America’s Sovereign Wealth Plan

All engines working together

Whole-plan scenario · all nine engines plus spending integrity

Slow growth → Cap debt → Reduce debt

Illustrative timing: five years slowing, five years capped, then paydown. The durations and rates are editable below. The target phases do not force the actual debt line to follow them: progress depends on funded cash flows from the entire plan.

The default uses the proposal’s 3% real growth and 4% inflation, plus explicit tax, spending and refinancing assumptions. Resource expansion, distinct non-grant support and spending savings start at zero because their additional collectible amounts have not been established. Zero means unpriced, not that the engine has no potential. The illustrative package activates them with editable hypothetical amounts.

Grant-centered debt benchmark

Partial benchmark. This earlier model isolates grant and generic cash income. Its funding requirement is not the whole-plan result. Use the integrated engine model above for productivity, resources, savings, investment portfolios and interest feedback.

Corrected financing objective · outstanding debt comes first

What it takes to change the debt path

The starting debt is $30.871T, using the existing model’s end-2025 public-debt anchor. At the selected interest and GDP rates and a baseline primary deficit of 2% of GDP, the first-year requirements are:

A sovereign fund cannot substitute for this fiscal adjustment. It can contribute cash, but the annual deficit and interest bill determine whether outstanding debt rises or falls. These figures solve the model’s budget equation; they are not CBO scores of a spending or tax package. CBO’s February 2026 outlook separately explains the role of primary deficits and interest in debt accumulation.

Earlier borrowing-funded comparison

Earlier financing case — retained for comparison. This scenario borrows to invest. Its $3.03T net financial improvement is not debt repayment. The debt-first model above is the corrected leading approach.

National scale · annual cohorts · 30-year integrated cash flow

Start with the real grant universe

Treasury reports approximately $1.2T of FY2025 grant/cooperative-agreement obligations. Our USAspending API snapshot returns $1,244.87B in Grant_Obligations, including $32.8565B under category_business. Query: fiscal year October 1, 2024–September 30, 2025; award types 02/03/04/05; transaction-level spending_over_time. Amounts may change with revisions. No cash-outlay total was returned.

State, local, nonprofit and other noncommercial funding stays in the national grant budget without invented financial returns. Business classification alone does not prove commercial purpose or annual gross revenue of at least $100,000. Repeat-award funding is excluded from recoveries here; a company’s ten-year clock cannot reset with another grant. No historical entitlement to returns is assumed: new contracts would require new authority.

The same national rules against 30 years of history

Using 1996–2025 stock/Treasury returns, inflation, bill-rate financing proxies and observed GDP/debt, the selected grant/funding rules produce a $4.64T portfolio and $1.59T additional debt: $3.06T net financial improvement. These are counterfactual results, not observed recoveries. Current fiscal controls and forward market stresses do not override historical observations.

Annual grant pools, capitalization, administration and resource receipts are scaled to each historical year’s GDP relative to 2025; reserve targets are scaled to 1995 GDP and then held fixed nominally. This deliberately tests the national policy’s scale against historical markets—it does not claim that the 2025 grant mix, business eligibility, company profits or resource revenues existed throughout 1996–2025. Published forward inflation assumptions are replaced by historical CPI. Data revisions, hindsight, index selection and issuer-cap limitations remain. See the sourced historical benchmark and methodology below.

Download national historical-input replay (CSV)

The fiscal problem

The fiscal problem concerns both the debt stock and the economy supporting it. If debt grows faster than nominal GDP, debt/GDP rises. If GDP grows faster for a sustained period, the ratio can fall while the nominal amount of debt still increases. A national investment portfolio adds an asset side to the analysis; it does not erase the liability side.

Both charts normalize the starting ratio to 100%. Their liability measure is debt held by the public, before deducting SSWF assets. “Gross” in these charts means gross of those assets; it is not Treasury’s broader total federal debt measure, which also includes intragovernmental holdings. [2]

Core assumptions

Every number below is an illustrative assumption or proposed objective unless explicitly attributed to a federal source. No agency has endorsed this package or validated its revenue potential.

The GDP identity uses GDP-price inflation. The current Fed objective uses PCE inflation, a different price measure. These scenarios assume both equal 4% for illustration; legislation would have to specify the target index, horizon and review process.

Chart A · gross debt/GDP

Chart A — gross debt/GDP

Illustrative scenario — not a forecast. At 3% real growth and 4% GDP-price inflation, nominal GDP grows 7.12%. Imposing 2% nominal debt growth produces approximately 100% → 61% → 38% → 23% over 30 years. The calculator retains the lower and higher real-growth cases.

The 2% debt-growth input is a constraint, not an outcome generated by the SSWF. It requires a budget that accounts for interest, spending, revenue and capitalization. Primary balance alone may be insufficient. At 2% debt growth, the nominal debt amount is about 81% larger after 30 years even though the ratio declines.

The September 27 simulation results test the earlier resource-fund model: an integrated primary-balance case reached 82.7%, rather than the imposed 23% path, at year 30. Those historical simulations do not evaluate the expanded SSWF or its new grant, patent and reserve mechanisms.

Chart B · gross, assets & net

Chart B — gross versus net federal financial debt

A separate accelerated illustration. This case imposes 1% nominal debt growth, retains 3% real growth and 4% inflation, and stipulates qualifying SSWF financial assets rising to 20% of GDP by year 30. It does not use Chart A’s 2% debt-growth input.

Negative net debt means those qualifying assets exceed the modeled publicly held debt amount. Treasury securities still exist. The dashboard always shows gross liabilities, qualifying assets and the net measure together.

Here, qualifying assets are unencumbered financial claims on parties outside the consolidated federal government, net of any SSWF borrowing or associated financial liabilities. The chart excludes physical strategic reserves, natural capital, unextracted minerals and funds pledged to restoration obligations. Treasury securities held by the SSWF cannot be counted as an additional external national asset.

The asset path is assumed, not financed by this chart. Its five-year asset/GDP waypoints are 0%, 2%, 5%, 8%, 12%, 16% and 20%, with linear interpolation between them. No claim is made that $150B of annual receipts or a 7% return achieves that path. The new ownership caps, mandatory exits and capped project returns have not been modeled into these assumed assets. An integrated budget would have to fund the assets while meeting the stronger 1% liability-growth constraint; distributions are not subtracted a second time.

AI & productivity

The scenario assumes AI, automation, robotics, advanced computing and capital investment raise real output per worker sufficiently to support sustained 2.5%–3.5% real GDP growth. CBO’s February 2026 baseline averages 1.8% real growth over 2027–2036, so this is a materially stronger scenario, not a conventional baseline. [1]

Manufacturing investment, reshoring, entrepreneurship and innovation could strengthen output. Their size and timing remain uncertain. The plan must also be evaluated under slower growth and recession; it does not book an economic boom or a change of administration as guaranteed debt reduction.

Productivity can rise while some jobs disappear. Broad prosperity is not automatic. Workforce transition, retraining, new occupations, entrepreneurship, potentially shorter average workweeks and changes in labor-force participation matter. A shift of income from labor toward capital could also change the tax base. Implementation costs, energy demand and unequal access may reduce or redistribute gains.

Congress sets the target

Congress does not vote on interest rates meeting by meeting

The Fed would continue to choose the federal-funds target range, the timing of rate adjustments, open-market operations, reserve implementation, liquidity operations and balance-sheet operations authorized by law. It would retain discretion over the monetary response to inflation and employment conditions within its statutory mandate.

Higher inflation is not free debt reduction

In the model, higher inflation raises nominal GDP and the nominal tax base, reduces the real burden of legacy fixed-rate nominal debt, and may raise nominal resource receipts. But Treasury yields can rise, refinancing can increase interest expense, indexed federal spending can increase, wages and contracts can reprice, and purchasing power erodes faster when household income does not keep up. Expectations may become unstable if the change is viewed as fiscal dominance.

The model only works if nominal GDP grows faster than federal debt after accounting for higher interest costs. Raising the target also creates transition and credibility risks; a statutory number does not guarantee that inflation will settle at that number.

The SSWF architecture

United States Super Sovereign Wealth Fund

The SSWF would be the central national asset-building institution. Congress would establish its capitalization, investment mandate, ownership rules, legal accounts, distribution limits and oversight. The National Resource Fund would become one part of this umbrella, alongside public markets, innovation and strategic assets.

Each portfolio would have separate legal accounts, custody records, liabilities, valuation rules and permitted uses. Public reporting would reconcile them into a consolidated statement without counting the same asset, receipt or obligation twice. Commercial investment returns, emergency readiness and ecological restoration require different performance measures.

Broad-market ownership

The Public Markets Fund would invest broadly through neutral, rules-based methods such as market-cap weighting or index-style accounts. Eligibility would reflect law, risk limits, company elections and the ownership cap, no-control rules and exit schedule. A permanent fund does not require permanent ownership of any one company.

SSWF Ownership Exclusion Election

A public company could opt out of direct SSWF equity ownership. The election would stop new direct purchases and start orderly divestment within 90 days. Reentry would require a new company election and compliance with the ownership clock and cooling-off period; it could not reset them.

The election would not erase generally applicable taxes or a limited payment obligation already accepted for a funded project. Aggregate economic exposure would include look-through pooled holdings, warrants and controlled vehicles. Pooled managers could not receive SSWF instructions to control a portfolio company, and indirect holdings could not circumvent company exclusions, caps or mandatory exits. A vehicle unable to comply would be ineligible.

Caps, exclusions and scheduled exits can produce tracking error, transaction costs and foregone returns. The Fund would report those costs; it would not claim to replicate every company in an index or guarantee an unchanged investment return.

Investment governance

The voluntary Santiago Principles provide a governance reference for sovereign funds; they are not a substitute for enforceable domestic law. These proposed caps and remedies would be additional binding requirements. [18]

No ordinary statute can prevent a future Congress from changing it, and institutional independence cannot eliminate misconduct. Disclosure, independent oversight, access to courts and an actual exit obligation matter more than an assurance that officials will behave well.

Private control & a kill switch

No route to government control

• One aggregate cap. Count SSWF holdings and related federal investment programs together, including subfunds, agencies, controlled entities, warrants, convertible rights and look-through pooled interests. The 5% test applies to both issued and fully diluted economic ownership. Agencies cannot split a position to evade it.
• No votes or management powers. No board seats, appointment rights, vetoes, golden shares, voting alliances or directions on hiring, prices, speech or business strategy. Use nonvoting instruments where available; otherwise impose a legally enforceable abstention and no-delegation requirement. If those protections cannot be secured, do not buy.
• No takeover through the back door. No forced equity conversion, controlling collateral, compulsory share transfer or special SSWF seizure power. Ordinary regulation and independently adjudicated fraud recovery remain separate from investing. Existing privately owned intellectual property is not transferred by accepting a limited return agreement.

An exit fixed before money changes hands

The ten-year company clock starts with the first covered equity exposure or covered commercial-support disbursement, whichever comes first. Follow-on awards, refinancing, related entities, intermediaries and new patents cannot restart it. After exit, the five-year cooling-off period covers direct and look-through company exposure; customized index accounts must honor it too.

For commercial support, all related awards form one audited project account. Royalties, grant-equity distributions, buyout or sale proceeds and any overlapping 1% Innovation Dividend count toward the same 2× disbursed-funding ceiling. Additional disbursements can increase the ceiling only to twice the updated total of covered funding; it cannot extend the original company clock. Ordinary taxes, penalties and separately priced public-resource leases are outside this funding-return ceiling.

Grant-created equity or payment rights end when the ceiling or deadline is reached. Equity would be returned to the issuer for cancellation under terms agreed upfront, so the remaining private shareholders regain the economic ownership proportionately; no favored insider receives it. An earlier company buyout would use an independently appraised value capped by the remaining permitted return. Any proceeds above that ceiling would follow the same pre-agreed cancellation or pro-rata return terms. Public-market shares bought at market prices would instead be sold to private buyers by the deadline, with proceeds retained by the Fund; the 2× grant ceiling does not cap unrelated market returns.

Commercial-support contracts would provide automatic expiry if no buyer or repayment is available. Unrecovered support would be reported as a taxpayer loss, not a reason to extend ownership or convert it into control. Fraud claims survive expiry through normal adjudication, without creating a new ownership right.

A kill switch with a defined trigger

1. Prevent and freeze. The independent custodian must reject a transaction that breaches a cap or control restriction. A detected breach automatically freezes new exposure to that company and disables any offending authority. The freeze does not interrupt unrelated public benefits or existing service contracts.
2. Review and unwind. A documented inspector-general finding or court order would require public notice, independent review and cancellation or divestment of the prohibited interest within 90 days. Even an involuntary over-cap position must be corrected; an agency cannot waive the limit.
3. Stop a compromised program. Systemic evasion, repeated violations or political direction would suspend new corporate investments across the affected program. Resumption would require public independent certification that the breach is cured and controls work, subject to judicial review. Existing assets would be managed solely for a lawful, orderly exit.

The authorizing law would give affected companies and shareholders a defined right to seek prompt judicial review and injunctive relief, with due process. Sunset losses, forced-sale costs and any cancellation of valuable public interests must be disclosed. Stronger protection for private control can reduce taxpayer returns; the financial scenarios have not yet priced that tradeoff.

Fewer subsidies, stronger audits

• Keep conditions within the project. Define the funded work, measurable milestones, return terms and audit rights. Do not use funding to impose unrelated speech, political, hiring or state-policy conditions; generally applicable law still applies.
• Review and sunset programs. Review commercial-support programs at least every five years. Renewal would require published evidence of net public benefit and fresh congressional authorization; weak or duplicative programs would be reduced or ended through the budget process.
• Prevent fraud continuously. Verify recipients and beneficial ownership, screen conflicts, use milestone-based disbursement, run risk-based audits, protect whistleblowers and pursue independently established overpayments or fraud with appeal rights. A weak risk score alone is not proof of wrongdoing.
• Count savings once. Publish verified recoveries net of enforcement costs. Distinguish cash recovered, future spending avoided and estimated losses. Do not both capitalize the Fund and claim debt reduction with the same dollar.

GAO distinguishes fraud from the wider category of improper payments and calls for better prevention, detection, recovery and oversight. A loss estimate is not an amount that can automatically be recovered or used to close the deficit. [17]

David Russ’s No Strings Act proposal argues for project-specific conditions and limited, auditable contracts for nongovernmental recipients. This plan adopts that project-boundary principle while retaining a disclosed, capped return for covered commercial support. It does not adopt his entire bill, claim its asserted savings, or imply that he endorses the SSWF or these numerical safeguards. [19]

Returns & compounding

Congress could establish a long-term benchmark assessed over rolling 5-year, 10-year and 20-year periods, with transparent risk, fee and inflation adjustments. This is not a promise of 7% each year and not a guaranteed distribution rate. Compounding the real and inflation factors exactly, (1.07 / 1.04) − 1 is about 2.88% real; an exact 3% real target at 4% inflation would require 7.12% nominal before fees.

Reinvestment would build the portfolio before large distributions begin. The proposal would save qualifying receipts as national assets instead of allowing unrestricted near-term spending. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global provides an example of petroleum receipts supporting a diversified investment portfolio, but it does not establish the feasibility or returns of a U.S. SSWF. [16]

Total return includes unrealized appreciation. It is not all cash available to Treasury. Investment losses, fees, taxes where applicable, custody, storage costs, inflation and withdrawals affect the result.

Capitalization is not free. Borrowed seed capital creates a matching liability. Redirecting receipts already used by the budget can increase borrowing elsewhere. Contributions must be scored alongside the fiscal path, and returns must be compared with the interest saved by reducing borrowing immediately. The accumulation table is not the asset path used in Chart B.

Federal grant participation

The $100,000 threshold applies to the business’s annual gross revenue before expenses. It does not measure profit or the size of the grant. A business at exactly $100,000 qualifies; a business below that revenue threshold falls outside this proposed commercial-grant participation rule. Congress would define the measurement year, aggregation of related businesses and verification requirements.

Eligibility example: a business with $120,000 in annual gross revenue receiving a $10,000 commercial grant is covered. A business with $80,000 in annual gross revenue receiving a $150,000 grant falls below this revenue threshold; the larger award alone does not qualify it.

Secure the interest upfront; collect returns when the agreed trigger occurs. The default is a project-linked royalty or revenue share with no company control. Nonvoting equity is available only if the recipient affirmatively chooses it and independent valuation supports the terms; choosing a non-equity return carries no penalty. Any equity, warrant or conversion right must fit the aggregate 5% cap, ownership clock and no-control rules. The Innovation & Grant Fund would account for these rights collectively for taxpayers, rather than issue individual citizens shares.

The funding agreement would specify the instrument, valuation, participation rate, attributable products or technology, payment trigger, the mandatory ten-year deadline, shared 2× disbursed-funding ceiling and any earlier buyout before acceptance. It would also define reporting, audit rights and enforcement. A profit-based agreement would need allowable-cost, related-party and cost-allocation rules so profits cannot simply be shifted away from the covered project. Payment would be required when those agreed conditions are met, until the shared ceiling or deadline ends the obligation. Contractual royalties and revenue/profit shares cover only the funded project, not unrelated products, intellectual property or business activity. Optional company equity must disclose its wider economic exposure and pass independent project-value and ownership-cap review.

Required participation is not a guaranteed investment return. Successful commercialization can produce recurring payments for the agreed term; the proposal does not assume only one payment. Equity returns depend on dividends or realization of value under the ownership terms. A failed project may produce no commercial income, and equity can lose its value. A long development cycle may leave little or no payment period before the fixed sunset. The government cannot extend the clock to recover a disappointing return. Securing an enforceable public interest does not eliminate taxpayer risk or require immediate repayment merely because funding was awarded.

The grant rule would cover every commercial award amount for businesses meeting the $100,000 annual gross-revenue threshold, with proportionate administration for small grants. Disaster relief, ordinary education aid, entitlement payments and noncommercial assistance would remain outside this commercial participation requirement. Congress would define coverage, exclusions and implementation through new legislation. This is a proposed funding rule, not an existing blanket federal grant requirement. [14] [15]

Participation can discourage applications, complicate private financing, raise product-development costs or shift business activity. Its benefits would need to be weighed against those effects and the cost of valuing and administering public interests.

Conditional returns: a bounded 30-year illustration

For this simulator, each agreement sets a minimum annual profit for the funded project. A payment is possible only when that profit is positive and reaches the hurdle; eligibility is checked again every year. The hurdle is stated in nominal dollars and is separate from the business’s $100,000 annual gross-revenue eligibility rule.

A fixed-rate agreement targets the selected percentage of original grant funding each year. An inflation-linked agreement targets (1 + real spread) × (1 + annual inflation) − 1, floored at zero. Actual payments cannot exceed that year’s project profit or the remaining shared payment ceiling. No unpaid target accrues, and no additional principal repayment is assumed.

The model honors the proposed ten-year company deadline and 2× disbursed-funding ceiling. Related awards must share one audited company account; other covered payments consume the same ceiling. The editable illustration starts with three unrelated recipients, no earlier covered payments, and no overlapping patent-dividend payments. It models contractual cash returns, not equity valuations or the broader national budget.

National Innovation Dividend

National Innovation Dividend

For qualifying patented inventions substantially developed with covered federal financial support, new legislation would establish an illustrative contribution of 1% of attributable U.S. commercial sales when commercialization occurs. It would not assess 1% of the company’s entire revenue.

Covered revenue could include product sales materially covered by the patent, patent licensing revenue, and the attributable portion of bundled products under statutory rules. Filing or receiving a patent alone would not trigger payment. Commercialization would.

Those receipts would flow directly to the proposed National Debt Reduction Account, not also be counted as SSWF contributions. Grant participation and the patent contribution would remain separate destinations but use one audited project ledger, dollar-for-dollar credits and a shared ceiling. Legislation would define allocation across overlapping patents, licensing chains and bundled products; no dollar could be collected twice or counted in both destinations.

Current law: 35 U.S.C. Chapter 18, commonly associated with Bayh-Dole, addresses federally supported inventions, rights and commercialization. NIST administers implementing regulations. The proposed grant-participation rule for businesses with at least $100,000 in annual gross revenue and this 1% sales contribution would require new legislation and careful coordination with that framework, existing licenses, university arrangements and other funding authorities. They are not existing blanket requirements. [14] [15]

The contribution would apply prospectively to new covered support. Its collections share the ten-year company clock and 2× actual-disbursement ceiling with related commercial-support returns, even if patents last longer. Licensing, restructuring or follow-on awards cannot restart the clock. Attribution, the meaning of substantial support, audits, appeals, trade-secret protection and treatment of small firms require legislative detail. A gross-sales contribution can be material for low-margin products and may affect commercialization incentives.

Responsible resource conversion

BLM administers approximately 245 million surface acres and 700 million acres of federal mineral estate. These are not all economically recoverable or legally available for development. Gold, silver, copper, lithium, uranium, rare earths, oil, natural gas, geothermal resources and other critical minerals require distinct geological, economic and legal assessments. No precise total dollar value is assigned to federal mineral wealth here. [5] [6]

Royalties, leases and competitive auctions could supply eligible receipts. New authority could establish production-sharing agreements, carried interests, dividends or other federal economic interests. Federal hardrock claims differ from oil and gas leasing: locatable hardrock minerals under the General Mining Act generally do not pay a federal production royalty. New hardrock royalty or participation rules would require legislation. [7]

Project viability must include extraction and infrastructure costs, environmental obligations, reclamation, bonding, restoration and monitoring. Investable public receipts must then respect existing revenue-sharing requirements and dedicated obligations. This is a net-availability test, not a proposal to deduct every producer cost from every statutory gross royalty.

Global resource investments

The United States should not depend indefinitely on expanding domestic extraction to fund this model. A limited resource allocation could buy minority, noncontrolling interests in mining, energy, royalty, processing and recycling businesses, plus eligible timber, infrastructure, resource funds and foreign resource assets. It could not acquire control of a private operating company. The same aggregate cap, voting prohibition, sunset and anti-circumvention rules apply across portfolios.

Investments would remain subject to sanctions, national-security review, foreign ownership law, environmental and geopolitical risk, and diversification limits. Market price, liquidity, currency exposure and potential liabilities matter. Buying shares does not automatically add productive capacity or guarantee delivery of materials during a crisis.

Environmental protection

Before major extraction, operators would establish funded reclamation and restoration plans backed by full financial assurance based on credible third-party costs. Covered BLM operations already require financial guarantees; this proposal strengthens the broader restoration and reserve architecture rather than treating reclamation as a new idea. [9]

Assurance should be secured before disturbance, updated as costs change and released only after verified performance. Taxpayers should not inherit avoidable abandoned liabilities. Bonding, replanting or restoration elsewhere cannot make every project acceptable; irreversible damage, cumulative impacts and lifecycle emissions remain part of the assessment.

Replant what is disturbed

Replant What Is Disturbed

Use native and ecologically appropriate trees, grasses, shrubs, wetland vegetation, riparian plants and pollinator habitat. Planting must fit soils, climate, water and the original ecosystem. Tree counts alone cannot measure recovery, and naturally open grasslands should not be treated as failed forests.

Where projects are lawful and viable after full obligations, additional funds could support abandoned-mine cleanup, watershed repair, forest recovery, wildfire resilience, wetlands, habitat corridors and contaminated federal land. Legacy remediation elsewhere would supplement, not replace, the operator’s responsibility at the project site.

Restoration Reserve

Legislation could dedicate portions of royalties, lease payments, penalties and restoration assessments. Environmental bonds must remain tied to the obligations they secure: refundable collateral is not freely investable public revenue. Funds pledged to reclamation cannot also support the debt-reduction distribution pool.

The reserve could address legacy sites whose original responsible company no longer exists, while preserving recovery from responsible parties where possible. Ecological condition and completed remediation—not commercial portfolio returns—would measure its performance.

Strategic reserve rules

Investment and national security are different objectives. Congress would set finite reserve targets, eligible holdings, custody, maintenance, release and replenishment rules. Critical minerals, rare earths, uranium, copper and other defense- or infrastructure-critical materials would be assessed for supply vulnerability and substitutability.

Illustrative initial allocation of permitted distributions

For a hypothetical $100B permitted distribution, the initial split is $50B / $25B / $15B / $10B. If all reserve targets are met and statute sends all redirected shares to debt reduction, Treasury receives $100B. If statute instead reinvests those shares, Treasury receives $50B and $50B remains invested. These are allocation examples, not projected income.

Purchased reserves and a debt transfer cannot both be counted as debt paydown. Physical reserves would be reported separately by quantity, quality, location, access restrictions, carrying costs and disclosed valuation method. Chart B excludes them entirely.

Precious metals

The Precious Metals Reserve Fund could hold gold, silver and appropriate platinum-group metals, physically or through qualifying financial instruments with disclosed custody and counterparty risks. Potential purposes include strategic liquidity, diversification, real-asset exposure and emergency financial optionality.

These assets do not guarantee purchasing-power preservation. Prices fluctuate; physical holdings require secure custody, audit and storage, and may generate no operating income. Strategic usefulness and investment return are separate tests.

Existing federal fact: Treasury already reports substantial official U.S. government gold reserves. Sovereign gold ownership is not unprecedented. Existing reserves would not become new SSWF wealth merely through an accounting transfer, and Treasury book values must be distinguished from market valuations. [10]

Petroleum & energy

The existing SPR would not become a speculative investment fund. The proposed portfolio could consider physical petroleum, storage capacity, pipeline and storage infrastructure, and other qualifying energy assets. Emergency release powers, security requirements and operating readiness would remain distinct from commercial return objectives.

How debt is reduced

A growing SSWF does not automatically retire Treasury debt. The proposal needs explicit transfers and a fiscal rule that prevents new commitments from consuming them.

1. Capitalize the SSWF. Use legislated, scored sources and disclose any associated liability.
2. Reinvest a substantial share of returns. Protect liquidity, solvency and long-term purchasing power.
3. Build strategic reserve targets. Allocate only permitted distributions, subject to finite statutory targets.
4. Transfer permitted distributions to the National Debt Reduction Account. Add qualifying innovation-dividend receipts through their separate direct channel.
5. Treasury reduces borrowing or retires publicly held Treasury securities. Use legal financing and redemption mechanisms; do not require the Fed to absorb debt.

Both matter, but they are not the same thing. Under the illustrative 1% and 2% growth constraints, nominal publicly held debt continues to increase. Absolute debt reduction would require enough net transfers and fiscal improvement to exceed the rest of the financing need.

AI & resource development

AI could support geological modeling, satellite analysis, remote sensing, ore-body targeting, autonomous drilling, mine planning and predictive maintenance. It could also assist water management, tailings monitoring, methane detection, environmental monitoring, reclamation planning and reforestation monitoring.

These uses need measured validation, reliable sensors, safety review and independent environmental oversight. Incomplete data, model error and increased development following lower costs can offset the benefits. Technology does not replace tribal consultation or environmental obligations.

Fiscal discipline

Primary balance covers noninterest spending, not the interest bill. A durable plan would slow expenditure growth relative to GDP, limit structural deficits and specify any further primary surplus needed to meet its liability-growth constraint. Commercial-support review and continuous anti-fraud work are proposed above, but no independently scored package of tax or spending changes is supplied here. Neither those reforms nor hoped-for manufacturing growth is assumed to eliminate the budget gap by itself.

For example, a 5% effective interest cost and no other financing adjustments would require a primary surplus of about 3% of starting debt to hold debt growth to 2%. This is arithmetic, not a forecast or a scored budget. SSWF capitalization and reserve purchases can add financing needs.

Distributions reduce borrowing only when they replace financing otherwise required. Spending the same money on new commitments, or borrowing to replace revenue diverted to the Fund, can cancel the benefit.

Separate responsibilities

How the system works

The nine engines

Risks & dependencies

These risks are central to assessing the proposal. The model does not establish that the economic, legal, environmental or governance conditions can be achieved.

Credible evaluation would compare this strategy with simpler alternatives, including direct debt reduction, conventional public investment and leaving assets under current arrangements. A higher expected financial return does not by itself justify risk, government influence or environmental harm.

What would have to change

This package cannot be implemented entirely by executive order. It would require legislation, agency rules, appropriations where applicable, institutional capacity and legal review.

30-year historical backtest

Historical replay · 30 complete calendar years · data snapshot September 30, 2026

What the economy actually did

Keeping debt growth at 2% would have ended 2025 at $6.67T, or 21.6% of observed GDP, versus actual public debt of $30.87T. The $24.20T gap is a difference in ending debt stocks, not an estimate of available savings. A 1% path would end at 16.1%. Neither path is generated by creating the fund.

Grant returns under historical inflation and cash rates

This separate replay disburses the existing three hypothetical grants, totaling $45M, at the start of 1996. It retains their profit hurdles, nominal profit-growth assumptions and low/median/high settings. Grant payments end in 2005; later values reflect only reinvestment at the historical bill-rate proxy. Inflation-linked payments use that year’s December-to-December CPI change. These are not observed grant recipients, success rates or government recoveries, and are not added to the national portfolio above.

The default grant contracts do not recover the initial outlay in any of the three return cases. That may be consistent with a subsidy intended to create wider public benefits, but those benefits are not measured here. Profit shares, failure rates, administrative costs and financing must be evaluated with real cohort data before calling this fund financially self-sustaining.

Method, sources and limits

1. Investment arithmetic: F(t) = F(t−1) × (1 + weighted historical return) × (1 − fee) + contribution. Contributions arrive at year end, so they earn no return that year. The same fixed nominal amount is contributed every year; no inflation escalation, withdrawals, taxes, trading costs beyond the assumed fee, or automatic reserve distributions.
2. Funding comparator: L(t) = L(t−1) × (1 + annual bill-rate proxy + premium) + contribution. Borrowed or diverted receipts increase liabilities by L. Genuinely additional net cash creates no such liability but could instead reduce debt by L. This annual short-rate approximation is not actual Treasury financing or a maturity-matched liability portfolio. A higher premium is a sensitivity test, not a prediction of issuance costs.
3. Historical data: Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern: annual stock, bond and bill data. Stocks include dividends; the ten-year bond series includes price changes and coupons. The bill series is the annual average rate used as a return proxy. Values are taken from the published table, rounded there to two percentage-point decimals.
4. Economy and debt: BEA nominal GDP and real GDP, Treasury debt held by the public, and BLS CPI-U, distributed by FRED. GDP is the average of four quarterly annualized observations; debt is the Q4 end-period stock. Ratios therefore differ from fiscal-year or Q4-GDP ratios. Purchasing power uses December 1995 CPI as its base. CPI is not the GDP deflator or PCE price index.
5. No invented history: resource receipts, grant profitability, patent collections, AI-driven growth, anti-fraud savings, restoration costs and reserve purchases are not observed outcomes of this proposal. No additional income from them is booked. The $150B contribution is assumed, not recovered from an historical revenue series.
6. What this cannot establish: index replication does not test the 5% company cap, nonvoting instruments, ten-year exits, five-year cooling-off or company exclusions. Policy and market feedback, capacity constraints, forced-sale costs and legal implementation remain unmodeled. The data are today’s revised history, not unrevised information available to an investor in each year. No allocation was optimized to this sample; U.S. market selection and one thirty-year period limit generalization.

The earlier calculators remain illustrative forward scenarios. This historical section does not replace their assumptions or validate the complete SSWF policy.

Central scenario

The objective

This is a conceptual balance-sheet framework, not an accounting identity: GDP is an annual flow, while assets and liabilities are stocks. They cannot simply be added in dollars. Private productive assets, sovereign holdings, natural capital and reserves need consistent valuation and consolidation to avoid overlap. Chart B uses only the narrower financial-debt definition above.

America should not manage only a national debt.
It should also manage a national balance sheet.

The proposed strategy is to grow productive capacity; keep liability growth below nominal economic growth; convert finite public assets into permanent financial assets; secure a capped, temporary project return from commercial success financed by taxpayers; invest broadly rather than politically; protect and restore natural capital; accumulate strategic reserves; and use mature sovereign wealth to progressively reduce federal debt.

Private owners keep control. The public claim is limited, temporary and enforceable only within its disclosed terms. A permanent national fund would build assets through successive lawful investments, not permanent control of individual businesses.

Sources and Methodology

Policy revision: September 30, 2026. Ownership and project-return safeguards were added after feedback; the dated economic sources and model inputs below are unchanged. Current-law statements, dated federal projections, policy proposals and model assumptions are distinguished throughout. The CBO comparison retains the February 2026 baseline and links the later tariff update. The September 16 FOMC statement confirms the current 2% goal. Citations support the attributed facts, not government endorsement of this proposal.

Calculation and valuation rules

• Chart A uses the existing calculator: D(t)/Y(t) = 100 × [(1+d)/((1+g)(1+π))]^t, with central g = 3%, π = 4%, d = 2%. Unrounded rates are used; displayed values round to one decimal.
• Chart B uses the same ratio identity with d = 1%. Qualifying financial assets/GDP are stipulated at 0, 2, 5, 8, 12, 16 and 20 percentage points at years 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30; intervening years are linearly interpolated. Net debt/GDP subtracts those asset ratios. There are no probabilities or confidence intervals.
• Chart B excludes physical reserves and natural capital. A future physical-reserve statement would disclose quantities, valuation date, market versus book values, storage costs, liquidity restrictions and any valuation haircuts. Existing gold or SPR transfers would not create new consolidated wealth.
• The financial asset definition excludes intra-federal claims, encumbered restoration balances and duplicate holdings, and nets any SSWF financial liabilities. Assets would require independent valuation, audit and reconciliation to gross federal liabilities.
• The scenario inflation input is GDP-price inflation, assumed equal to the proposed PCE-style objective solely for illustration. The two price measures can diverge.
• The separate accumulation table uses F(t) = C × ((1+r)^t−1)/r, with C = $150B at each year end, zero initial balance, fixed nominal contributions, constant returns and no fees or withdrawals. At r = 0, F(t) = C × t. Its results do not generate Chart B’s asset assumptions.
• The illustrative return benchmark adds 3 percentage points to inflation. At 4% inflation, a 7% nominal return is about 2.88% real before fees. Neither this target nor the 50/25/15/10 distribution split establishes a sustainable annual payout rate.
• Distributions are allocated only after required reinvestment and legal obligations. Reserve purchases, reinvestment and Treasury transfers are separate uses of cash. A return cannot simultaneously be reinvested and spent, and innovation-dividend receipts cannot simultaneously fund the SSWF and retire debt.
• The earlier resource-fund simulations linked above are a historical stress test. The broader SSWF, company elections, grant interests, patent contribution and reserve rules have not yet been integrated into that stochastic model. Neither model prices the new 5% cap, ten-year exits, cooling-off period, 2× commercial-support ceiling, program sunsets or anti-fraud proposals. Their effects on returns, costs and revenues require new valuation and fiscal scoring; the existing charts are not evidence that the revised plan reaches their assumed results.

A full feasibility study would require a scored fiscal budget; refinancing, interest and indexation paths; independently supported revenue and grant valuations; asset allocation, fees and drawdowns; labor and distributional effects; environmental and tribal assessments; and legally enforceable governance. This page does not assume those unresolved conditions away.

1. CBO · The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036February 2026 baseline: debt held by the public, deficits and real growth. These are dated official projections, not measured current balances.
2. Treasury · Debt to the PennyDistinguishes debt held by the public from intragovernmental holdings and total public debt outstanding.
3. Federal Reserve Act · Section 2AExisting statutory monetary-policy objectives; no numerical 2% or 4% target appears in this section.
4. Federal Reserve · FOMC statement, September 16, 2026The statement continues to identify 2% as the Committee’s goal. The proposed congressional 4% target is not current policy.
5. BLM · About UsApproximately 245 million surface acres and 700 million mineral-estate acres. Acreage is not a valuation of economically recoverable resources.
6. USGS · Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026Mineral production, reserves and resources; resource inventories do not establish investable federal revenue.
7. GAO · Mining Operations OversightFederal mining systems, royalty differences, reclamation and abandoned-mine oversight.
8. Interior / ONRR · FY2025 revenue disbursementsReported $14.61B across recipients, including $5.01B to Treasury. This is existing revenue, not a forecast of additional SSWF receipts.
9. BLM · Mining and Minerals: BondingExisting financial guarantees for covered mining operations; the expanded restoration architecture here is proposed.
10. Treasury · Status Report of U.S. Government Gold ReserveExisting sovereign gold holdings and reporting. Official book values and market values must not be treated as interchangeable.
11. CBO · Updated Budgetary Projections of Tariffs, August 20, 2026A subsequent update to the February baseline. The dated comparison in this page does not incorporate every later policy change.
12. Federal Reserve · Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy StrategyCurrent strategy statement: 2% longer-run inflation measured with the PCE price index and the Fed’s policy framework.
13. DOE · Strategic Petroleum ReserveEmergency energy-security purpose and approximately 714 million barrels of authorized storage capacity, not current inventory.
14. U.S. Code · 35 U.S.C. Chapter 18Current law governing patent rights in federally assisted inventions, including commercialization objectives and disposition of rights.
15. NIST · Bayh-Dole Regulations for Federally Funded InventionsFederal implementation and regulatory context. The proposed grant participation and 1% sales contribution are additional legislative proposals.
16. Norges Bank Investment Management · About the fundNorway’s Government Pension Fund Global illustrates conversion of petroleum receipts into a diversified portfolio. Its legal structure and economics differ from this proposal.
17. GAO · Payment Integrity: Significant Improvements Are Needed to Address Improper Payments and FraudSeptember 10, 2024 testimony: prevention, detection, recovery and congressional oversight; improper payments and fraud are not interchangeable. Estimated losses are not a guaranteed source of budget savings.
18. IFSWF · Santiago PrinciplesVoluntary sovereign-fund governance principles support transparency, accountability and prudent investment. The binding caps, exit rules and remedies proposed here go beyond this voluntary framework.
19. David Russ · Proposed Bills: No Strings ActCampaign proposal advocating project-specific funding conditions and limited, auditable contracts. This comparison does not establish endorsement of DutyStation’s plan, adoption of his bill, or independently scored savings.

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