and below the Medicaid eligibility boundary. Mean annual spending was $2,484 for Medicaid enrollees and $4,553 for Marketplace enrollees, while average out-of-pocket costs were $45 and $569, respectively. When Marketplace services were repriced at Medicaid payment rates, the remaining spending difference was not statistically significant. This suggests that Medicaid’s cost advantage arose primarily from lower provider-payment rates rather than substantially lower use of care.

These findings support enhanced federal assistance for states that extend Medicaid eligibility for adults toward 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Families near this income level often lack the liquid assets needed to absorb large Marketplace deductibles and may be forced to borrow, sell assets, delay care, or miss other obligations when medical expenses arise.

A refundable HSA credit large enough to offset multi-thousand-dollar deductibles for millions of lower-income households would require substantial new spending and create another income-based benefit. It would help pay the deductible without addressing the higher underlying prices paid by private insurance. Medicaid instead combines limited cost sharing with lower administered or negotiated prices.

Medicaid nevertheless involves important tradeoffs. Lower provider-payment rates can reduce provider participation and make specialist appointments more difficult in some states or geographic areas. Any expansion should therefore monitor appointment availability, network adequacy, specialty access, and continuity of care. Targeted payment supplements may be necessary for primary care, behavioral health, obstetrics, rural providers, and pediatric specialties.

The federal budget effect would depend on the matching rate assigned to newly eligible beneficiaries. Medicaid may reduce total medical and public spending while reallocating costs between the federal government and the states. Legislative estimates should therefore report total medical spending, combined public spending, federal outlays, state costs, displaced Premium Tax Credits, and beneficiary out-of-pocket savings separately.

Reform One could also protect Medicaid managed-care programs from unusually high claims through a federal high-cost risk pool or reinsurance mechanism. The design would need to complement rather than duplicate existing capitation, risk-adjustment, and state risk-sharing arrangements. Properly structured, it could reduce the cost of rare and catastrophic cases while preserving incentives for effective care management.

Children require separate consideration. One option is to expand CHIP eligibility toward 300 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Another is a pediatric reinsurance program that substantially lowers the private cost of rare diseases, complex disabilities, behavioral health treatment, developmental services, and other high-cost care. The appropriate balance may vary across states. Federal policy could permit states to choose among approved approaches subject to common standards for benefits, affordability, provider access, and continuity of care.[4]

Extending Medicaid toward 200 percent FPL would displace some heavily subsidized private Marketplace enrollment. In this setting, however, crowd-out need not be an economic loss. If Medicaid provides comparable or better financial protection at lower total public cost, shifting some enrollment from private plans to Medicaid can improve economic efficiency. The objective is not to maximize either public or private insurance; it is to use the financing system that provides the best combination of access, protection, and taxpayer value for each population.

Fiscal and Administrative Considerations

The numerical parameters in this paper are illustrative rather than final legislative specifications. The reinsurance attachment point, reimbursement percentage, Premium Tax Credit contribution schedule, Medicaid eligibility threshold, HSA match, pediatric coverage model, and federal Medicaid matching rate all require actuarial, distributional, and budgetary analysis.

Any legislation should separately report gross federal costs; savings from lower Premium Tax Credits; changes in federal and state Medicaid spending; beneficiary premium and out-of-pocket savings; employer effects; and administrative expenses. The reforms should be phased in with periodic evaluation and authority to adjust parameters as actual enrollment, premium, claims, and access data become available.

Several of the reforms could nevertheless be highly cost-effective because their direct costs would be partly offset by savings elsewhere in the health-financing system. General reinsurance would lower Marketplace premiums and therefore reduce the Premium Tax Credits required at every subsidized income level; sufficiently large premium reductions could also make a more limited subsidy eligibility ceiling or phaseout financially and politically sustainable. Pediatric reinsurance would lower the cost of family coverage, reduce related Premium Tax Credits, and lessen the need to move some children into publicly financed CHIP coverage. Portable state-exchange coverage supported by employer contributions would reduce coverage disruptions during job transitions and could limit some of the increase in Medicaid enrollment that ordinarily accompanies recessions. Finally, extending Medicaid to lower-income adults may cost less than providing those same households with especially generous Premium Tax Credits for private plans that pay higher provider prices. These offsets do not eliminate the need for formal budget estimates, but they mean that the gross cost of each reform would substantially overstate its likely net fiscal cost.

The four reforms also require coordination across the tax code, the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, CHIP, ERISA, employer-mandate rules, and state insurance regulation. The framework is modular, but each module needs a complete statutory architecture rather than relying on broad administrative discretion.

Conclusion

The United States does not need to choose between dismantling the Affordable Care Act and replacing nearly the entire health insurance system with Medicare for All. A more durable strategy would preserve what works, correct identifiable market failures, and direct public resources toward the places where they produce the greatest benefit for patients and taxpayers.

The four reforms reinforce one another. Reinsurance lowers the underlying cost of individual coverage and reduces the amount required for Premium Tax Credits. Lower premiums make portable employer contributions more practical. Modernized HSAs and FSAs help moderate-income families manage unavoidable cost sharing without sacrificing retirement security. Medicaid provides a more efficient and protective alternative for households that cannot realistically absorb private-plan deductibles.

Each reform could be enacted independently, but together they offer an alternative to the recurring cycle of partisan expansion and retrenchment. The objective is neither to maximize government insurance nor to preserve private insurance for its own sake. It is to provide affordable and continuous coverage, encourage work and mobility, protect household savings, preserve meaningful choice, and obtain better value from every public dollar.

Health care reform should not require Americans to surrender the coverage they value, remain trapped in jobs they would otherwise leave, or risk financial ruin when illness strikes. A well-designed system can provide security without imposing uniformity, support markets without ignoring their failures, and expand coverage without abandoning fiscal discipline. That is the practical path forward.

Appendix: Notes

Technical Notes for “A Durable Path Forward on American Health Care”

These notes provide additional evidence and explain legal, budgetary, and administrative considerations underlying the four reforms. They supplement the main discussion without interrupting its flow.

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Note 1. Trump Administration Health Policy Changes and Coverage Effects

During the first Trump administration, the 2017 tax legislation reduced the Affordable Care Act’s individual-mandate penalty to zero, the administration approved Medicaid work-requirement demonstrations under Section 1115 waivers, and federal rules expanded the availability of short-term limited-duration insurance. The Biden administration later reversed or limited several of those policies, expanded Premium Tax Credits through the end of 2025, streamlined Medicaid enrollment, and again restricted short-term plans.

Federal policy shifted again after President Trump’s return to office. The enhanced Premium Tax Credits expired after December 31, 2025. Public Law 119-21, signed on July 4, 2025, requires certain Medicaid expansion adults to document work or other qualifying activities, requires eligibility redeterminations every six months, shortens retroactive coverage, imposes cost sharing on some expansion adults, constrains several state Medicaid financing mechanisms, and tightens Marketplace subsidy eligibility, verification, and repayment rules. The law also expands Health Savings Account eligibility by treating bronze and catastrophic Marketplace plans as HSA-compatible beginning in 2026.

Early 2026 data indicate substantial coverage and affordability effects. KFF estimates that average monthly effectuated Marketplace enrollment could decline from 22.3 million in 2025 to approximately 17.5 million in 2026 and could be as low as 16.5 million. Average enrollee premium payments increased from $113 to $178 per month, while average Marketplace deductibles increased from $2,759 to $3,786 as many consumers shifted toward lower-premium, higher-deductible plans. These figures remain preliminary because complete effectuated-enrollment data for 2026 are not yet available.

The Congressional Budget Office separately estimates that the Medicaid provisions of Public Law 119-21 will increase the number of uninsured people by 7.5 million in 2034 relative to its January 2025 baseline. That estimate should not be mechanically added to separate estimates of the effects of the Premium Tax Credit expiration because the estimates use different policy comparisons and may use different projection years.

Sources: KFF, Health Provisions in the 2025 Federal Budget Reconciliation Law; KFF, What We Know So Far About 2026 ACA Marketplace Enrollment, Premiums, and Deductibles; Congressional Budget Office, Supplemental Cost Estimate for Public Law 119-21; Internal Revenue Service, One Big Beautiful Bill Provisions.

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Note 2. ICHRAs and Portable Employer Benefits

Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements have allowed employers to reimburse employees for individual-market insurance on a tax-preferred basis since 2020. The portable-benefit proposal would build on this framework by placing employee-owned coverage on equal footing with traditional group insurance, simplifying employee-class rules, coordinating employer contributions with Premium Tax Credits, and standardizing treatment under the employer mandate and small-business tax rules.

Under current law, an offer of an affordable ICHRA generally affects an employee’s eligibility for Premium Tax Credits. A broader portable-benefit system would therefore require an integrated affordability formula under which employer assistance and federal subsidies complement one another without leaving coverage gaps or providing duplicate benefits.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements Final Rule and Model Notice materials.

Note 3. Deductibles, HSAs, and FSAs

KFF reports that the average 2025 single deductible among workers enrolled in plans with a general annual deductible was $1,886. At firms with 10 to 199 workers, the average was $2,631. Public Law 119-21 broadened HSA eligibility, but broader eligibility alone does not provide the cash needed by households that cannot afford to contribute.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute reports that roughly half of FSA account holders forfeited funds in 2023 and that the average forfeiture was $436. Current law permits, but does not require, an employer to offer a limited carryover or grace period.

Allowing unused FSA balances to move into retirement accounts would require a specific tax rule because FSA contributions were excluded from taxable income when contributed. One possible structure would treat transferred balances as pre-tax retirement funds that are taxable when withdrawn. Other structures could achieve the same objective, provided they prevent both forfeiture and a double tax benefit.

Sources: KFF, 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey; EBRI, Updates from EBRI’s Flexible Spending Account Database; IRS Publication 969; IRS, One Big Beautiful Bill Provisions.

Note 4. Medicaid Cost, Access, Financing, and Pediatric Coverage

Two often-cited 2018 Congressional Budget Office figures provide historical context. CBO estimated average federal Marketplace and Basic Health Program subsidies of $6,300 per subsidized enrollee and average federal Medicaid benefit spending of $4,230 per adult enrollee. Because the figures cover different populations and categories of expenditure, they do not establish a fixed percentage saving from moving a particular enrollee from Marketplace coverage to Medicaid.

More direct evidence comes from a matched Colorado study of adults near the Medicaid eligibility threshold. Average annual spending was $2,484 under Medicaid and $4,553 under Marketplace coverage, while average out-of-pocket spending was $45 and $569, respectively. When the researchers repriced, services using Medicaid payment rates, the statistically significant total-cost difference disappeared, indicating that lower provider prices explained much of Medicaid’s cost advantage. Earlier national studies estimated that private coverage would cost approximately 18 to 26 percent more for comparable low-income adults. The evidence therefore supports a Medicaid cost advantage, but not a single national savings percentage applicable in every state or population.

Lower Medicaid spending partly reflects lower payments to hospitals, physicians, and other providers. These payment levels can affect physician participation, specialist access, and appointment availability, although the magnitude varies across states and services. Any expansion above the current Affordable Care Act eligibility threshold should include network-adequacy standards, reporting on appointment wait times, and authority for targeted payment supplements where access is inadequate, particularly in behavioral health, obstetrics, rural care, primary care, and pediatric specialties.

The budgetary effects of expansion would depend heavily on the federal matching rate. A complete estimate should separately report total medical spending, federal outlays, state outlays, displaced Premium Tax Credits, beneficiary premiums and cost sharing, and administrative expenses. Medicaid may reduce total medical spending while shifting costs differently between the federal government and the states.

For children above current Medicaid eligibility limits, policymakers could use broader CHIP eligibility, pediatric reinsurance, or a combination of the two. The most efficient approach may vary by state because Marketplace premiums, CHIP thresholds, provider networks, and family cost-sharing rules differ. Any approved model should cover essential pediatric services and protect continuity of care for children with complex medical, developmental, behavioral, or disability-related needs.

Sources: JAMA Network Open, Comparison of Utilization, Costs, and Quality of Medicaid vs. Subsidized Private Health Insurance for Low-Income Adults; KFF, Medicaid Spending Growth Compared to Other Payers; Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Is It Still Less Expensive to Serve Low-Income People in Medicaid Than Private Coverage?; Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, Provider Payment and Delivery Systems; MACPAC, Evaluating the Effects of Medicaid Payment Changes on Access to Physician Services.

Selected Sources

1. KFF: Health Provisions in the 2025 Federal Budget Reconciliation Law

2. KFF: What We Know So Far About 2026 ACA Marketplace Enrollment, Premiums, and Deductibles

3. Congressional Budget Office: Supplemental Cost Estimate for Public Law 119-21 Medicaid Provisions

4. IRS: One Big Beautiful Bill Provisions

5. U.S. Department of Labor: Individual Coverage HRA Final Rule

6. CMS Data Brief on State-Based Reinsurance Programs

7. KFF: 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey

8. EBRI: Updates From EBRI’s Flexible Spending Account Database

9. IRS Publication 969: Health Savings Accounts and Other Tax-Favored Health Plans

10. JAMA Network Open: Medicaid vs. Subsidized Marketplace Coverage for Low-Income Adults

11. KFF: Medicaid Spending Growth Compared to Other Payers

12. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Urban Institute: Medicaid Compared with Marketplace Coverage

13. MACPAC: Provider Payment and Delivery Systems

14. MACPAC: Evaluating Medicaid Payment Changes and Access to Physician Services

The line between medical care and social development has blurred. Historically, health insurance excluded non-medical behavioral therapies, leaving them to schools and families. Today, state and federal mandates require commercial plans and Medicaid to cover long-term behavioral interventions like Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). While these mandates have largely survived broader federal budget cuts to Medicaid and private insurance, they significantly increase health insurance premiums. Transitioning to a new federal program that pays for developmental and autism treatments outside the traditional health insurance infrastructure would modestly decrease premiums and reduce the overall number of uninsured Americans.

The growth in insurance mandates for developmental services has triggered substantive fiscal strain. A prominent Wall Street Journal investigation, “The Boom in Autism Therapy Is Medicaid’s Largest Jackpot,” revealed that Indiana’s Medicaid program paid a single provider $29 million in one year to treat just 84 children—roughly $340,000 per child. This far exceeds the annual cost of treating a lung cancer patient. Similarly, federal audits found that Colorado spent more Medicaid funds on pediatric autism therapy than on emergency room care for all patients combined, documenting widespread billing for napping, eating, and playing video games.

The push for mandatory coverage began in the mid-2000s, driven by rising autism diagnoses and aggressive lobbying by advocacy groups like Autism Speaks. Between 2007 and 2019, these campaigns successfully established insurance mandates across all 50 states, applying heavily to employer-based and state exchange insurance. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) further reinforced these requirements by classifying autism treatment as an Essential Health Benefit (EHB) in many states.

In contrast, most large corporate employer-based plans are “self-insured”—covering roughly 57% to 60% of all insured American workers. Under these arrangements, the company pays medical claims directly out of its own pocket, utilizing a standard commercial carrier only for administrative services. Under federal law, these plans are governed strictly by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which entirely exempts them from state-level insurance mandates.

Driven in part by federal mental health parity compliance and the safety net of stop-loss reinsurance, a growing number of large enterprises still choose to offer these benefits voluntarily. Historical data from Autism Speaks notes that roughly 45% of companies with 500 or more employees explicitly opt to include ABA or intensive behavioral therapies within their self-funded plan designs.

However, because an intensive, 40-hour-a-week ABA regimen introduces significant financial volatility, most mid-to-large, self-insured employers do not take on this risk entirely exposed. Instead, they purchase stop-loss insurance (a form of private reinsurance) to transfer liability to a secondary carrier once an individual child’s annual therapy claims clear a specific “attachment point” or deductible—which typically ranges from $70,000 to over $300,000 depending on firm size.

Politically, autism mandates have proven to be exceptionally resilient, creating a sharp paradox within conservative healthcare policy. For example, the Trump administration issued sweeping regulations modifying the ACA’s EHB framework via the 2019 Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters. This rule granted states unprecedented flexibility to choose new benchmark plans or swap out entire benefit categories to lower costs. Yet, notably, this regulatory mechanism was never applied to this specific clinical group.

Similarly, the administration’s sweeping Medicaid overhauls—anchored by aggressive fiscal tightening, state budget caps, and strict work requirements—deliberately avoided targeting autism benefits. Despite pushing for massive Medicaid spending reductions, federal reforms left the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT) mandate completely intact.

Because EPSDT legally compels states to provide any “medically necessary” treatment to low-income children under 21, pediatric ABA therapy survived federal budget battles entirely unscathed. While states under pressure from fiscal caps may scale back optional adult dental or vision benefits, the statutory framework protecting pediatric behavioral health remains virtually impossible to roll back without triggering insurmountable legal risks.

Because intensive behavioral therapies frequently require up to 40 hours a week per child, they create an expensive, continuous drain on standard commercial insurance pools. Small businesses purchasing group coverage and individuals buying policies on state exchanges end up subsidizing these long-term developmental services through higher monthly premiums.

Extracting these developmental services from the standard commercial insurance framework entirely—and transitioning them to an independent, standalone federal program—would correct these distorted insurance mechanics. Rather than dropping or eliminating access to autism services, a structural pivot to a dedicated Federal Developmental Assistance Program would isolate the costs of long-term behavioral therapy from basic medical insurance pools.

A well-designed program could preserve access while vastly improving the financing and oversight of autism and developmental services. The framework would require:

• Clear eligibility standards and a precise division between developmental services and ordinary medical care.

• Strict coordination rules with Medicaid, EPSDT, state insurance mandates, and school-based services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

• National requirements for provider qualifications, standardized treatment plans, independent medical-necessity reviews, periodic recertification, and strict auditing to prevent fraud.

The enacting legislation would also need to determine whether the federal program serves as the primary payer or reimburses states, require insurers to legally reflect transferred claims costs in lower consumer premiums, and identify a sustainable financing mechanism that accounts for offsetting reductions in Medicaid spending and ACA premium subsidies. With these protections, the reform could broaden the financing base, strengthen program integrity, and modestly reduce commercial insurance premiums without withdrawing needed assistance from families.

This policy shift would immediately drop commercial premiums. For a typical 40-year-old couple with two children purchasing an unsubsidized silver plan on a state exchange (costing roughly $1,800 a month), a modest 1% to 3% rate reduction would save that household $18 to $55 a month, translating to $216 to $660 in annual savings.

From a macroeconomic perspective, establishing a separate federal developmental program would reallocate public capital without drastically altering total national healthcare spending as a share of GDP. While a new federal program represents a new spending line item, it would yield a non-trivial decrease in private health insurance premiums and federal premium subsidies. While not a complete transformation of American medicine, the resulting premium drop would modestly reduce the number of uninsured Americans, moving national healthcare policy in a more sustainable direction.

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Introduction

The Affordable Care Act has substantially reduced the number of uninsured Americans, but its reliance on income-based premium subsidies creates three persistent challenges. Premiums remain unaffordable for many middle-income households, implicit marginal tax rates discourage additional work and income, and federal health care assistance increasingly relies on back-end tax credits -- a design that fails to tackle the root causes of high insurance costs.

Previous research on this blog and at SSRN has shown that the interaction of multiple Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)-based taxes and benefit programs can create de facto marginal tax rates that substantially exceed statutory income tax rates. (An improved and updated version of the SSRN paper is under review and will be available shortly.) The Affordable Care Act premium subsidy structure is one important contributor to these distortions, particularly for households whose eligibility for assistance changes rapidly as income increases.

This paper proposes shifting a portion of federal support from back-end premium tax credits to front-end catastrophic reinsurance while replacing the existing subsidy schedule with a smooth quadratic contribution formula. The objective is not necessarily to reduce government spending, but to allocate public resources in a manner that improves affordability, reduces labor-market distortions, and creates a more stable and transparent health insurance market.

The Proposal

The proposal supplements the existing Affordable Care Act framework with two complementary policy instruments: publicly financed catastrophic reinsurance and a continuous household premium contribution schedule. Rather than relying primarily on premium tax credits to make coverage affordable, the proposal seeks to reduce the underlying cost of insurance while allowing household premium obligations to increase gradually with income.

The first component is an upstream reinsurance program under which the federal government would reimburse 50 percent of commercial insurance claims exceeding $50,000. Rather than requiring insurers to price the full cost of catastrophic medical events into every policy, a portion of these low-frequency, high-cost risks would be shared across taxpayers. The expected result is a structural reduction in retail insurance premiums for all marketplace participants.

The second component replaces the existing stepwise subsidy schedule with a continuous household contribution formula. Household premium responsibility would increase gradually with income, beginning at a low contribution rate for lower-income households and rising smoothly as income increases. Because public reinsurance reduces the underlying benchmark premium, the premium tax credit would often phase out naturally once the household’s calculated contribution equals the reduced market premium. At that point, no additional subsidy would be needed. The proposal therefore does not require an arbitrary subsidy cliff at 400 percent or 600 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Instead, assistance would decline continuously and disappear only when the household contribution formula exceeds the reinsurance-reduced premium.

For many households, this framework is more generous than the baseline Affordable Care Act subsidy structure. That outcome is intentional rather than accidental. The current system limits explicit government expenditures but often does so by exposing middle-income households to rapidly rising premiums and large effective tax rates on additional income. The proposed framework instead allocates a greater share of public resources toward lowering underlying insurance costs and providing a smoother transition from subsidized to unsubsidized coverage.

The proposal therefore should not be evaluated solely by comparing federal expenditures with current law. Public resources are finite. Additional spending on health care ultimately requires either higher taxes, reductions in other government programs, or higher budget deficits. This proposal does not claim otherwise. Instead, it argues that improving the efficiency and affordability of health insurance should rank among the highest priorities for public investment because health care affects labor-market participation, household financial stability, entrepreneurship, and economic mobility. The relevant policy question is therefore not whether public resources are scarce, but whether allocating additional resources to a more efficient health insurance system generates greater social benefits than available alternatives.

Whether this approach justifies somewhat higher public expenditures is ultimately a policy judgment. The central hypothesis of this paper is that a system built on lower retail premiums and gradual subsidy withdrawal will produce superior economic outcomes by expanding insurance affordability, reducing labor-market distortions, improving household financial stability, and creating a more predictable insurance marketplace.

Illustrative Example

The interaction between catastrophic reinsurance and a continuous contribution schedule is best illustrated through a representative marketplace participant. The example below is intended to demonstrate the mechanics of the proposal rather than provide a comprehensive simulation of all household types.

Consider a 45-year-old single individual purchasing the benchmark silver plan in the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Under the baseline system, the benchmark premium is assumed to be approximately $551 per month. At 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), the household pays approximately $427 per month while the federal government provides a premium tax credit of approximately $124 per month. A modest increase in income beyond the statutory threshold causes the subsidy to disappear immediately, increasing the household premium from $427 to $551 per month—an annualized increase of approximately $1,488 resulting from only a minimal increase in earnings.

Under the proposed framework, publicly financed catastrophic reinsurance reduces the benchmark premium to approximately $358 per month. At 400 percent FPL, the household contribution is approximately $283 per month, and the remaining federal subsidy is approximately $75 per month. Unlike the current system, however, that subsidy does not disappear at 400 percent FPL. Instead, as income rises, the required household contribution increases gradually while the subsidy correspondingly declines.

Eventually the required household contribution equals the compressed retail premium of $358 per month, at which point the subsidy naturally phases out to zero.

A second example illustrates the marginal tax-rate effect more directly. Suppose the same individual receives a $10,000 raise after reaching 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Under the baseline system, the raise causes the remaining premium tax credit to disappear. Monthly premiums rise from approximately $427 to $551, an increase of $124 per month, or $1,488 per year. The loss of premium assistance therefore absorbs nearly 15 percent of the raise before considering income taxes, payroll taxes, or other income-tested benefits.

Under the proposed framework, the same raise has a smaller and smoother effect. Because public reinsurance has already reduced the benchmark premium to approximately $358 per month, the maximum additional premium exposure is limited. The household’s monthly premium rises from approximately $283 to $358, an increase of $75 per month, or $900 per year. The effective marginal burden from premium changes alone is therefore approximately 9 percent of the raise rather than nearly 15 percent.

This comparison shows why the structure of the subsidy matters. The proposal does not eliminate income-related premium increases, but it reduces their size and prevents a household from facing a large discontinuous loss of assistance after a modest increase in earnings.

The proposal therefore does not eliminate subsidy phase-outs; rather, it changes both their size and their shape. Public reinsurance substantially reduces the amount that must be subsidized, while the continuous contribution formula replaces an abrupt statutory cliff with a gradual reduction in assistance over a limited income range.

This interaction between the two components is central to the proposal. Reinsurance lowers the underlying cost of insurance for all marketplace participants, reducing reliance on premium tax credits. The continuous contribution schedule then allows the remaining subsidy to taper smoothly as household income rises, substantially reducing the de facto marginal tax rates created by the current system without requiring a simple across-the-board expansion of premium subsidies.

Although this example focuses on a single individual, the same economic principles apply more broadly. Premium reductions and subsidy phase-outs will vary with age, household composition, and benchmark premiums, but the underlying design remains the same: catastrophic medical risk is addressed through public reinsurance, while affordability is addressed through a continuous income-based contribution schedule rather than abrupt eligibility thresholds.

Discussion

The combination of public catastrophic reinsurance and a continuous premium contribution schedule create three principal benefits: improved affordability, lower de facto marginal tax rates, and reduced distortions in insurer behavior arising from low-frequency, high-cost medical claims..

Improved Affordability

The proposal improves affordability through a mechanism that differs from a conventional expansion of premium tax credits. Public reinsurance reduces the underlying retail cost of marketplace coverage before income-based subsidies are calculated, allowing many households to benefit from lower premiums regardless of their subsidy eligibility. Middle-income households that currently face rapidly increasing premiums may therefore experience meaningful reductions in out-of-pocket costs while maintaining a stronger connection between premium obligations and ability to pay.

Reduced De Facto Marginal Tax Rates

The Affordable Care Act subsidy structure illustrates a broader public finance problem in which multiple AGI-linked taxes and benefit programs interact to create de facto marginal tax rates substantially above statutory income tax rates. Abrupt subsidy withdrawal can discourage additional work, career advancement, entrepreneurship, and self-employment by imposing large financial penalties on relatively small increases in earnings.

The proposed contribution schedule addresses these distortions by replacing abrupt eligibility thresholds with a continuous phase-out of assistance. Rather than facing a sudden increase in premium obligations, households experience a gradual and predictable increase that more closely reflects their economic capacity. The resulting reduction in de facto marginal tax rates may improve labor-market efficiency while reducing the financial uncertainty associated with income-tested benefits.

Reduced distortions in Insurer Behavior

Public reinsurance addresses distortions in insurer behavior caused by the insurance firms desire to avoid or mitigate the impact of low-frequency, high-cost medical events. The reinsurance subsidy reduces the incentive for insurers to design policies that discourage enrollment by people with chronic health conditions, reduce the incentive for insurers to deny claims and reduce the need for strict time consuming and costly prior authorization procedures. In fact, some of the claim denial and prior authorization procedural decisions might be handled by standards created by economists and doctors hired by the reinsurance agency instead of the private health insurance company.

Conclusions and Limitations

The examples presented in this paper are illustrative rather than comprehensive and are intended to demonstrate the mechanics of the proposed framework rather than estimate its aggregate fiscal effects. The assumed reduction in retail premiums depends on the design and effectiveness of the reinsurance program and would require empirical validation through actuarial modeling and microsimulation.

The examples in this paper use one continuous contribution schedule to illustrate the proposed framework rather than to prescribe a unique mathematical solution. Alternative functional forms could achieve many of the same objectives while preserving the central principle of smooth subsidy phase-outs and lower de facto marginal tax rates. Future research should examine aggregate budgetary effects, insurance market participation, labor supply responses, and interactions with other AGI-linked federal benefit programs.

Public reinsurance lowers the underlying cost of insurance, reducing the amount that must be financed through premium tax credits, while a continuous contribution schedule allows the remaining subsidy to phase out gradually rather than disappear at an arbitrary statutory threshold. The combination of these two complementary policy instruments seeks to improve affordability, reduce de facto marginal tax rates, strengthen labor-market incentives, and create a more coherent system of health insurance support. Whether these benefits justify somewhat higher public expenditures is ultimately a policy judgment, but the proposal demonstrates that alternative subsidy designs may achieve superior economic outcomes without relying exclusively on ever-larger premium tax credits.

Author’s Note: This paper is part of a broader research agenda on reducing economic distortions created by AGI-linked taxes and benefit programs including the paper A Third-Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Health Care. Planned projects include pediatric reinsurance, alternative methods for smoothing income-based subsidies and loan repayments, and detailed estimates of the fiscal costs and economic effects of these proposals. Paid subscriptions directly support the purchase of data, statistical software, computational tools, and the time required to produce independent policy research.

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The United States has rapidly become the world’s largest market for digital infrastructure, hosting more than 5,400 operational data centers and roughly 1,500 additional projects in various stages of planning or construction. Driven by explosive growth in artificial intelligence and cloud computing, these facilities have become one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the country. Their rapid expansion is reshaping regional electricity markets, water systems, and state economic-development strategies.

Unlike most industries, data centers are remarkably mobile. They require abundant electricity, reliable fiber connections, land, and cooling capacity, but they do not need to be located near customers. As a result, geography matters. The social cost of building a hyperscale AI campus varies dramatically depending on local electricity capacity, water availability, environmental conditions, and public infrastructure.

This geographical sorting, however, is heavily distorted by a ubiquitous patchwork of state-level corporate incentives. Data center development is no longer isolated to traditional tech hubs; instead, state governments have engaged in an aggressive, nationwide bidding war. According to data tracked by the economic development watchdog Good Jobs First, at least 32 states have enacted statutory tax exemptions specifically engineered to attract the data center industry. These programs primarily waive sales and use taxes on high-value server equipment, cooling infrastructure, and the massive quantities of electricity these facilities consume.

Because these tax abatements are frequently uncapped and can span decades, the fiscal strain on state budgets has become massive. Disclosed annual revenue losses have reached $1 billion in Texas, $1.02 billion in Virginia, and an estimated $2.5 billion in Georgia. Compounding the issue, a recent 2026 Good Jobs First study revealed that 14 states completely fail to disclose their revenue losses under the guise of taxpayer confidentiality. This baseline policy approach treats data centers as traditional economic development engines, ignoring the structural reality that they generate very few permanent local jobs relative to the immense, multi-decade resource burdens they shift onto local communities.

The current pattern of development reflects these combined tradeoffs of physical limits and aggressive fiscal courtship. Northern Virginia remains the historical center of global internet traffic but is increasingly constrained by transmission congestion and local opposition. Ohio has aggressively pursued data center investment through lucrative tax incentives and infrastructure support. Tennessee benefits from the extensive generating capacity of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Texas offers abundant land, a completely decoupled utility grid, and one of the nation’s largest electric systems.

The most controversial expansion, however, is occurring in the arid West. Arizona and Utah have emerged as major destinations for hyperscale AI infrastructure because they offer inexpensive land, business-friendly regulatory environments, and access to growing western technology markets. Yet both states also face chronic water scarcity, increasing electricity demand, and long-term environmental challenges. Their experience raises a broader policy question: should governments encourage resource-intensive industries in regions where the underlying resources are already scarce?

The economic benefits of data center growth are uneven. Construction creates substantial short-term employment for electricians, engineers, construction workers, and specialized contractors. Once completed, the facilities become highly automated, capital-intensive operations requiring relatively few permanent employees. The strongest economic case exists when projects generate lasting improvements in infrastructure, tax revenue, or complementary business activity rather than simply large construction expenditures.

The principal costs of new data centers involve the use of electricity and water and additional pollution or traditional external costs associated with any industrial project.

Data centers place enormous new demands on electric grids. If utilities must build additional generation, transmission lines, or substations, the central policy question becomes who pays. Residential customers should not subsidize infrastructure constructed primarily to serve private hyperscale facilities.

Water presents an equally important challenge. In humid regions electricity may be the binding constraint. In the arid West, however, water scarcity may be even more significant. Facilities using evaporative cooling consume substantial quantities of water throughout their operating lives because server heat generation is continuous. Switching to dry cooling reduces direct water consumption but substantially increases electricity demand, shifting rather than eliminating environmental costs.

Local political and water authorities often eager to attract investment fail to protect local consumers. The lopsided nature of this development is laid bare: for example, a Blackstone-owned data center in Fayetteville, Georgia, consumed nearly 30 million gallons of unmetered water through unauthorized hookups during a severe drought without having to pay fines.

Data centers also generate localized externalities through diesel backup generators, cooling equipment noise, wastewater management, and construction impacts. These costs are real even when they are not reflected in market prices.

The appropriate response is neither a blanket ban nor an unconditional subsidy.

Instead, states should require data centers to internalize the full cost of the resources they consume.

Utilities should establish separate large-load rate classes so ordinary households are not forced to finance grid expansions serving hyperscale facilities.

Water-stressed regions should require water budgets, recycled or non-potable water where feasible, drought contingency plans, and pricing structures that reflect the true marginal cost of scarce supplies.

Pollution should be addressed through Pigouvian taxes, emissions standards, generator restrictions not subsidization of a private industry. In reality, state and local governments compete and provide tax abatements, infrastructure commitments, utility concessions, and favorable zoning decisions to attract jobs.

The political economy of data center development increasingly resembles the economics of publicly subsidized sports stadiums. The sports stadium literature provides a useful warning. Decades of research conclude that promised economic gains often fail to materialize while taxpayers absorb substantial long-term costs. AI infrastructure is unquestionably more productive than a football stadium, but the underlying lesson remains valid: visible capital investment does not guarantee positive social returns.

Utah and Arizona illustrate the central challenge of AI infrastructure policy.

Both states have become attractive locations for hyperscale developments because of available land and favorable business climates. Both also face chronic water scarcity, increasing electricity demand, and long-term environmental pressures.

Utah is particularly instructive. This scarcity is acute in the west where the seven Southwest basin states have blown past multiple federal deadlines to negotiate usage cuts as a catastrophic 2026 snow drought has pushed Lake Powell and Lake Mead to record-low inflows, prompting unprecedented federal management intervention to stabilize the collapsing river system.

The sheer absurdity of building hyper-scale computing in this fragile arid zone is underscored by Kevin O’Leary’s recent high-profile retreat, where intense public backlash and state pressure forced him to slash his proposed 40,000-acre Utah data center plan in half—vividly proving that the region simply cannot hydrologically or politically sustain the unmitigated footprint of AI.

Unlike many industrial facilities, hyperscale AI campuses generate continuous cooling requirements for decades. Water consumption is therefore not a temporary construction issue, but an ongoing operating requirement directly tied to electricity consumption and server heat generation.

The broader lesson is national rather than regional. AI infrastructure should be located where resource constraints are smallest rather than where subsidies are largest. Regions with abundant water supplies, excess generating capacity, existing transmission infrastructure, or access to hydroelectric or nuclear power can provide the same computing services at substantially lower social cost.

The unmitigated expansion of digital infrastructure has become one of the defining issues of the 2026 political cycle at the local, state and national level. The WSJ has identified 150 digital infrastructure projects that were halted in the last year alone.

In New Albany and Hebron, Ohio, a wave of emergency municipal bans on new data center footprints forced the state legislature to abruptly suspend long-standing corporate sales tax exemptions for the industry while launching an urgent grid-impact study.

City councils in Baltimore, Maryland, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, unanimously passed emergency moratoria halting all new applications, rezoning, and building permits to shield over-allocated municipal water supplies.

In Port Washington, Wisconsin, citizens took the resistance a step further, enacting a first-in-the-nation municipal referendum mandating that any future large-scale data center project seeking public tax incentives must first secure a majority vote from local residents on the ballot.

Over a dozen states—including New York (S.B. 9144) and Pennsylvania (H.B. 2533)—have introduced bills to enforce multi-year, statewide freezes on hyperscale development pending comprehensive environmental and grid-resiliency reviews.

In Maine, shortly after vetoing a bill imposing a moratorium on the construction of data centers Governor Janet Millsdropped out of the race for the Democrat nomination for the U.S. Senate.

A moratorium is a blunt, non-market instrument. Rather than pricing a scarce resource (like water or power), it drops the supply curve to zero by fiat. While it temporarily shields an over-allocated grid or aquifer, it creates a massive deadweight loss (lost economic efficiency) because it treats all digital infrastructure equally—whether a facility uses highly efficient, closed-loop water recycling or an outdated, resource-heavy cooling plant.

Economists generally prefer pricing externalities through a cap-and-trade system or targeted resource tariffs (e.g., charging exponential premiums for peak-hour megawatts). This forces the industry to innovate its way out of the bottleneck rather than halting development entirely. However, for local town councils facing immediate resource depletion, a moratorium acts as an emergency circuit breaker when they cannot afford to wait for a multi-year tax structure to phase in.

Opposition to data centers at the federal level is centered on a national moratorium on all facilities over 20 megawatts in a proposal offered by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Senator Sanders is also proposing a sovereign wealth fund which would own 50 percent of all AI firms over $100 million dollars. This would create an incentive for the federal government to drastically expand AI.

This escalating political debate over AI data centers increasingly mirrors the gridlock of the American health care debate. On one side, a laissez-faire faction argues for giving the private sector unbridled power, claiming that any regulatory friction will stifle innovation and cede technological dominance to global rivals. On the other side, populist critics offer performative resistance tailored for their political base rather than serious policy solutions, proposing sweeping bans and moratoria that would effectively cripple a vital, nascent industry. This polarization leaves a massive vacuum where pragmatic governance should be—trapped between a corporate blank check and an outright technological freeze.

Artificial intelligence infrastructure may well become as vital to the twenty-first-century economy as railroads, interstate highways, and telecommunications networks were to earlier generations. However, economic importance is not a license to transfer massive structural costs onto households, localized utility ratepayers, or future generations. The era of unfettered state-level competition to attract hyperscale data centers through blank-check fiscal sacrifices is rapidly ending, fractured by both hard physical resource limits and an aggressive legislative backlash. The geographic sorting of digital infrastructure is no longer dictated purely by a state’s willingness to forfeit its tax base; it is running directly into the physical boundaries of local energy grids, depleting municipal water supplies, and triggering severe political liabilities at every level of government.

Ultimately, the core objective of modern public policy should not be to maximize the raw number of data centers crammed within a state’s borders, but rather to minimize the total social cost of providing the computing infrastructure the nation requires. Achieving this outcome requires adhering to a straightforward economic rule: data centers must pay the full, unsubsidized marginal cost of the electricity, water, pollution, and public infrastructure they consume. This result will lead developers to search for the location where costs are the smallest.

Authors Note: Did you find this post informative? You will probably also enjoy A Tale of Three Energy Sectors and Trump and Biden on Wind and LNG.

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The foundational question of modern political economy is straightforward: Why is a new political party even necessary?

It is necessary because the two existing parties have fundamentally abandoned the core duty of governance: choosing how to responsibly allocate the nation’s finite resources. Instead, they operate on a shared delusion. One concentrates on massive, unaffordable tax cuts; the other pushes for unlimited, unchecked spending. Both act as if the bill will never come due.

This third party exists because we recognize a hard truth that neither major party will admit: resources are limited, money is completely fungible, and to govern is to prioritize. We make decisions based on what best serves both the current generation and the next.

To understand why this platform is different from all other platforms, we must answer the four questions that the establishment parties refuse to touch.

1. On the Decision to Avoid the Long-Term Entitlement Time Bomb

On all other platforms, parties ignore the compounding math of our major entitlement programs, pretending they can be sustained without structural change. Why on this platform do we face the time bomb directly?

Because the major parties are playing chicken with our future, waiting to see who blinks first while the clock runs down. The tragedy is that these systemic problems could have—and should have—been fixed far less expensively ten years ago. Because of a decade of political cowardice, the fixes required today will be harder and more painful. We refuse to participate in this generational betrayal. We choose to address the structural design of these programs now, before a sudden, unmanaged fiscal crisis forces catastrophic cuts on those who rely on them most.

Now, the math is unyielding. Congressional scorekeepers project that the Social Security retirement trust fund will be exhausted by 2032. If we allow the establishment parties to drift into that insolvency cliff, current law mandates an immediate, unmanaged 24% to 28% across-the-board benefit cut. -- slashing about $500 a month from the typical retiree’s check.

To avert that crash at the final hour would require a sudden, crushing 31% tax increase or immediate, sweeping benefit reductions. We choose to address the structural architecture of these trust funds now, replacing panic-driven brinkmanship with deliberate, pro-savings reform before an unmanaged fiscal crisis breaks our promises to those who rely on them most.

2. On the Scarcity of Resources and Fungibility of Money

On all other platforms, parties treat public funds as isolated pots of infinite monopoly money. Why on this platform do we treat resources as strictly limited and fungible?

Money is completely fungible; a dollar spent chasing a political trend is a dollar taken directly from a core human need. Look at the shifting political landscape: the major parties eagerly authorize massive, convoluted outlays—like spending billions on electric vehicle (EV) tax subsidies that disproportionately benefited high-income earners, only to see those subsidies restricted, lapsed, and ultimately abolished under shifting administrations. Meanwhile, vital, baseline safety nets are left to twist in the wind. They passed temporary expansions for healthcare premium tax credits and allowed critical nutrition programs for the hungry to face abrupt sunsets, treating human survival as a disposable political bargaining chip while locking in unstable corporate incentives.

We must explicitly ask: Could the core environmental and economic goals of the multi-trillion-dollar Build Back Better and Infrastructure initiatives have been accomplished far more effectively by simpler tax changes that directly alter relative prices, rather than launching massive, bureaucratic spending initiatives?

The answer is a definitive yes. Instead of spending billions to pick corporate winners—such as direct grants to build specific EV charging stations or complex tax credits for select manufacturers—we favor efficient, neutral market mechanisms. Implementing targeted user fees on infrastructure use or a uniform, transparent carbon fee relies on the market to efficiently adjust relative prices across the entire economy.

We can go even further: by pairing a corrective tax on carbon-intensive energy with a direct subsidy or tax credit for a vital household necessity—such as permanent healthcare coverage or early childhood education—we can leave both the government and household balance sheets completely untouched. The government’s ledger remains neutral because the revenue raised is designed to offset the new benefit. The average family’s balance sheet remains stable because the increased cost of energy is directly neutralized by the reduced cost of a core necessity. Yet, because relative prices have shifted, the market is powerfully incentivized to innovate, allowing private capital to find the most efficient path toward a cleaner economy without draining a single dollar from the American household.

3. On Balancing Fiscal Responsibility with Household Financial Strength

On all other platforms, parties force a false choice—either obsessing over the federal ledger while ignoring the family checkbook or passing short-term handouts that worsen the national debt. Why on this platform do we treat fiscal stability and household balance sheets as inseparable?

Because you cannot fix a macro-economic problem with a micro-economic crisis. This mirrors the famous 1992 Democratic primary debate between Tom Harkin, Paul Tsongas, and Bill Clinton. Harkin prioritized combating inequality, Tsongas focused strictly on the debt, and Clinton won by recognizing that a viable economic strategy had to deal with both.

Today, the establishment parties offer competing disasters for household stability. The progressive left relies on short-term, legally fragile handouts like blanket loan discharges or the SAVE program. Meanwhile, the populist right counters with draconian repayment overhauls that eliminate inflation-adjusted poverty protections and stretch loan terms to a punishing 30 years, trapping families in debt for decades.

Worse, neither party understands how their fractured agendas collide. The populist right routinely targets the safety net with blunt instruments, pushing for deep Medicaid retrenchments and stripping away ACA premium tax credits in a way that leaves millions of vulnerable Americans completely without health insurance. Meanwhile, by blindly stacking temporary ACA premium tax credits on top of income-driven student loan repayment formulas, the left has constructed a devastating, de facto marginal tax rate on the middle class. As a young family works harder to earn an extra dollar, that dollar is simultaneously clawed back by phased-out healthcare subsidies and higher mandatory loan payments.

The math is unforgiving: it is mathematically impossible to defuse our largest fiscal time bombs—the Social Security and Medicare trust funds—without policies that actively allow households to build equity. If families are squeezed by draconian repayment formulas, left uninsured by reckless safety net cuts, or trapped by a stealth tax system that punishes upward mobility, they cannot save. Increased private saving is a mathematical prerequisite for any successful, long-term entitlement reform. By stabilizing baseline costs and eliminating these punitive, overlapping cliffs, we enable the private capital accumulation necessary to secure both the household’s future and the nation’s ledger.

4. On Ideological Purity and Partisan Pandering

On all other platforms, parties shape their proposals to satisfy the dogmas of their extreme bases, ignoring both economic science and practical reality. Why on this platform do we prioritize empirical evidence over political posturing?

Because a complex, modern society cannot be responsibly governed by bumper-sticker slogans. The two major parties have abandoned evidence-based policymaking, preferring instead to perform ideological theater for their primary voters while leaving real-world consequences to sort themselves out.

Look at the progressive left’s demands for “Medicare for All.” Their preferred architecture would completely outlaw private health insurance overnight with zero transition plan. It ignores the reality of an advanced, highly integrated healthcare system that cannot simply be dismantled by fiat—especially when successful universal systems across Europe routinely integrate private insurance to maintain capacity and choice. Rather than doing the hard work of building a continuous, stable healthcare safety net, they demand an all-or-nothing ideological purity test. Simultaneously, to appease activists, they pander on complex foreign policy crises like the conflict in Gaza, taking performative rhetorical stances that ignore the ground-level security threats facing Israel and undermine stable, long-term diplomacy.

Look across the aisle at the populist right. Their legislative agenda is driven by a desire to take a sledgehammer to anything with an opponent’s name attached, regardless of the economic fallout. Under the banner of ending the “Green New Scam,” they seek to gut production tax credits for wind energy and advanced manufacturing. This rash move willfully ignores the billions in private capital already deployed and the thousands of manufacturing jobs created in their own domestic districts. They treat soft power institutions like USAID as partisan targets rather than strategic assets, slashing global health and development programs just to secure a short-term win on cable news.

We reject this governing-by-grievance model. We believe that economic policy must be tethered to science, arithmetic, and institutional stability. We do not design proposals to win a Twitter fight or feed a primary base; we design them to work in a complicated world.

The Conclusion

On all other nights, the American people are asked to choose between two competing illusions. But on this night, we offer a choice rooted in reality: an acknowledgment of scarcity, a commitment to concurrent household and fiscal strength, a refusal to ignore the entitlement time bomb, and a dedication to pragmatic, empirical governance. That is why this platform is different from all other platforms.

For centuries, this was not a statement about where people stood, but where they aspired to go—a prayer of transition from bondage to freedom, from a broken present to a rebuilt future.

Our political journey carries that same prospective duty. We do not accept that our current state of fiscal decline and ideological captivity is permanent. We reject the fear-driven paralysis of the status quo. With a clear-eyed view of our challenges and a firm commitment to the generation to come, we close this manifesto with our own shared determination for the nation:

Next year in a redeemed republic.

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The United States is facing an accelerating private retirement savings crisis that requires immediate structural tax reform. The upcoming 2029 sunset of temporary federal tax provisions presents policymakers with a stark choice: extend narrow, consumption-focused tax carve-outs or deploy those same fiscal resources to build a resilient, broad-based foundation of private savings.

Because federal tax expenditures are resource-constrained and federal capital is entirely fungible, the budget cannot sustain untargeted income exemptions while simultaneously expanding the domestic savings safety net. We must choose.

Prioritizing a permanent extension of the “No Tax on Tips” policy represents a significant misallocation of public funds due to several problems:

Exempting tips from federal income tax does absolutely nothing to address the structural retirement deficit. Tipped and service-sector workers are among the least prepared for retirement in the American workforce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that only about 25% of service workers -- and 23% of workers in the lowest earnings quartile -- participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan.

Worse, a blanket income tax exemption completely fails the lowest earners. More than one-third of all tipped workers have baseline earnings low enough that they owe zero federal income tax before applying refundable credits. A “No Tax on Tips” policy provides a $0 benefit to these low-income families while scaling its upside entirely to high-income tipped earners in upscale venues. It subsidizes current consumption without building a single dollar of long-term financial security.

A tax code must maintain horizontal equity. The No-Tax-On-Tips provision violates a fundamental provision -- individuals with identical economic capacity should face identical tax liabilities. There is no economic or ethical justification for why a retail clerk, a distribution center packer, or a home health aide earning $35,000 entirely in standard hourly wages should pay higher federal income taxes than a restaurant server or bartender earning an identical $35,000 split between base wages and $5,000 in discretionary tips.

This arbitrary favoritism distorts labor markets, creates immense industry pressure to reclassify ordinary wage income as “discretionary tips” to evade taxes, and forces standard low-wage workers to subsidize their peers.

The key selling point of a “no-tax-on-tips” policy is liquidity. People reliant on tip income often face tight financial constraints and avoid saving because they cannot afford to lock up their cash. The Retirement Security Act (RSA) solves this by introducing a dual-ledger IRA system that blends complete tax deductions with immediate cash flexibility.

Under this framework, 100% of an individual’s IRA contribution is tax-deductible, but the funds are automatically split: 60% goes into a locked Retirement Reserve, and 40% goes into a completely liquid Flexible Savings ledger. Savers can withdraw from this 40% buffer at any time, permanently tax-free and penalty-free. For example, if a worker contributes $4,000 to an IRA, they get a tax deduction on the full $4,000, yet they can immediately access and spend $1,600 of it without penalty. The remaining $2,400 is locked until age 59½. This simple shift provides a powerful incentive to save for people who are liquidity-constrained, eliminating the fear of asset lock-up while firmly protecting the core retirement nest egg from premature leakage.

Traditional deductible IRAs suffer from an inherently regressive design. A high-income earner in the 32% marginal tax bracket saves $320 in immediate taxes for every $1,000 contributed, whereas a low-income worker in the 10% bracket saves only $100 for making the identical economic sacrifice. If a worker has zero income tax liability, a traditional deduction yields a $0 financial benefit.

The RSA framework completely flips this incentive structure to prioritize wealth-building at lower incomes. While high-income earners continue to receive a standard tax deduction (balanced by the new ledger rules), low-income workers qualify for a progressive federal match. Under the traditional framework, a low-income worker in the 10% bracket captures a minor $100 tax benefit per $1,000 saved, while a high-income earner in the 32% bracket extracts a $320 federal subsidy for the same contribution level.

The RSA framework changes these dynamics entirely. A high-income earner continues to receive their standard tax deduction, but a low-income worker with zero income tax liability receives a direct, 50% federal matching contribution ($500 for every $1,000 saved) deposited straight into their locked retirement core, all while keeping 40% ($400) of their own principal 100% liquid.

The combination of the progressive match and the 0% effective tax rate on the flexible buffer ensures that the federal government provides its highest aggregate subsidy rate to lower income quartiles. The credit phases down smoothly as income rises, transitioning into a standard deduction for high-income earners who utilize the account primarily for its structural liquidity advantages.

Because the 40% flexible allocation removes the primary behavioral barrier to retirement plans—the fear of asset lock-up during a financial emergency—the overall surge in both individual participation and average contribution rates across the entire economy will be substantial. Consequently, the near-term federal tax expenditure impact will be quite large, as billions of dollars in adjusted gross income are deferred from the immediate tax base by savers capitalizing on the 40% untaxed cash allowance. High-income individuals will aggressively maximize their contributions to capture the unique benefits of the liquid asset split, further compounding this near-term revenue effect.

However, this elevated public expenditure represents a high-leverage shift from consumption-side tax breaks to structural asset accumulation. A massive influx of private capital expands the domestic investment pool, reducing household dependence on state-sponsored safety nets and creating a highly resilient, self-funded workforce. Crucially, building this broad-based foundation of robust private savings serves as an indispensable prerequisite for systemic Social Security reform. By successfully engineering a parallel asset base for every American worker, policymakers will finally possess the structural flexibility and financial cushion needed to stabilize long-term public entitlement programs for generations to come.

Through this design, a worker who chooses to save does not lose their tax preference; they capitalize on it through asset accumulation. Instead of receiving a tax break when spending cash, the worker receives a functionally identical “no tax on cash” benefit when saving their income.

Appendix: Statutory Language of the RSA

Section 101. Structural Modification of Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs)

Effective January 1, 2029, the Individual Retirement Account (IRA) architecture under Internal Revenue Code Section 408 is modified to transition individual, non-employer-sponsored retail savings into a dual-ledger system. All individual contributions are 100% deductible from adjusted gross income (AGI) in the taxable year of the contribution, up to a statutory individual limit of $7,000 (adjusted annually for inflation).

• Workplace Plan Preservation: This structural modification applies strictly to individual retail IRAs. Employer-sponsored qualified retirement plans—including traditional 401(k), Roth 401(k), 403(b), and 457(b) frameworks—remain completely unchanged, operating under their existing statutory contribution limits, non-discrimination testing, and withdrawal rules.

• The Bifurcated Ledger Split: Upon receipt of any individual IRA contribution, the qualifying financial institution must automatically segment the principal according to a strict 60/40 structural split:

  • The Retirement Reserve Ledger (60%): Formulates the locked core. To eliminate premature account leakage, funds on this ledger and all associated investment earnings are completely locked and cannot be distributed under any circumstances until the holder passes age 59½, except in cases of total permanent disability or death.

  • The Flexible Savings Ledger (40%): Establishes the liquid buffer. Funds on this ledger may be withdrawn at any time, permanently tax-free and penalty-free, up to the aggregate amount of the historical principal deposited.

Section 102. The Progressive Low-Income IRA Match

For single filers with an AGI below $35,000 (and joint filers below $70,000), the federal government will provide a direct, matching contribution equal to 50% of the worker’s qualified individual IRA contribution, deposited directly into the account’s locked Retirement Reserve Ledger.

• Phase-Out: This matching credit phases out linearly at a rate of 5% per $1,000 of AGI above the baseline, reaching 0% at $45,000 for single filers and $90,000 for joint filers.

• Workplace Exclusion: Contributions made by an employee to an employer-sponsored 401(k) or similar workplace plan are excluded from this specific retail IRA federal match mechanism, ensuring zero cross-contamination of public funding between workplace plans and individual retail accounts.

Section 103. Repeal and Transition of Special Income Exemptions

Any temporary provision excluding tip income from federal gross income calculation is repealed effective December 31, 2028. All earned income, whether received as base salary, hourly wages, or discretionary tips, shall be treated identically under the federal income tax code. Funds captured from the sunset of this exemption are structurally earmarked to fund the Section 102 low-income retail savings match.

Related Reading: For a deeper analysis of the broader legislative vehicles and budget mechanics driving these structural changes, readers should review the companion paper, Tax Reconciliation and Retirement Policy.

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This memorandum represents the fourth installment in a series examining the potential provisions of a comprehensive third-party tax reconciliation bill. The first three memos in this series addressed areas where the two major political parties hold drastically different ideological perspectives, frequently resulting in a volatile, “one-step-forward, two-steps-back” approach to policy progress. These initial analyses include:

• A Third Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Health Care Reform

• A Third Party Tax Reconciliation Approach to Student Debt

• Tax Reconciliation and Capital Gains Taxes

In contrast to those deeply polarized issues, this fourth memo on tax reconciliation and retirement policy addresses an area that enjoys a meaningful degree of bipartisan consensus. However, despite this political agreement, recently enacted legislative changes have proven fundamentally inadequate for the very households that face the greatest difficulties saving for the future. The structural reforms presented in this memorandum are designed to move past these limitations—expanding retirement savings, lowering systemic costs, and substantially improving long-term financial outcomes for the entire population.

Key Proposals

• Universal Auto-IRAs: Establish a workplace-independent, automatic enrollment framework for all workers to capture multiple part-time income streams and receive automatic rollovers during job transitions.

• IRA and 401(k) Parity: Allow employers to provide employer matches into IRAs and expand IRA contribution limits to reduce the need for small employers to create their own 401(k) plans.

• Automated Spousal Funding: Launch a joint marital payroll default that automatically routes split contributions to a caregiver’s IRA, while eliminating legacy income phase-outs and separate-filer tax penalties.

• Core Account Preservation: Limit the amount of funds which can be disbursed prior to retirement. Replace existing tax penalties with a fee which allocates a percent of the early disbursements to the person’s own Social Security account.

• FSA Balance Rollovers: Eliminate the “use-it-or-lose-it” FSA rule with a rule mandating automatic rollover of FSA funds to a non-deductible IRA.

• De-Risked Target Funds: Update default regulations to restrict high-fee private credit and mandate smooth transitions into inflation-protected assets.

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Introduction:

Retirement savings policy has reemerged as a critical component of federal tax and budget debates, serving as one of the few arenas where Congress has consistently secured bipartisan consensus. However, recent structural reforms are unlikely to yield higher net retirement savings for the households struggling most to balance long-term asset accumulation with basic household emergencies.

This memorandum evaluates the operational mechanisms of recent legislative and executive interventions, identifies core structural vulnerabilities in the contemporary framework, and proposes targeted, structural reforms designed to safeguard wealth for low- and moderate-income families.

Recently enacted retirement reform proposals:

The SECURE Act of 2019, now commonly referred to as SECURE 1.0 focused primarily on expanding access to retirement plans and modernizing portions of the retirement system.

· allowed several small firms to participate in a single shared retirement plan, reducing administrative costs and complexity for small employers;

· raised the required minimum distribution age from 70½ to 72;

· allowed older workers to continue contributing to traditional IRAs after age 70½ if they still had earned income;

· encouraged employers to offer annuity and lifetime-income products inside retirement plans;

· expanded retirement-plan access for part-time workers;

· and required many inherited IRAs to be withdrawn within 10 years rather than over the beneficiary’s lifetime.

Congress followed with SECURE 2.0 in 2022, also enacted on a bipartisan basis rather than through reconciliation. Among other changes, the law:

• expanded automatic enrollment requirements for many new retirement plans;

• increased catch-up contribution limits for older workers;

• improved retirement-plan access for part-time employees;

• allowed certain student-loan payments to qualify for employer retirement matching contributions;

• created emergency savings “sidecar” accounts linked to retirement plans;

• increased the required minimum distribution age further over time;

• expanded tax incentives for small businesses establishing retirement plans;

• and replaced the old Saver’s Credit with the new Saver’s Match beginning in 2027.

The 2025 tax reconciliation legislation did not create a comprehensive new retirement framework comparable to SECURE 1.0 or SECURE 2.0. Its principal retirement-related initiative instead centered on the creation of so-called “Trump Accounts,” new tax-favored investment accounts established for children and designed to encourage long-term savings beginning at birth. Key provisions included:

• creation of “Trump Accounts,” tax-advantaged savings and investment accounts established for eligible children, with assets intended to accumulate over time through family, employer, private, and federal contributions;

• a temporary federally funded $1,000 seed contribution for children born between 2025 and 2028, with the limited eligibility window reducing the bill’s long-term budget score under reconciliation rules;

• expanded opportunities for parents, employers, and private donors to contribute to those accounts subject to annual limits;

• and favorable tax treatment for investment earnings and certain qualifying withdrawals within the accounts.

The Trump administration subsequently supplemented this framework through executive action, particularly through efforts to promote IRA participation and implementation of the Saver’s Match previously enacted under SECURE 2.0.

In April 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Treasury, IRS, and the Department of Labor to establish “TrumpIRA.gov,” a federal portal designed to help workers without employer retirement plans open and compare low-cost IRAs.

The executive order primarily directed Treasury, IRS, and the Department of Labor to create a federal IRA information and enrollment portal intended to make retirement saving easier for workers lacking employer-sponsored plans. It also encouraged administrative coordination and public outreach related to the Saver’s Match previously enacted under SECURE 2.0.

The executive order did not create new retirement subsidies, mandate employer participation, establish automatic enrollment, or substantially modify the Saver’s Match itself. Its primary practical effect was creation of administrative and informational infrastructure intended to increase participation in existing retirement programs.

Beginning in tax year 2027, eligible lower- and moderate-income workers will receive direct federal matching contributions deposited into their retirement accounts.

Key features of the Saver’s Match include:

• a federal match equal to 50 percent of up to $2,000 in annual retirement contributions;

• a maximum annual federal contribution of $1,000 per eligible worker;

• direct deposit of the federal contribution into retirement accounts rather than reduction of tax liability;

• eligibility for many workers with little or no federal income-tax liability;

• automatic federal expenditure increases if participation and contributions rise;

• and no major near-term sunset provision currently built into the program.

Issues with Recent Retirement Reform Efforts

While recent statutory updates have successfully expanded plan access, their underlying design remains heavily influenced by the retirement-services industry, focusing primarily on increasing total plan participation and encouraging voluntary savings through tax incentives and automatic enrollment.

Consequently, these reforms have functioned better as upscale substitution mechanisms for households already positioned to save, rather than addressing the deeper structural bottlenecks facing lower- and middle-income workers who lack financial flexibility.

Crucially, contemporary policy prioritizes front-end account creation while largely ignoring back-end wealth preservation. Significant retirement assets continue to be lost through abandoned accounts, excessive administrative fees, fragmented structures driven by frequent job changes, and punitive early-withdrawal policies during periods of household financial distress.

The following sections examine these core system vulnerabilities and propose targeted structural interventions to achieve true long-term wealth preservation.

Issue One: Expanding IRA Access and Making IRAs a True Parallel System to 401(k) Plans

Employer plans remain the strongest retirement-saving channel for many households, but millions of workers are outside that system. In March 2025, 72 percent of private-sector workers had access to employer-sponsored retirement benefits, which means more than one-quarter still did not.

Crucially, this point-in-time snapshot severely understates the structural damage to lifetime wealth accumulation. Because modern career paths are fluid, millions of workers who have plan access today will transition into a “coverage desert” tomorrow—whether by moving to a small business, launching a freelance initiative, or downshifting to part-time status. Over a full 40-year working career, the percentage of Americans who spend multi-year stretches completely locked out of the 401(k) system is vastly higher than 25%. When a worker encounters these inevitable coverage gaps, they face an “automation cliff.” Because individuals are up to 15 times more likely to save when deductions are automated, the absence of a parallel, workplace-independent IRA structure means that personal savings velocity completely flatlines during these transitional years, permanently fracturing the momentum of early-career compounding.

The gap is especially important for workers at small firms, gig workers, part-time workers, workers with multiple jobs, young adults, and non-working spouses. These groups often need a portable account that does not depend on one employer relationship. IRAs are the natural vehicle for that role, but current policy does not do enough to ensure that every household actually opens, funds, and preserves one.

The need for a stronger IRA system is also evident in household balance-sheet data. Federal Reserve data show that retirement accounts, including IRAs, Keogh accounts, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and thrift savings accounts, were held by only 54.3 percent of families in 2022. CRS analysis of the same data found especially large income gaps in IRA ownership: about 63 percent of households with income of $150,000 or more owned IRAs, compared with only 8.8 percent of households with income below $30,000.

This is the basic policy problem: the workers most likely to need IRAs are often the least likely to have them.

There has been some progress toward automatic IRA coverage. State auto-IRA programs have expanded rapidly, and Georgetown’s Center for Retirement Initiatives reports that, as of May 2026, 17 state programs were open to all eligible employers and workers. These programs are an important step because they use payroll deduction and default enrollment rather than relying entirely on voluntary account opening.

But automatic IRA access alone is not enough. The account has to be created, remain open, receive contributions, avoid excessive fees, and survive job changes and financial emergencies. Otherwise, the system may create more small accounts without solving the deeper problem of long-term retirement accumulation.

This account fragmentation is driven by a fundamental policy misstep: the statutory insistence on treating the employer as the primary gatekeeper of high-limit retirement plans. SECURE 1.0 and 2.0 focused heavily on nudging small firms to adopt complex 401(k) plans. But forcing small businesses to act as financial fiduciaries saddles them with administrative overhead and subjects their workers to high retail-layer fees. There is no structural or economic reason why individual IRAs must possess lower contribution limits than 401(k)s, nor why current tax law bans employers from contributing matches directly into a worker’s personal, portable IRA. True parallel parity requires decoupling retirement security from specific employer relationships entirely, allowing small firms to bypass 401(k) setups altogether by matching directly into a universal, portable IRA.

A more complete reform would put IRAs on a more equal footing with 401(k) plans. That means expanding automatic IRA enrollment for workers without employer plans, strengthening incentives for regular contributions, allowing automatic rollover of small 401(k) balances into low-fee IRAs, and limiting rules that permit complete depletion before retirement.

IRAs are also essential for non-working spouses. A spouse with little or no earned income can still build retirement savings through spousal IRA rules when the household has sufficient earned income. But that opportunity is underused if households do not understand the rule or lack an easy default mechanism for opening and funding the account.

Young adults also need earlier attachment to the retirement system. Trump Accounts may create some early-life savings infrastructure, but those accounts will matter only if they remain active and eventually connect to the broader retirement system. A dormant account created at birth is not a substitute for an IRA system that encourages regular contributions beginning early in working life.

The central goal should be to make IRAs a universal fallback retirement account. Every worker without a 401(k), every worker with multiple jobs, every young adult entering the labor market, and every eligible non-working spouse should have a simple, low-fee IRA available by default. The policy challenge is not merely to create more accounts. It is to create accounts that remain open, receive contributions, and are protected from unnecessary erosion or full pre-retirement depletion.

Related data and background:

• BLS, Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2025

• Federal Reserve, 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances summary

• CRS summary on retirement account ownership by income

• Georgetown Center for Retirement Initiatives state auto-IRA tracker

• Center for Retirement Research analysis

• Behavioral evidence from H&R Block experiment

• A look at 401(k) Plan Fees (Department of Labor)

Issue Two: Abandoned 401(k) Accounts and Excessive Fees

One important weakness in recent retirement reforms is that policymakers have focused heavily on expanding the number of retirement accounts while paying far less attention to preserving account balances after workers change jobs. SECURE 2.0 expanded automatic enrollment and increased retirement-plan participation, but these changes will also increase the number of small inactive 401(k) accounts left behind when workers move between employers.

These abandoned or “stranded” accounts create several problems. Small inactive accounts are often subject to disproportionately high administrative and investment fees, which can significantly erode retirement savings over time. In some cases, accounts may eventually be transferred to state unclaimed-property systems through escheatment processes if account owners lose contact with plan administrators.

Congress has recently considered legislation designed to reduce retirement-account escheatment. However, preventing escheatment addresses only part of the larger problem. Even when accounts remain active, many workers continue to lose substantial retirement wealth because small dormant accounts are frequently invested in relatively high-fee products.

A more effective solution would require automatic rollover of small inactive 401(k) balances into low-fee default IRA accounts when workers leave employers. Such a system would help preserve retirement balances, reduce fee erosion, simplify account management for workers with multiple jobs over time, and build naturally on the automatic-enrollment framework already expanded under SECURE 2.0.

High fees remain one of the least discussed but most economically significant threats to long-term household retirement savings, particularly for lower- and middle-income workers with relatively modest account balances.

This automatic rollover mechanism forms the vital structural pipeline connecting front-end account creation with long-term wealth preservation. By automatically sweeping dormant, low-balance 401(k) assets out of fragmented employer plans and into a consolidated, low-fee default IRA system, policy would simultaneously resolve the “stranded account” crisis while giving the parallel IRA framework the critical mass and asset scale it currently lacks. Instead of forcing workers to manage a trail of administrative wreckage across every job transition, the automated transfer mechanism transforms the IRA into a robust, lifetime financial anchor.

Discussion:

• “Stranded Savings”

• “How to Minimize the Impact of 401(k) Fees”

Issue Three: Pre-Retirement Depletion of Retirement Assets

A second major weakness in recent retirement reforms is that they continue to allow substantial pre-retirement depletion of retirement accounts. The problem is not merely that workers fail to save enough. It is also that workers increasingly use retirement accounts as emergency funds, debt-management tools, or last-resort liquidity sources before retirement.

Research on pre-retirement use of 401(k) funds finds that workers who access retirement savings before retirement often have other debts and weak credit positions, suggesting that withdrawals are frequently driven by broader financial stress rather than casual consumption. Other research similarly finds that retirement assets in IRAs and 401(k)s can be tapped relatively easily to finance pre-retirement needs, despite tax penalties and plan restrictions.

Current law discourages early withdrawals mainly through tax penalties rather than through strong preservation rules. Traditional IRAs and many employer retirement plans generally impose ordinary income tax and an additional 10 percent penalty on taxable distributions taken before age 59½, unless an exception applies. Roth IRAs are somewhat more flexible because contributions can generally be withdrawn before retirement, but early withdrawals of earnings may still be subject to tax and penalty rules. Trump Accounts generally cannot be withdrawn before the year the child turns 18; after that point, they are generally treated like traditional IRAs and subject to the same distribution rules.

These rules create a serious policy problem. They penalize workers for withdrawing funds early, but they do not prevent full account depletion. A worker facing financial distress may still empty an entire retirement account, pay income taxes and penalties, and reach retirement with little or nothing left. The penalty can be harsh precisely when the household is already under financial pressure, while still failing to preserve retirement assets.

There is a real tradeoff. If retirement accounts were completely locked up until retirement, contributions would likely fall because many households would be unwilling to save in accounts that provide no access during emergencies. But the current system moves too far in the other direction. It allows 100 percent depletion of retirement balances before retirement, relying mainly on punitive tax penalties after the fact.

A better system would preserve some access to emergency funds while protecting a core retirement balance. One approach would prohibit pre-retirement distributions from exceeding a fixed share of account assets. For example, 40 or 50 percent of accumulated retirement balances could be permanently protected from pre-retirement withdrawal except in the most extreme circumstances.

Another approach would create an emergency-liquidity compartment inside retirement accounts. For example, a fixed portion of contributions, such as 30 percent, could automatically flow into an emergency account available for pre-retirement use, while the remaining balance would be protected for retirement. This approach would acknowledge that households need liquidity while preventing complete depletion of long-term retirement assets.

While both mechanisms attempt to restrict asset leakage, the structural creation of an emergency liquidity compartment is policy-preferred over a rigid percentage cap. A hard cap on total balances introduces unnecessary volatility, as a worker’s available emergency liquidity would fluctuate with market cycles. Conversely, an explicit partition (e.g., an 80/20 or 75/25 split where 20% to 25% of contributions automatically fund a liquid emergency tier up to a fixed dollar ceiling) leverages the psychological power of mental accounting. By separating liquid safety nets from the core asset-building engine, this design explicitly signals to households which funds are operational, and which are untouchable, optimizing both short-term resilience and long-term wealth preservation.

The current 10 percent penalty should also be reconsidered. A more coherent system would restrict full depletion directly rather than imposing a harsh penalty on households already facing financial stress. Some early distributions could remain subject to ordinary income tax, and policymakers could consider a smaller dedicated charge, such as a 5 percent payroll-style contribution to Social Security or another retirement trust fund, instead of the current blanket penalty.

The core reform principle should be simple: retirement policy must prevent the possibility of 100 percent depletion of retirement accounts before retirement.

Readings:

· David Bernstein, Pre-retirement use of 401(k) funds

· Urban Institute analysis of early retirement withdrawals

· IRS guidance on exceptions to early-distribution penalties

· IRS guidance on Trump Accounts

Issue Four: Retirement Security for Non-Working Spouses and Caregivers

Another weakness in the current retirement system is that retirement savings incentives remain tied too heavily to continuous formal employment. Workers with stable long-term labor-force participation generally accumulate retirement assets through employer plans and payroll deduction. But many spouses, particularly caregivers and stay-at-home parents, spend substantial periods outside the paid labor force and therefore accumulate far smaller retirement balances.

Current law partially addresses this problem through “spousal IRAs,” which allow a non-working spouse to contribute to an IRA based on the earned income of the working spouse. However, the existing system remains limited and underused. Many households are unaware that spousal IRAs exist, contribution patterns are highly uneven, and restrictive rules apply when married couples file taxes separately.

The current framework also assumes a relatively cooperative household financial structure. In practice, retirement savings decisions are often controlled primarily by the working spouse. This creates particular problems in marriages involving unequal financial power, restrictive prenuptial agreements, or eventual divorce. A spouse who spends years outside the labor market performing caregiving work may reach middle age or retirement with minimal retirement assets despite contributing substantially to household well-being.

Current retirement policy therefore fails to treat caregiving and household labor as activities that justify systematic retirement accumulation.

Several reforms could improve this system.

One reform would eliminate or substantially relax restrictions on spousal IRA contributions for married couples filing separately. Current rules effectively discourage retirement accumulation in some households with fragmented finances or marital instability.

Another reform would normalize automatic spousal retirement contributions whenever one spouse participates in an employer-sponsored retirement plan. For example:

• employer payroll systems could automatically offer a parallel spousal IRA contribution option;

• tax software could default households into spousal IRA contributions unless they opt out;

• or a portion of retirement-plan contributions could automatically flow into a spouse’s IRA account unless the household declines.

The larger goal would be to make spousal retirement saving routine and automatic rather than optional and poorly understood.

Automatic spousal contributions would also better reflect the economic reality that household retirement security is often produced jointly, even when only one spouse formally earns wages. A retirement system centered entirely on individual wage income systematically disadvantages caregivers and many non-working spouses.

Policymakers should also reconsider income-based restrictions on spousal IRA eligibility. High-income households are often assumed to have adequate retirement savings already, but unequal control of household assets can still leave non-working spouses financially vulnerable, particularly in divorce situations involving restrictive premarital agreements or uneven asset ownership structures.

The broader principle is straightforward: retirement policy should not assume that only formal wage earners deserve systematic retirement accumulation. A modern retirement system should provide automatic and durable retirement-saving pathways for caregivers and non-working spouses as well as traditional full-time workers.

Readings:

• IRS guidance on IRA deduction limits and spousal IRAs

• IRS overview of IRA contribution rules

Issue Five: Student Debt and Retirement Savings

One of the largest impediments preventing younger households from building retirement savings is the high level of student debt carried by many borrowers during the first decade of their working lives. Monthly student-loan payments often directly compete with retirement contributions, emergency savings, home purchases, and family formation.

SECURE 2.0 attempted to address part of this problem by allowing certain employer retirement plans to treat student-loan payments as if they were retirement-plan contributions for purposes of employer matching contributions. Under this approach, workers making student-loan payments may still receive employer retirement-plan matches even if they are unable to contribute directly to the 401(k) plan themselves.

Although this reform may increase retirement balances for some borrowers, it has important limitations. Many younger workers do not have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans at all, and many smaller employers are unlikely to adopt the optional feature. As a result, the provision primarily benefits borrowers already working in relatively stable jobs with access to established 401(k) systems.

The policy also effectively expands tax-preferred retirement contributions for eligible borrowers while channeling additional assets into the 401(k) industry. Critics may reasonably question whether the approach is overly dependent on expanding retirement-plan contributions and fee-generating retirement accounts rather than solving the underlying student-debt problem itself.

The broader problem is that retirement policy increasingly attempts to accommodate large student-debt burdens rather than reducing those burdens early in working life.

A more effective approach would focus on accelerated student-debt reduction during the first years after graduation. Earlier retirement of student debt would free younger households to begin retirement saving sooner, accumulate assets earlier in life, and reduce long-term dependence on complex retirement subsidies.

One proposed alternative framework would:

• provide temporary zero-interest federal student loans during the early repayment period;

• delay entry into income-driven repayment systems during the first years after graduation;

• encourage refinancing into private credit markets once borrowers achieve greater financial stability;

• reduce marriage penalties embedded in current repayment systems;

• protect borrowers from inflation erosion during repayment;

• and concentrate federal assistance earlier in borrowers’ careers rather than extending debt burdens over long repayment horizons.

The broader goal would be to help borrowers eliminate student debt earlier in adulthood so that retirement saving becomes possible without permanent dependence on increasingly complicated tax-preferred retirement arrangements.

Readings:

• “A Third-Party Tax Reconciliation Student Debt Proposal”

Issue Six: Health-Care Costs, Health Savings Accounts, and Retirement Saving

Saving for retirement has become increasingly difficult because many households face high out-of-pocket health-care costs even when they possess relatively comprehensive health insurance coverage. Deductibles, co-payments, prescription costs, dental expenses, vision care, and long-term-care concerns often compete directly with retirement saving for limited household resources.

As a result, many households prioritize contributions to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) or Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) over contributions to 401(k) plans or IRAs. This behavior is economically rational because households often fear near-term medical expenses more than distant retirement risks.

Current policy partially recognizes this tradeoff by providing favorable tax treatment for HSAs and FSAs. However, the interaction between health-care savings and retirement savings remains fragmented and sometimes punitive.

One particularly problematic feature involves Flexible Spending Accounts, which often operate under “use-it-or-lose-it” rules. Workers who fail to spend remaining balances within specified periods may forfeit part of their savings. This structure effectively imposes penalties on households attempting to budget conservatively for uncertain medical expenses.

The broader problem resembles the weaknesses discussed earlier involving retirement accounts. Policymakers frequently rely on forfeitures, penalties, or restrictive withdrawal rules rather than designing systems that preserve household savings over time.

A more coherent approach would integrate health-care savings and retirement savings more directly. One proposal would automatically roll unused Flexible Spending Account balances into non-deductible IRA accounts rather than allowing forfeiture of unused funds. Such a reform would:

• reduce wasteful end-of-year spending incentives;

• preserve household savings rather than penalizing caution;

• encourage longer-term asset accumulation;

• and create a smoother connection between health-care saving and retirement saving.

This type of reform would be particularly valuable for middle-income households struggling simultaneously with health-care expenses, student debt, emergency savings needs, and retirement preparation.

The larger principle is that households attempting to save responsibly should not face repeated penalties and forfeiture rules merely because financial needs evolve over time. Current policy too often punishes households already struggling to balance competing savings demands.

Readings:

• Economic Memos health-care reconciliation proposal

Issue Seven: Creating Better Default Portfolios for Automatically Enrolled Workers

The automatic-enrollment provisions contained in SECURE 2.0 represent more than a technical retirement-policy reform. In practice, they amount to a federal endorsement of the 401(k) system itself. When Congress and Treasury encourage or require automatic enrollment, the government is implicitly advising workers that participation in these plans is an appropriate and prudent financial strategy.

Once the government assumes that quasi-advisory role, it also assumes a responsibility to ensure that the default investment options into which workers are automatically enrolled are financially sound and reasonably protective during periods of economic stress.

Current default investment structures are often heavily dependent on conventional stock-and-bond allocations and target-date funds that may expose workers to substantial inflation risk, interest-rate risk, or correlated market declines during stressful economic periods. Many workers automatically enrolled into retirement plans have little understanding of the underlying portfolio risks and frequently remain invested in default options for long periods without making active portfolio decisions.

This issue becomes even more important as policymakers continue expanding automatic-enrollment systems. Automatic enrollment works partly because it assumes that default options are likely to be suitable for ordinary workers. But if the default portfolios themselves are poorly constructed or excessively exposed to certain forms of market risk, then the government may effectively be steering households into fragile investment structures.

Concerns about portfolio quality have become more significant as portions of the financial industry and some policymakers push for expanded inclusion of higher-risk assets such as private credit, private equity, and other illiquid investment products inside retirement accounts. Advocates argue that these products may increase long-term returns or broaden investment opportunities. Critics argue that many of these investments involve higher fees, lower transparency, valuation uncertainty, and potentially significant downside risk during economic downturns.

If policymakers are going to encourage broad participation in 401(k) plans through automatic enrollment, then retirement policy should include stronger safeguards regarding default investment design. At a minimum, policymakers should establish clearer guardrails limiting excessive risk exposure and requiring greater transparency regarding fees, liquidity risks, and downside scenarios.

More importantly, policymakers should actively encourage inclusion of financial products designed to provide greater protection during periods of inflation, rising interest rates, or broader financial instability. Retirement policy should focus not only on maximizing returns during favorable markets but also on preserving retirement security during stressful economic periods when many households are most vulnerable.

The broader principle is straightforward: if government policy increasingly nudges workers into retirement plans automatically, then government also bears some responsibility for the quality and resilience of the investment structures receiving those funds.

Related discussion of inflation risk and retirement portfolios:

Readings:

• “How to Protect Workers from Inflation”

• “How Best to Expand Investment Opportunities”

Issue Eight: The Unintended Savings Penalty of Untaxed Tips and Overtime

While exempting tips and overtime hours from the federal income tax base is intended to boost the near-term take-home pay of lower-income hourly and service workers, it introduces a severe structural distortion: the erosion and practical destruction of lower-income retirement and healthcare savings incentives.

Traditional asset-building vehicles—including traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)—rely entirely on the value of an income deduction to alter household savings behavior. When a worker’s marginal tax rate on a significant portion of their earned income is reduced to zero through selective exemptions, the financial utility of these deductions simultaneously drops to zero. For an hourly or tipped worker whose remaining taxable AGI is already fully neutralized by the standard deduction, locking up liquid capital in a retirement or health account yields zero immediate tax relief.

The current tax-deferred framework effectively demands that low-AGI workers accept significant illiquidity without providing any offsetting federal subsidy. Consequently, policies that narrow the tax base via income exemptions inadvertently disincentivize long-term asset accumulation among the households most vulnerable to financial shocks.

To mitigate this structural friction, policy design must pivot away from income deductions and toward direct tax preferences that decouple the savings incentive from a worker’s marginal tax bracket. For example, rather than offering a functionally useless tax deduction, a modernized framework could utilize a structured federal match. Implementing a 100 percent government match on the first $1,000 of taxable tips or overtime contributed to an IRA would reverse the behavioral math. By shifting from a regressive deduction system to a direct matching credit, retirement policy can preserve asset-building opportunities for low-tax-burden households without relying on the leverage of an income tax liability.

Conclusion:

Recent and proposed retirement changes have proven inadequate for households struggling financially. Because the federal government actively prioritizes 401(k) plans over other household savings options, it has an institutional obligation to improve plan outcomes. Here are some potential reforms:

· Establish a Universal Auto-IRA Framework: Implement a national, workplace-independent default IRA framework with automated enrollment for all workers lacking employer plans.

· Create an Automated Spousal IRA Default: Establish an automated, marital-joint enrollment mechanism that automatically opens and funds a spousal IRA for a non-working caregiver when the primary earning spouse triggers a workplace 401(k) deduction, removing separate-filer administrative barriers.

· Decouple Small-Business Matching: Amend tax law to grant individual IRAs contribution limit parity with 401(k) plans, allowing small employers to bypass complex company plan administration by matching directly into their employees’ portable, personal IRAs.

· Enact Automated Rollover Pipelines: Mandate the automatic clearing of dormant, small-balance 401(k) assets out of fragmented employer plans and into a consolidated, low-fee national default IRA system upon a worker’s termination, preserving early-career compound interest.

· Restructure Pre-Retirement Account Leakage: Enact a Core Preservation Rule that legally isolates 50% to 60% of an account’s peak value from pre-retirement distribution. Replace the punitive 10% tax penalty with a 5% diversion fee routed directly back into the worker’s future Social Security trust fund.

· Mandate Health Spending Rollovers: Eliminate the inefficient “use-it-or-lose-it” statutory design of Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) by requiring the automated rollover of unspent end-of-year balances directly into a worker’s traditional IRA.

· De-Risk Default Portfolios and Modernize Distribution: Direct the Department of Labor to update QDIA regulations to restrict high-fee, illiquid private credit concentrations in target-date funds, requiring default portfolios to transition smoothly into dynamic, inflation-hedged distribution models (utilizing assets like inflation-indexed securities) rather than relying on static, outmoded withdrawal rules.

The persistent failure of recent bipartisan retirement legislation to move the needle for lower-income savers stems from a fundamental conflict of interest: federal policy has effectively allowed the Wall Street firms running these 401(k) networks to hold the pen, prioritizing institutional fee retention over friction-free asset accumulation for the working class.

The proposals presented here prioritize the needs of households facing the hardest time saving rather than the commercial interests of Wall Street. Automatic enrollment is meaningless if savings are immediately eaten away by friction. True structural reform ensures that hard-earned savings actually persist and grow—demanding lower asset fees, plugging early-career leakage, banning high-risk toxic assets from default funds, and anchoring portfolios against the twin threats of inflation and interest rate exposure.

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