An options library: these pages compare approaches without selecting one. Nothing here is an approved Maha position, a personal commitment, or a declaration of candidacy.

How we assess costs and distributional effects

Name the payer, time horizon, price year and baseline. Separate federal budget effects, state/local costs, household costs and total social effects. Moving an expense to another payer is not a saving.

An independent official score, an analyst scenario and an uncosted option are different things. Every new brief in this sprint is uncosted. No illustrative estimate is represented as CBO’s assessment or a funding commitment.

Assess who benefits and who bears costs, uncertainty and transition burdens. Distributional analysis describes impacts; it must not become demographic targeting, political profiling or different substantive promises for different readers.