Fiscal competence and public funding

Selected direction.

Enforce three strikes for serious agency failure

Consequences should reach the agencies and decision-makers responsible for material failure.

The proposal. Hold individual agencies accountable for material financial failures and serious or repeated legal violations attributable to the agency. Minor errors corrected promptly do not trigger this process. The national budget deficit is not an agency strike, and agencies need not finance themselves from their own revenue. Material failures can include unauthorized commitments, materially unreliable accounts or inability to account for substantial public funds.

Establish causation first. Determine what caused the failure before assigning a strike or personal responsibility. Agencies own credible cost estimates, spending commitments and management decisions. Budget decision-makers own the effects of their attributable funding and scope choices. Causes may be shared. An imposed funding shortfall cannot simply be relabeled agency mismanagement.

First strike. Issue a public corrective order naming the responsible leaders, the required changes, and binding milestones and deadlines. Give those charged with recovery the authority and resources to carry it out.

Second strike. Failure to meet required correction milestones triggers outside financial supervision and formal disciplinary proceedings against the leaders responsible.

Third strike. Require restructuring or dissolution of the failing organization and transfer of necessary services, together with removal of leaders found responsible through enforceable lawful procedures. Preserve competent staff, whistleblowers, records and essential functions while replacing a hierarchy that prevents correction.

No reset through turnover. The agency’s strike record survives leadership resignations, reorganizations and name changes. Resignation does not erase personal investigation, potential penalties or criminal prosecution where warranted. An incoming leader inherits the duty to fix the problem under a binding recovery plan with authority, resources and deadlines, not a predecessor’s guilt. The next strike follows a missed correction milestone, not merely discovery of an inherited problem. Institutional restructuring may still be required without personal fault by the incoming leader.

Responsibility follows authority. Document who had decision-making power, what they knew, the resources and time available, and whether a superior blocked correction. Hold obstructing leaders responsible rather than blaming employees who lacked power to fix the problem. Preserve competent staff only within a structure that actually enables the required changes.

Criminal conduct and due process. Investigate evidence of fraud, theft, knowing false accounting, concealment or obstruction immediately; do not wait for three strikes. A failed audit alone does not establish criminal guilt. Removal, penalties and prosecution require the applicable evidence, lawful process and appeal protections.

Evidence and attribution. Trace required work, cost evidence and assumptions, requested and approved funding, changes and reasons, credible savings or changed scope, warnings, and named signoffs or votes. A warning does not confer immunity; a signature or vote does not prove guilt. Responsibility depends on authority, knowledge, choices, causation and lawful findings.

Implementation. Use existing oversight and audit institutions to establish findings and monitor correction. This does not create a new universal independent budget-approval layer. Define materiality, the responsible decision-maker, deadlines, fiscal-year treatment and any reset after sustained recovery. Specify lawful authority for supervision, removal, restructuring, dissolution and service transfer. Preserve taxpayer restrictions and essential functions. Any temporary emergency exception to advance funding or obligation approval remains unsettled; no immunity from accounting or accountability is adopted.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

Reject involuntary bailouts and require local financial responsibility

Unwilling outsiders should not inherit reckless or concealed losses.

The proposal. Local governments retain their own budgets, debts, pensions, treasuries, and independent audits; unwilling outsiders should not cover reckless or concealed losses.

Implementation. Budget balance and financial workability take priority over assuming a general debt reset. Restructuring, nonessential asset sales, leadership changes, and voluntary merger remain options requiring explicit rules. Protecting people during disasters or rights violations differs from bailing out a balance sheet, but no compulsory exception to personal tax direction is established. Existing debts, pensions, contracts, and shared obligations need a workable transition.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

Approve responsibilities and funding together

A budget must credibly fund the work it requires, with responsibility for changes made clear.

The proposal. Estimate competent service needs, maintenance, replacement, reserves and legacy obligations before setting revenue targets. Approve required responsibilities and funding together. Distinguish fraud, improper payments, inefficiency and legitimate disagreement about priorities.

When funding changes. A lower budget must rest on credible savings or an explicit change in the work required. Do not assume the same output with less money. Record the evidence and assumptions, funding changes and reasons, service consequences, warnings, and named signoffs or votes so later review can trace who controlled each decision.

Prevent excess commitments. Track obligations already incurred, forecast costs and remaining authorized resources. Obtain an authorized funding or scope change before entering new obligations that exceed those resources. Warnings alone do not authorize overspending. Any temporary emergency exception to advance funding or obligation approval remains unsettled; no immunity from accounting or accountability is adopted.

Oversight. Use existing oversight and audit arrangements. Agencies remain responsible for credible estimates and competent management; budget decision-makers remain responsible for attributable funding choices. Shared causes require shared attribution. No new universal independent budget-approval layer is selected.

Implementation. Do not finance permanent commitments with speculative fraud recovery, automation savings or investment returns. Define the evidence, reporting cadence, escalation and lawful change procedures needed to make these requirements work.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

Use outsourcing only when full costs and outcomes justify it

Delivery arrangements should be judged by results, full costs and accountability.

How it would work. Public, nonprofit, and other arrangements require comparison; no operator type is preferred automatically. Outsourcing is optional only when it improves full cost, quality, and accountability.

Implementation. Compare transition costs, service quality, audit access, conflicts and the ability to change providers. A nonprofit or private contractor does not acquire taxing, legislative or police power merely by delivering a service.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Selected direction.

Prioritize budget balance and workable debt obligations

Existing public obligations require a workable budget rather than an assumed clean slate.

Prioritize balancing budgets and making public finances workable rather than assuming the debt slate can be wiped clean. No general debt reset is selected.

Existing debt, pensions, contracts and shared infrastructure need a workable transition within individual tax-direction commitments. Lawful restructuring remains an option; no blanket ban on restructuring or compulsory funding override is adopted.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Working proposal. This is a working proposal, not an adopted policy.

Maintain an emergency reserve and share unused funds

Protect emergency capacity, then share genuinely unused funds equally with agency employees.

The working proposal. Maintain an agency emergency reserve with a target equal to 20% of its operating budget, additional to ordinary operations. Carry the retained balance forward and replenish only the missing amount needed to restore the target. At year end, distribute half of the genuinely unused reserve in equal dollar shares to every federal employee within that agency; carry the other half forward.

Emergency use comes first. This is conditional sharing of an unused emergency fund, not a guaranteed annual bonus. It is not a replacement with a verified-efficiency-savings bonus. Legitimate emergencies must be funded before any distribution; protecting a potential payout cannot justify withholding a necessary response.

Selected emergency definition. Use the definition drawn from 2 U.S.C. § 900(c)(20)–(21): a situation requiring new budget authority and outlays to prevent, mitigate or respond to loss of life or property, or a threat to national security, that is unanticipated. Unanticipated means sudden, urgent, unforeseen rather than predicted or anticipated as an emerging need, and temporary. Routine overruns do not automatically qualify.

What the source establishes. The statute defines emergencies in an existing federal budget-enforcement context. It does not establish this proposed agency reserve or employee-payment plan. Applying that definition to the reserve still requires legal and administrative design.

Before a payout. Existing oversight must check emergency needs, required work, outstanding obligations and necessary spending that could have been deferred to make the fund appear unused. A payout cannot be based solely on a positive account balance. Protect reporting outside the management chain and prohibit retaliation. Audits alone are not sufficient protection.

Risks to resolve. The payment creates an incentive to resist legitimate emergency use, pad operating budgets or shift costs into a later period. These risks remain material even with audits. The design must make needs, obligations and decisions traceable and preserve a practical route for staff to report pressure or concealment.

Illustration. With an operating budget of 100 units, the additional reserve target is 20. If 12 remains available after emergency needs and obligations are checked, 6 is shared equally among agency employees and 6 carries forward. If the operating budget and target stay unchanged, the next replenishment is 14, not another 20.

Still open. Define the operating-budget calculation base, eligibility administration, payment timing, any caps, authority to carry and replenish funds, compensation and appropriations law, and the legal implementation route. The all-employee, equal-dollar direction is selected; these administrative choices are not settled. Any temporary emergency exception to advance funding or obligation approval remains unsettled; no immunity from accounting or accountability is adopted.

Source: Emergency definition: 2 U.S.C. § 900(c)(20)–(21)

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Working proposal. This is a working proposal, not an adopted policy.

Explore voluntary community funding and investment arrangements

Voluntary funding deserves examination without assuming it can pay every public bill.

Working proposals: Extend personal allocation accounts to the relevant local government and any agreed shared services. Publish costed service proposals, providers, maintenance needs, minimum funding levels, and delivery milestones. Restricted contributions could be held until a project is viable, with disclosed return or reallocation rules. Willing residents could make multiyear commitments for continuing services.

Voluntary donations, community nonprofits, commercial earnings, and endowments may supplement or reduce tax requirements. Nonprofits could administer restricted funds or deliver services if the efficiency test is met. Larger contributions must not buy regulatory privileges or additional electoral rights. Controls must prevent steering contributions to one's own business or receiving private benefits disguised as public spending.

These options remain exploratory. Participatory budgeting typically lets residents vote collectively on public spending; that does not satisfy the project's distinct endpoint of personal control over each person's contribution. Choosing the use of a compulsory payment also differs from choosing whether to contribute at all.

Open decisions: Determine how sales and excise taxes would be attributed to people without unnecessary purchase surveillance, how nonresponse is handled, and how restricted balances are reconciled. Resolve funding shortfalls for ongoing services while preserving the no-bailout and individual-consent principles. Voluntary commitments and reserves improve predictability but do not prove sufficient funding.

Community investment funds and commercial activity need genuine sources of capital and net earnings. Private infrastructure financing normally requires repayment from fees, revenue, or public payments. Investment risk, management costs, inflation, and the income surrendered when selling a public asset must be included. No specific asset sale or investment strategy has been adopted.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.

Open question. This is an open question. No substantive policy has been selected.

Currency, banking and financial stability

Money and financial institutions require a coherent stability and accountability framework.

The question. Probable federal currency assignment; monetary/banking architecture not selected.

How to develop it. Identify what currently works, establish any concrete problem and examine evidence, affected people, rights, costs and alternatives before selecting reform. No complete policy for this subject has been adopted.

Read this alongside The Framework and the Working Guide.