The Federal Debt and the Federal Budget Amendment

A Story to Start

Every year, before a single dollar reaches a veteran’s hospital, a school district, or a border inspector, the federal government writes a check for roughly one trillion dollars. Not for anything the public voted for or received, but simply to cover the interest on money already spent. In 2025 that interest bill reached $970 billion, the largest share of the economy it has consumed since 1991. By 2026 it crossed $1 trillion for the first time in American history. It is now growing faster than defense spending, faster than Medicare, faster than any category of the federal budget except itself.

Picture a household that owes so much in credit card interest that the payment alone exceeds what it spends on groceries. That household is not permitted to also take out a new loan for home renovations without first answering an uncomfortable question: how, exactly, do you intend to pay this back? This book asks the federal government to build a fourth branch, three new independent agencies, and a permanent income floor for every citizen. It owes the reader the same uncomfortable question, asked honestly and answered directly, with a number attached, not just a promise.

I. The Honest Question: How Do We Pay for This?

As of mid-2026, the United States carries a national debt of $39.28 trillion. Roughly $115,000 for every living American, adult and child alike. The federal deficit for fiscal year 2026 alone is projected at $1.9 trillion, or 5.8 percent of GDP, nearly double the 3.8 percent average of the last fifty years. Debt held by the public stood at 101 percent of GDP in 2026 and is projected to reach 120 percent by 2036, a level the country has not seen since the height of the Second World War; except that in 1946, the debt was falling. Today it is climbing, not counting increased military spending, on autopilot.

A book that proposes universal healthcare, universal basic income, free education, and four new constitutional offices cannot simply gesture at referendum rights and call the financing question answered. This chapter, and the amendment that closes it, is the honest attempt to answer that question with real figures, real tradeoffs, and a real constitutional mechanism for fiscal discipline, not just an argument that the debt matters.

II. Two Kinds of Deficit

Not all borrowing is the same, and this Article should not pretend otherwise. A dollar borrowed to educate a child who will spend forty years paying taxes on a larger income than she would have earned without that education is not the same as a dollar borrowed to cover a tax cut for an already-profitable corporation, or a dollar lost to a defense contractor who overbilled the Pentagon because no one was independently watching. The first is an investment with a return. The others are simply debt.

The distinction matters because it is the difference between borrowing that builds the country’s future earning capacity and borrowing that just moves the bill to the next generation with nothing to show for it. The Office of Humanity’s healthcare and education provisions fall on the investment side of that line. The waste, fraud, and self-dealing that motivate independent oversight fall entirely on the other side. Inspector general investigations have already identified billions of dollars in fraud, waste, and abuse under a system that lacks real institutional independence.

III. What This Actually Costs and What Already Pays for It

This book owes the reader a number, not just a mechanism. Here is the honest, order-of-magnitude estimate, built from the same kind of external cost studies Congress itself relies on when it scores comparable proposals, not a precise federal score, which only the Congressional Budget Office can ultimately produce once implementing legislation exists, but a defensible range.

The Office of Humanity is, by a wide margin, the dominant cost. It combines a Universal Basic Income of $1,500 per month for every American, from birth to death, not adults only, with a national healthcare system covering physician, hospital, prescription drug, dental, and vision care, and its other domains, including housing assistance and retirement security. The gross program cost of the Office of Humanity, fully phased in, runs to roughly $11.2 trillion per year. That figure is not the net new burden on the federal budget, however: it substantially overlaps with programs the federal government already funds. Crediting the actual cost of the nine federal programs the Office of Humanity absorbs or supersedes, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits, SNAP, Supplemental Security Income, housing assistance, child nutrition programs, and the Children's Health Insurance Program, together costing roughly $3.7 trillion per year today, and crediting a further $1.1 trillion per year in healthcare cost-control savings from Medicare-anchored provider reimbursement, direct drug price negotiation, and capped cost-sharing, puts the realistic net new federal commitment at roughly $6.4 trillion per year, the figure used throughout Chapter 21, which itemizes this calculation in full.

New regulatory agencies of the kind proposed to police product, environmental, and data safety are, by comparison, a rounding error. The FDA, EPA, and Consumer Product Safety Commission functions consolidated into the Office of Public Safety today cost roughly $16 to $17 billion per year combined; an expanded mandate with mandatory premarket safety review could reasonably run $25 to $40 billion per year once fully staffed. The Data Protection Authority has no exact federal precedent, but comparable regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, operate on budgets in the several-hundred-million to roughly one-billion-dollar range; a new authority with a national data-privacy mandate might reasonably run $2 to $4 billion per year at full operation. Combined, the two new safety agencies add tens of billions of dollars a year to the federal budget: real money, but a fraction of one percent of the Office of Humanity’s cost, and well within reach of ordinary regulatory penalty structures.

Education is no longer a separate case. The Office of Humanity's national land value tax, calibrated to raise roughly $450 billion a year, is ordinary Trust Fund revenue, available to help fund healthcare, income support, housing, labor, retirement, or the instruction and tutoring resources guaranteed elsewhere in this Constitution, not a dedicated charge reserved for education alone. Because Congress is required to revisit every revenue stream's rate against actual need every five years, and because the cost of a mature, fully built AI-delivered instruction system is expected to fall well below its initial build-out cost, education's share of that $450 billion is likely to shrink over time, freeing revenue for needs the Office has not yet addressed, potentially including phasing out the modest healthcare per-visit charge and deductible or raising the Universal Basic Income payment above its statutory floor. This is, again, a case where a number is more likely to move in the government's favor than against it. A further refinement of that tax ties a tripled rate to second homes and to rental units with verified short-term-rental activity, not to lease length, projected to add roughly $40 billion a year more on top of that base, without raising the rate paid by any primary residence or any tenant on an ordinary long-term lease.

A program of this scale requires financing sized to match it, and this book does not leave that financing to a future Congress to invent. Chapter 21 itemizes ten dedicated revenue mechanisms, a modernized national sales tax, a minimum progressive income tax rate floor, an employer healthcare contribution extended to employees and gig workers alike, a national land value tax, equal taxation of capital gains and carried interest, taxation of investment gains at death, a decennial mark-to-market on billionaire wealth, a phase-down of agricultural and fossil-fuel subsidies, a carbon fee, and an automation transition contribution, that together raise an estimated $11.2 trillion a year in new federal revenue against$7.6 trillion a year in new program costs, turning today's deficit into a projected surplus. That is a specific, sourced, and defensible answer to the financing question, not a promise deferred to the future. The Federal Budget Amendment below does not do the work of raising that revenue; that work is done elsewhere in this Constitution. What it does is enforce the discipline that keeps the number honest once it is enacted: a structural deficit cap, mandatory program review, an automatic sunset on tax expenditures, and a citizen-enforceable backstop if Congress lets the numbers drift.

IV. A New Federal Budget

The reforms below are no longer aspirations. They are drafted as Sections of the Federal Budget Amendment that follows: a structural balance rule capping the annual structural deficit at 2.5 percent of GDP (tighter than the European Union’s 3 percent Stability and Growth Pact benchmark), phased in from the current 5.8 percent over five years; zero-based review of every federal program on a five-year cycle; a five-year sunset on federal tax expenditures, with defense procurement contracts, agricultural subsidies, and fossil fuel tax credits named as the first tranche subject to review; and an end to debt-ceiling brinkmanship, replaced by automatic borrowing authority tied to enacted appropriations, checked by a citizen referendum mechanism built directly into this amendment rather than by Congress threatening to default on its own obligations.

The enforcement design behind these numbers matters as much as the numbers themselves. A court asked to enforce this Article is never asked to pick which program absorbs a cut or to referee a live economic argument about the true size of the deficit; the formulas in Sections 3 and 6 already make that choice, uniformly and without exception. What a court can compel is narrower and more concrete: that the Congressional Budget Office certify the deficit using the locked methodology this Article requires, that a sequestration schedule be calculated and transmitted on time, and that a Fiscal Correction Measure stay within the tax and spending ranges Congress has already authorized by law rather than becoming a vehicle for an unelected office to write new law. A budget rule nobody can enforce is not a budget rule. This one is built to be enforced by judges doing what judges actually do, checking whether a fixed rule was followed, not by judges running the federal budget themselves.

V. The Cost of Waiting

The instinctive political response to a $40 trillion debt is to delay everything until the debt is fixed. That instinct has it backwards. Every year of delay compounds the interest bill and shrinks the room available for anything else, including the fiscal reforms this chapter proposes. The choice is not between financing the 8 HARPS and addressing the debt. Both problems have the same root cause: a federal budget process with no enforceable discipline, run by a government widely and correctly regarded as unaccountable to the people it serves. Fix that, and both problems get smaller. Leave it as it is, and both get worse together.

PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

Article [___] — The Federal Budget Amendment

Section 1. Definitions. For purposes of this Article:

(a) “Fiscal year” means the annual accounting period used by the government of the United States for federal budgeting purposes, currently October 1 through September 30, or such other twelve-month period as Congress may by law establish, provided that no change to the fiscal year may be used to shorten, lengthen, or otherwise manipulate a measurement period under this Article.

(b) “Gross domestic product” or “GDP” means the nominal gross domestic product of the United States for the applicable fiscal year, calculated using the same source data and methodology employed by the Bureau of Economic Analysis as of the ratification of this Article; if that methodology is later revised, calculations under this Article shall continue on a basis consistent with the methodology in effect at ratification, restated using the Bureau of Economic Analysis's own published reconciliation between the prior and revised methodology, until Congress by law adopts the revised methodology for purposes of this Article.

(c) “Structural deficit” means the federal budget deficit for a fiscal year, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product for that fiscal year and adjusted to remove the estimated effects of the business cycle, as certified annually by the Congressional Budget Office using the cyclically adjusted budget balance methodology it employs as of the ratification of this Article, or any successor methodology adopted under subsection (b).

(d) “Cyclical deficit” means that portion of the federal budget deficit for a fiscal year attributable to the estimated effects of the business cycle, as certified under subsection (c), and excluded from the structural deficit calculation under this Article.

(e) “Appropriations enacted into law” means any budget authority provided by an Act of Congress presented to and signed by the President, or enacted over the President's veto, including a full-year appropriations Act, a continuing resolution, and any other measure providing budget authority for any period, however brief.

(f) “Tax expenditure” means any federal tax credit, deduction, exclusion, exemption, deferral, or preferential rate that reduces federal revenue relative to the baseline tax system defined in Section 4(a).

(g) “Affirmative reauthorization vote” means a recorded vote of both Houses of Congress, taken separately from the vote on any other legislation, in which a Constitutional majority of each House votes to continue a program, office, or agency reviewed under Section 3.

(h) “Non-exempt spending” means all federal spending other than the payments Congress has exempted from a reduction under Section 6.

(i) “Corrective legislation” means an Act of Congress that, by itself and without relying on any subsequent appropriation or other implementing action, reduces the projected structural deficit by an amount sufficient to restore compliance with the applicable limit under Section 2, as certified by the office established under Section 7.

(j) “Compliance level” means, with respect to a Fiscal Correction Measure approved under Section 5, the structural deficit outcome that Measure is certified to produce, as certified under Section 5.

Section 2. Structural Fiscal Balance.

(a) Beginning five years after ratification, the structural deficit shall not exceed two and one-half percent of gross domestic product for any fiscal year.

(b) For each of the five fiscal years following ratification, the maximum permissible structural deficit for that year, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product, equals the structural deficit certified for the fiscal year of ratification (the “baseline level”), minus the product of the number of complete fiscal years elapsed since ratification and one-fifth of the difference between the baseline level and two and one-half percent of gross domestic product; no fiscal year's maximum permissible structural deficit under this subsection may exceed the prior fiscal year's maximum permissible structural deficit. This subsection is self-executing and requires no further action by Congress to take effect.

(c) Nothing in this Section limits the cyclical deficit, which is excluded from the structural deficit calculation under Section 1(c).

(d) If the actual structural deficit for any fiscal year during the transition period established under subsection (b) exceeds the maximum permissible structural deficit calculated for that year, the excess shall be added to the reduction required for the following fiscal year under subsection (b), without extending the five-year transition period established by subsection (a).

Section 3. Zero-Based Program Review.

Every federal program, office, and agency shall be subject to a full justification review not less often than once every five years, conducted by the relevant Congressional committees of jurisdiction. A program that does not receive an affirmative reauthorization vote, as defined in Section 1(g), by the end of its review cycle shall have its funding reduced by twenty-five percent of its funding level at the start of that review cycle in the following fiscal year, and by an additional twenty-five percent of that same baseline funding level in each subsequent fiscal year in which reauthorization continues to be withheld, until the program's funding is reduced to zero or the program is reauthorized or terminated, whichever occurs first. This reduction is self-executing and applies notwithstanding any appropriation enacted for that program, office, or agency in excess of the amount permitted under this Section.

Section 4. Tax Expenditure Sunset.

(a) For purposes of this Article, the “baseline tax system” is an income tax applied to all realized gains, all compensation for labor, and all business profits net of the ordinary and necessary costs of earning that income, at rates and brackets set by Congress, without regard to the source, use, or type of taxpayer engaged in the activity taxed. The baseline tax system does not include, and this Section does not apply to, the standard deduction, the personal exemption or its successor, the income floor below which no tax is owed, ordinary cost recovery for the wear, depletion, or obsolescence of property used in a trade or business, the accounting methods by which income and expenses are matched to the taxable year in which they are economically incurred, or any other rule that defines the tax base itself rather than granting a preference within it. For purposes of this subsection, the terms “realized,” “ordinary and necessary costs,” and “ordinary cost recovery” carry the meaning given those terms under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and its implementing regulations as of the ratification of this Article, and any question of whether a specific provision falls within the baseline tax system as defined in this subsection, or instead grants a preference within it, is resolved by reference to that meaning.

(b) Every tax expenditure, as defined in Section 1(f), enacted or renewed after the ratification of this Article shall expire automatically five years after enactment unless affirmatively renewed by law, through the same bicameral passage and presentment to the President required for its original enactment, voted on specifically by its own terms and not as part of a larger measure addressing unrelated subject matter.

(c) Within one year of ratification, Congress shall apply the review and sunset requirement of this Section to all existing tax expenditures related to defense procurement contracts, agricultural commodity and crop insurance subsidies, and fossil fuel production and extraction tax credits, notwithstanding the date such expenditures were originally enacted. If Congress fails to do so within that year, each such existing tax expenditure expires automatically at the end of that year.

(d) Congress may by law extend the sunset requirement of this Section to additional categories of existing tax expenditures on a schedule of its choosing, and may by law establish a longer sunset period, not to exceed ten years, for a specific category of tax expenditure supporting capital-intensive, long-horizon investment, upon a finding, subject to judicial review under Section 8, that the five-year period established in subsection (b) is impractical for that category.

(e) Notwithstanding subsections (b) and (c), each tax expenditure and direct spending program that constitutes an agricultural commodity or crop insurance subsidy, or a production, extraction, or exploration tax credit or subsidy for fossil fuels, in effect on the date of ratification, shall be reduced by ten percent of its funding or revenue-cost level, measured as of the date of ratification, in each fiscal year for the first five fiscal years following ratification, for a cumulative reduction of not less than fifty percent of that baseline level by the end of the fifth fiscal year. This reduction is self-executing and applies notwithstanding any appropriation, reauthorization, or renewal enacted in excess of the amount permitted under this subsection. Congress may by law reduce the remaining funding or revenue-cost level further, or eliminate it entirely, but may not restore funding or revenue cost above the level permitted under this subsection for the applicable fiscal year, except upon a finding, subject to judicial review under Section 8, of a bona fide national security or food-supply emergency, and then only for the duration of that emergency. Congress may by law direct that savings realized under this subsection be applied to transition assistance for affected farmers, ranchers, or displaced fossil-fuel-sector workers, to disaster and crop-loss risk programs that do not themselves constitute a commodity subsidy, or to general deficit reduction. For purposes of this subsection, “agricultural commodity or crop insurance subsidy” means a subsidy of a type authorized under the Agricultural Act then most recently enacted or the Federal Crop Insurance Act, and “production, extraction, or exploration tax credit or subsidy for fossil fuels” means a credit, deduction, or subsidy of a type identified as such in the Internal Revenue Code and its implementing regulations, in each case as of the ratification of this Article. A finding of a bona fide national security or food-supply emergency under this subsection must identify the emergency with the specificity required for a declaration under the National Emergencies Act or an equivalent statute then in effect, and expires one year after it is made unless renewed through the same finding process.

Section 5. Borrowing Authority and Public Referendum.

(a) The authority of the United States to borrow money on the credit of the United States automatically extends, without regard to any statutory debt limit, dollar amount, or other numerical ceiling, to cover all appropriations enacted into law. No law may prohibit, condition, or delay the borrowing of money necessary to pay any obligation arising from appropriations enacted into law, including obligations arising during a lapse in full-year appropriations, under a continuing resolution, or during any period in which Congress has not enacted a full-year appropriations Act for the fiscal year in progress; during any such period, the borrowing authority established by this subsection extends to the funding levels most recently enacted into law for the affected accounts, applied on an annualized basis, until superseded by a full-year appropriations Act.

(b) If the Congressional Budget Office certifies for two consecutive fiscal years that Congress has failed to comply with the structural deficit target established under Section 2, the registered voters of the United States have the right to compel a national referendum on a “Fiscal Correction Measure” (a specific, self-contained legislative package that reduces the structural deficit by a stated amount sufficient to restore compliance with Section 2) through the process established in this Section.

(c) A Fiscal Correction Measure referendum may be initiated by a petition signed by not less than eight percent of persons registered to vote in federal elections, with signatories from not fewer than thirty states, valid for twelve months from the opening of the petition drive. Signatures shall be gathered and verified by the chief election official of each state in which they are gathered, using that state's existing procedures for verifying signatures on federal ballot petitions, and consolidated and certified by the office established under Section 7.

(d) Upon certification of a valid petition, Congress has one hundred twenty days to enact corrective legislation, as defined in Section 1(i). If Congress fails to do so, a national referendum shall be held on the next regularly scheduled federal election day, presenting the voters with a specific Fiscal Correction Measure prepared by the office established under Section 7, including an impartial fiscal analysis of its effects and of the compliance level it would produce.

(e) A Fiscal Correction Measure passes upon receiving both the affirmative votes of not less than fifty-five percent of the valid votes cast nationally and affirmative majorities of the valid votes cast in not fewer than twenty-six states, a dual requirement intended to ensure that a Fiscal Correction Measure commands both a national supermajority and support distributed across a broad cross-section of states, rather than a measure approved solely by the most populous states or a narrow regional majority.

(f) A Fiscal Correction Measure approved under this Section is self-executing, takes effect with the full force and effect of an Act of Congress upon certification of the referendum results, and preempts and supersedes any conflicting provision of federal law. It may thereafter be amended or repealed only by Congress, and only in a manner that does not cause federal finances to fall below the compliance level, as defined in Section 1(j).

(g) Content Limitation. A Fiscal Correction Measure prepared under this Section may consist only of: (i) adjustments, within any range or band Congress has by law established for that purpose, to the rate, bracket, or base of a revenue measure Congress has previously enacted; (ii) a uniform percentage reduction to non-exempt spending, calculated on the same basis as Section 6(a); and (iii) any combination of the foregoing sufficient to produce the compliance level required by subsection (d). A Fiscal Correction Measure may not create a new tax, program, or spending category, may not repeal, restructure, or amend any right, benefit, or program established elsewhere in this Constitution, and may not alter any rate, bracket, or base outside a range Congress has by law pre-established for that purpose. The office established under Section 7 shall prepare the Fiscal Correction Measure by selecting values within the ranges and formulas this subsection permits, and that preparation is a ministerial application of those pre-established ranges and formulas, not an exercise of legislative discretion.

Section 6. Enforcement.

(a) If the structural deficit exceeds the limit established under Section 2(a), or the maximum permissible structural deficit for the applicable transition year established under Section 2(b), for two consecutive fiscal years, and Congress has not enacted corrective legislation, as defined in Section 1(i), within one hundred eighty days of the Congressional Budget Office's certification of the second such fiscal year, the office established under Section 7 shall calculate a uniform percentage reduction, applied identically across all non-exempt spending accounts, sufficient to restore projected compliance with Section 2 for the following fiscal year.

(b) Upon completing that calculation, the office established under Section 7 shall transmit an itemized sequestration schedule to the President and the Secretary of the Treasury. The President and the Secretary of the Treasury shall implement that schedule ministerially, without discretion to alter, delay, or selectively apply the reductions it contains, not later than thirty days after its transmittal.

(c) Congress may by law exempt payments of principal and interest on the federal debt, Social Security benefits, and any right or benefit established as constitutionally protected elsewhere in this Constitution from the reduction required by this Section; the uniform percentage required by subsection (a) shall be calculated across whatever accounts remain non-exempt so as to still achieve compliance with Section 2. Absent such an exemption, no account is exempt from the reduction required by this Section.

(d) A reduction implemented under this Section remains in effect only for the fiscal year for which it was calculated. The calculation required by subsection (a) shall be performed anew, based on the certification for each subsequent fiscal year, for as long as noncompliance with Section 2 continues.

(e) Conflicts with Individualized Legal Duties. A reduction under this Section reduces the funding level available to an account; it does not repeal, suspend, or excuse compliance with any individualized statutory duty, entitlement, contractual obligation, or court order that account funds. If funding remaining in an account after a reduction under this Section is insufficient to satisfy such an individualized duty, the officer administering that account shall satisfy that duty first from the funds that remain, and any resulting shortfall in that account’s other spending shall be carried forward and added to the reduction otherwise calculated for that account under subsection (a) for the following fiscal year, allocated across the remaining non-exempt accounts on the same basis as subsection (a). This subsection does not create any new individualized duty, entitlement, or obligation; it governs only the order of operations when a reduction required by this Section intersects with a duty that otherwise exists.

Section 7. Administration.

(a) Congress shall establish by law a nonpartisan federal budget office, which may be the existing Congressional Budget Office or a successor agency, to certify structural deficit calculations, prepare Fiscal Correction Measure analyses, calculate sequestration schedules under Section 6, and report annually to Congress and the public on compliance with this Article.

(b) Until Congress establishes that office by law, the Congressional Budget Office shall perform all functions this Article assigns to the office, through its Director and staff as constituted under law as of the ratification of this Article.

(c) Members and senior staff of the office established under this Section shall be selected through a nonpartisan process established by law, designed to ensure that no single political party controls a majority of appointments, and senior staff shall be removable only for cause. Until Congress establishes that process by law, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office shall continue to be selected and removable as provided by law as of the ratification of this Article.

Section 8. Judicial Review.

(a) The obligations established by this Article are judicially enforceable. Standing to seek relief under this Section is granted to:

(i) any Member of Congress whose vote or institutional prerogative under this Article is directly nullified by an alleged violation;

(ii) the President;

(iii) the attorney general of any state, to enforce an obligation under this Article that directly affects that state’s receipt of federal funds; and

(iv) any person seeking to compel a ministerial duty defined in subsection (c), including any taxpayer or beneficiary of a program directly and adversely affected by a failure to perform that ministerial duty. Standing under clause (iv) is limited to compelling the specific ministerial duty at issue and does not extend to challenging the substantive policy content of any Fiscal Correction Measure, sequestration schedule, or funding decision made in compliance with this Article.

(b) An action under this Section shall be heard and determined by a three-judge district court, convened in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia or in the United States District Court for the district in which the plaintiff resides or is headquartered, without regard to any statutory limitation on when a three-judge court may be convened. The court shall advance the action on the docket and expedite its disposition. A party aggrieved by the judgment of a three-judge district court convened under this subsection may appeal directly to the Supreme Court of the United States as of right.

(i) the Congressional Budget Office’s certification of the structural deficit, the cyclical deficit, and compliance under Sections 1 and 2, calculated using the methodology this Article requires;

(ii) the calculation and transmittal of a sequestration schedule under Section 6(a) and (b);

(iii) the implementation of a sequestration schedule as calculated, by the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, under Section 6(b);

(iv) the consolidation, certification, and processing of a Fiscal Correction Measure petition and referendum under Section 5(c) and (d), and the preparation of a Fiscal Correction Measure within the content limitation established by Section 5(g); and

(v) the reduction of funding for a program under Section 3 or a tax expenditure under Section 4 as calculated by those Sections. A court in an action under this Section may grant declaratory relief, injunctive relief, and a writ of mandamus compelling performance of a ministerial duty defined in this subsection. No doctrine of ripeness, mootness, or political question bars an otherwise timely action brought under this Section to compel a ministerial duty defined in this subsection.

(d) Judicial review of a certification, calculation, or determination the office established under Section 7 makes in the performance of a ministerial duty defined in subsection (c) is limited to whether the office applied the methodology, formula, or content limitation this Article requires. A court may not substitute its own economic, fiscal, or policy judgment for a determination the office made within that required methodology, formula, or content limitation, and shall set aside such a certification, calculation, or determination only upon finding manifest error, a clear and material miscalculation, or a departure from the methodology, formula, or content limitation this Article requires.

Section 9. Transition.

Congress shall enact implementing legislation within two years of ratification. This Article is self-executing as to: the definitions established in Section 1; the structural deficit transition schedule established in Section 2(b); the automatic borrowing authority established in Section 5(a); the referendum right established in Section 5; the enforcement mechanism established in Section 6; and the default administrative arrangements established in Section 7(b) and (c); and the rule of construction established in Section 11. No provision of this Article that is self-executing under this Section requires implementing legislation to take effect, and the absence of implementing legislation is not a defense to an action brought under Section 8.

Section 10. Severability.

If any provision of this Article, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the remainder of this Article, and the application of its remaining provisions to any other person or circumstance, is not affected. If Section 5(b) through (f) is held invalid in whole or in part, Sections 1 through 4 and 6 through 11 of this Article remain in full force and effect, and the structural deficit limit established under Section 2 remains enforceable under Sections 6 and 8 without regard to the referendum mechanism established by Section 5.

Section 11. Relation to Prior Doctrine.

This Article takes effect and operates by its own force upon ratification, as an exercise of the amending power under Article V of this Constitution. To the extent any provision of this Article is inconsistent with a rule of construction, justiciability, or standing that would otherwise apply under this Constitution as it existed before ratification, this Article supersedes that prior rule, but only to the extent of the actual inconsistency and only for purposes of the rights of action, standing, and remedies this Article expressly creates in Section 8. This Article does not abrogate Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement for any claim other than one brought to compel a ministerial duty defined in Section 8(c), and does not confer jurisdiction over, or authorize any court to resolve, a generalized policy disagreement over fiscal, budgetary, or economic matters this Article commits to Congress, the office established under Section 7, or the voters acting under Section 5. The assignment of the certification and calculation functions established by Sections 6 and 7 to the office established under Section 7, and of only ministerial implementation to the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, is a valid exercise of the amending power under Article V notwithstanding any separation-of-powers limitation, including the limitation articulated in Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986), that would otherwise apply to an identical assignment made by ordinary legislation rather than by constitutional amendment.