Fixed baseline
No rewriting the starting line after a program launches.
Accountability · Chapter 37 & Appendix D
The Ten-Year National Scorecard
The scorecard is the book’s answer to a simple accountability question: what evidence, ten years from enactment, would show that the plan worked, failed, or needs to change?
Appendix D
Ten domains. Fixed baselines. Published targets.
The scorecard is designed to make the plan falsifiable. Baselines are fixed at enactment, target changes require a public process, measurement is separated from implementation, results are disaggregated, leading indicators are published quarterly, and GAO audits data quality.
Independent measure
The implementing agency does not get to grade itself.
Disaggregation
National averages are broken out by income, race and ethnicity, sex, disability, age, geography, rural and tribal status, and family type where data allow.
Quarterly indicators
Leading measures show trouble before a ten-year target is missed.
Rule for Failure
Missing the target creates a statutory duty to say so.
Publish the miss.
Within a defined period, the agency posts a plain-language statement on the standard public performance site.
Diagnose it.
Identify whether the miss resulted from funding, program design, administration, law, or changed external conditions.
Choose a correction.
Recommend expansion, redesign, or termination rather than treating continued funding as the default.
Force consideration.
Congress considers the response within a defined period, with a privileged vote available when a member requests it under the book’s proposed procedure.
Interactive scorecard explorer
Explore the ten domains and their first-edition baselines.
Progress bars below are deliberately not “live scores.” The edition freezes its baselines at September 20, 2026. Each track marks the fixed baseline at the left and the ten-year target at the right. It is directional, not a claim that every metric has a common numerical distance or a live progress score. Later editions can add measured updates without moving the original baseline.
Baseline values and targets are transcribed from Appendix D of the 2026 first edition. Some are point estimates; others are directional standards or require a new official series.
First-edition baselineTen-year target
The Strongest Counterargument & Our Response
Best case against
A national scorecard invites Goodhart’s law: once officials know the metric, they optimize the number rather than the underlying public purpose. Outcomes also move for reasons outside federal control, so a missed target can punish a competent agency for a recession, pandemic, war, or state-level decision.
The author's response
The appendix responds by using multiple measures per domain, independent data producers, disaggregation, data-quality audits, fixed baselines, and a diagnosis step that explicitly distinguishes design, funding, administration, law, and external conditions. A miss triggers explanation and reconsideration, not automatic punishment.
What remains uncertain
Attribution will remain imperfect. Some outcomes take longer than a decade, some official series will change methodology, and lawmakers can still game targets if the public and independent measurers do not defend the original baseline.