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Component-Level Adoption Guide for Each of the Eight Platform Pillars

v1.0 · Created May 7, 2026 for v3.2.10 (closes Milestone C2 final gap from the What Done Looks Like decision framework) · Jason Robertson · Ohio · 2026 · Updated May 10, 2026 for v3.7.15 (Pillar 3 section refreshed to reflect v3.7.14 architecture expansion) · Updated May 10, 2026 for v3.7.19 (Pillar 8 canonical split documented)

# Purpose

This document provides an adoption guide for each of the eight platform pillars, intended for advocacy organizations, legislators, think tanks, and other policy practitioners who may want to borrow specific pillars without adopting the platform as a whole. Each pillar's section identifies what the pillar provides, what it depends on within the platform, what it does NOT depend on (and can be borrowed without), what an organization adopting the pillar alone would need to handle, and which advocacy ecosystems align naturally with the pillar's policy commitments.

The platform is designed to be internally coherent, with mechanisms that work together better than any subset works alone. But the platform is also designed to be modular: each pillar has self-contained substantiation, contribution rate canonicalization, and benefit specification, so that components can be borrowed by parties with different scope ambitions. This document makes that modularity explicit. Closes the Milestone C2 final gap identified in 05_What_Done_Looks_Like.docx (the platform's decision framework for endpoint criteria).

# How to Read This Document

Each pillar section follows the same structure. The What This Pillar Provides paragraph describes the policy commitment in concrete terms, including contribution rate, benefit specification, and target population. The Dependencies on Other Platform Elements paragraph identifies which other pillars or platform-canonical decisions a borrowing organization would inherit if they adopted the pillar; some dependencies are hard (the pillar genuinely cannot be borrowed without them) and some are soft (the pillar works better with them but can stand alone). The What This Pillar Does NOT Require paragraph identifies what borrowing organizations can skip; the platform is more than the sum of its pillars, but each pillar is more than just a piece of the platform. The Adoption Considerations paragraph identifies what a borrowing organization would need to handle (legal review, fiscal modeling, communications strategy) that the platform documents do not provide. The Natural Advocacy Ecosystem paragraph identifies organizations whose missions align with the pillar's commitments and who would be plausible adopters.

# Pillar One: Community Contribution Plan

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar One replaces the Social Security Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) payroll tax architecture with a sovereign-fund-backed Community Contribution Plan. Specifically: the existing 7.65 percent FICA payroll tax (employer and employee shares combined to 15.3 percent) is replaced over a transition period with a sovereign fund that grows from current Social Security trust fund assets plus dedicated revenue inflows. At maturity, the sovereign fund's investment returns finance retirement and disability benefits without the projected 75-year actuarial deficit (the $63 trillion shortfall in current trustees' projections). Detailed substantiation is in 03_Community_Contribution_Plan_WhitePaper.docx and the Combined Reform Model (04_Combined_Reform_Model.xlsx). Year-15 outcomes target a $122 trillion sovereign fund corpus under 6 percent real return assumptions, or $62.5 trillion under 4 percent return assumptions; current FICA payroll-tax burden falls to zero at maturity for both employer and employee.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

Soft dependency on Pillar Two (Empirical Wage Floors): the platform's wage floor architecture interacts with retirement security through the floor exemption mechanism, but Pillar One can be borrowed independently with a different wage-floor or no-wage-floor architecture. Soft dependency on Pillar Four (Universal Healthcare): the platform reduces healthcare costs as a percentage of GDP, which improves the macro-fiscal context for the sovereign fund's projections, but Pillar One can be borrowed without Pillar Four; the trust-fund projections become less favorable but not unworkable. Hard dependency on the high-earner architecture (graduated income surcharge plus wealth surcharge above $10M plus wealth tax above $50M): Pillar One requires the high-earner-architecture revenue stream to fund the sovereign fund's accumulation phase, so a borrowing organization adopting Pillar One alone would need either to adopt the high-earner architecture or to substitute a different revenue source of comparable magnitude.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar One does not require Pillar Five (Universal Childcare), Pillar Six (Universal Mental Health), Pillar Seven (Civic Infrastructure), or Pillar Eight (Universal Paid Family Time). It does not require the platform's Federal Infrastructure Fee. It does not require Pillar Three (Sovereign Education Fund), although the two pillars share architectural patterns. A borrowing organization could adopt just the FICA-replacement-with-sovereign-fund mechanism with appropriate adjustments to fund-sizing and revenue assumptions.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) constitutional review of the wealth-tax components (the platform's CON-2 and PERSONA-SIG-4 acknowledge this is open); (b) sovereign-wealth-fund governance design (PERSONA-SIG-5 acknowledges this requires institutional-investor expertise); (c) macro-fiscal modeling of transition dynamics specific to whatever revenue architecture they pair with the pillar; (d) communications strategy addressing the 'is this Social Security being replaced or expanded' question; (e) coalition strategy with retirement security advocates, labor organizations, and constituencies dependent on Social Security.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and other retirement-security advocates (with caveats about how the transition affects current beneficiaries); the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College; the Roosevelt Institute (which has published on sovereign wealth fund concepts); the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; the Economic Policy Institute. Center-right alternative framing might appeal to think tanks emphasizing sovereign-wealth-fund concepts as alternatives to entitlement growth (Niskanen Center; potentially elements of the American Enterprise Institute). The labor movement has historically defended FICA structure, so engagement requires care about framing (FICA replacement that improves benefits versus FICA reduction that risks benefits).

# Pillar Two: Empirical Wage Floors

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Two replaces the federal income tax standard deduction with empirical wage floors calibrated to occupation category: $28,000 service-occupation floor; $42,000 trade-occupation floor; $55,000 professional-occupation floor; $80,000 senior-occupation floor. Income up to the applicable floor is exempt from federal income tax; income above the floor is taxed at the existing federal bracket rates. Functionally: the wage floor replaces both the standard deduction and many targeted credits (Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), dependent care, etc.) with a single mechanism that delivers floor exemption to wage-earners by occupation rather than by means-test or marital-status. Detailed substantiation in 05_Federal_Income_Tax_Revenue_Modified_Architecture.docx and 05_Wage_Floors_As_Tax_Architecture.docx.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

Hard dependency on the platform's high-earner architecture (graduated income surcharge): the wage floor exemption reduces tax revenue from lower-income filers; the high-earner surcharge replaces that revenue from upper-income filers. A borrowing organization adopting Pillar Two without the high-earner architecture would face a federal revenue shortfall of approximately $145 billion per year (the wage floor exemption's gross revenue cost) which would need replacement from another source. Soft dependency on occupation-classification administration: the platform assumes Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) occupation categorization can be adapted to administrative use; a borrowing organization would need to verify this with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) administrative guidance.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Two does not require Pillar One (Community Contribution Plan), Pillar Four (Universal Healthcare), or any of the pillars Five through Eight. It does not require the sovereign fund. It does not require the Federal Infrastructure Fee. The wage floor architecture is the platform's most modular pillar; it can be adopted as a standalone tax reform without committing to any other platform element.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) constitutional review of the high-earner architecture if adopted (CON-2 and PERSONA-SIG-4); (b) IRS administrative analysis of occupation-classification implementation; (c) interaction analysis with state income tax systems (most states base state taxes on federal AGI); (d) interaction analysis with existing tax credits (EITC, child tax credit, dependent care credit) that the wage floor would partially or wholly replace; (e) communications strategy addressing 'why occupation-based rather than income-based' framing.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Progressive aligned organizations include: the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; the Tax Policy Center; the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center; the Economic Policy Institute; the National Employment Law Project; SEIU and other service-sector unions. Center-right alternative framing has natural alignment with: the Niskanen Center (which has published on wage subsidies as alternative to minimum wage); the American Enterprise Institute's tax policy program; potentially the Tax Foundation. The wage-floor architecture is genuinely accessible to bipartisan engagement because it can be framed either as 'meaningful relief for working-class earners' (progressive) or 'meeting workers where they actually are without distorting labor markets' (center-right).

# Pillar Three: Sovereign Education Fund

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Three establishes a Sovereign Education Fund that finances post-secondary education access through investment-return distributions rather than student loans or tuition payments. The pillar covers tuition and required fees for vocational training, associate's, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs (research and professional doctorates alike), and provides living stipends during doctoral study. The funding window runs from age seventeen through age thirty. Within the window, there is no cap on the number of fields or credentials a citizen may pursue; continued funding is conditioned on academic performance (the citizen is passing the program in which they are enrolled). Participating institutions must have approved curricula built backwards from defined job fields with general-education content preserved; a curriculum-approval body oversees the framework. Federal liaisons are deployed to each participating campus (modeled on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Cooperative Extension Service) to preserve cross-institutional consistency. The pillar also commits the institution to attempt intervention when a student is struggling, with documented counselor staffing ratios and a four-line intervention pathway. Detailed substantiation is in the Sovereign Education Fund Substantiation document.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

Hard dependency on a sovereign-fund mechanism (parallel to Pillar One's design but operationally separate): a borrowing organization would need to design and govern a Sovereign Education Fund with similar principles as Pillar One. Hard dependency on the high-earner architecture for accumulation-phase revenue. Hard dependency on a curriculum-approval framework and a federal liaison program (the architectural choices that preserve cross-institutional consistency at scale). Hard dependency on a counselor workforce capable of delivering the student-support intervention architecture (this requires a multi-year buildout to roughly one hundred thirty thousand counselor FTE at national scale). Soft dependency on Pillar Two (Empirical Wage Floors): doctoral stipends are set at occupation-specific wage floors, so a borrowing organization without Pillar Two would need an alternative geographic-adjustment mechanism for stipend levels. Soft dependency on Pillar Six (Universal Mental Health Access): mental-health counselors are part of the student-support architecture but their delivery infrastructure comes from Pillar Six; a borrowing organization without Pillar Six would need to fund mental-health counselors separately as part of Pillar Three.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Three does not require Pillar One specifically (although the two share architectural patterns), Pillar Four, or any of the pillars Five through Eight. A borrowing organization could adopt just the sovereign-fund-financed-education mechanism with appropriate sizing and governance design.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) sovereign-wealth-fund governance design (parallel to Pillar One but separate fund); (b) institutional design for education financing distribution (state-by-state implementation; institution-level versus student-level funding; private versus public institution treatment); (c) curriculum-approval body design including methodology for defining and updating job fields drawn from BLS Standard Occupational Classification codes plus industry advisory input, while preserving academic freedom and general-education content (PERSONA-SIG-10 in Section 47); (d) federal liaison program design (parallel to USDA Cooperative Extension Service governance, including training, deployment, rotation, and authority structure; PERSONA-SIG-11 in Section 47); (e) doctoral funding ecosystem transition (the shift of research-grant funding away from student livelihoods toward research itself; PERSONA-SIG-12 in Section 47); (f) counselor workforce pipeline buildout (a five-to-seven-year transition to roughly one hundred thirty thousand counselor FTE; RESEARCH-16); (g) interaction with existing federal student aid (Pell grants, federal student loans, work-study); (h) interaction with state higher-education systems (some heavily subsidized, some not); (i) communications strategy addressing 'free college' framing concerns and ensuring vocational and trade-school paths are equally valued in public messaging.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: the Education Trust; the New America Higher Education program; the Center for American Progress; the Institute for College Access and Success; American Association of Community Colleges. Sovereign-fund-specific framing is novel in education policy; the Roosevelt Institute is the closest existing fit. Trade-school and apprenticeship advocates (Jobs for the Future; Apprenticeship Carolina type programs) are important counterweights to four-year-college framing.

# Pillar Four: Universal Healthcare Access

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Four establishes universal healthcare access through a 6 percent total payroll contribution (4 percent employer; 2 percent employee) that funds a system designed to bring per-capita healthcare spending from the current $14,612 baseline (CMS NHE 2023) toward a Year-15 target of approximately $9,500 per capita. Mechanisms: administrative simplification, drug-price negotiation, provider-rate-setting authority, and integration of public insurance programs. Annual savings at full implementation are approximately $1.7 trillion (the difference between current per-capita spending and target spending, multiplied by population). Detailed substantiation in 05_Healthcare_Transition_Detailed_Plan.docx and the master We The People Platform document's Pillar Four section.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

Soft dependency on Pillar One (Community Contribution Plan): the FICA-replacement architecture changes the payroll-tax landscape that healthcare contributions sit alongside; without Pillar One, the 6 percent healthcare contribution adds to existing FICA rather than replacing part of it. Soft dependency on the high-earner architecture: high-income contributions help fund the transition. No hard dependencies on other pillars; Pillar Four can be borrowed as a standalone universal-healthcare proposal with the contribution rate adjusted as needed for the borrowing organization's overall fiscal architecture.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Four does not require Pillar Two, Pillar Three, Pillar Five, Pillar Seven, or Pillar Eight. It does not require the sovereign fund. It does not require the wage floor. The healthcare pillar is highly modular and can be adopted as a standalone Medicare-for-All-style proposal with the platform's specific cost-reduction mechanism choices and the conservative methodology around 4 percent employer share display.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) healthcare rate-setting institutional design (PERSONA-SIG-3 acknowledges this requires healthcare-economics and healthcare-administration expertise); (b) ERISA-preemption analysis for employer-based insurance interactions; (c) state-level Medicaid integration design; (d) provider-payment transition modeling; (e) drug-pricing-negotiation legal review; (f) communications strategy addressing 'is this Medicare-for-All' question (it shares some design with M4A but uses different mechanism choices); (g) coalition strategy with healthcare workforce, employer groups (concerned about employer-mandate effects), and patient-advocacy organizations.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: Public Citizen; Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP); National Nurses United; the Center for American Progress (which has published Medicare Extra for All proposals); the Medicare for All Caucus members; AFL-CIO healthcare working groups. Center-right framing might find some traction with: Niskanen Center healthcare policy fellows; certain elements of the AEI healthcare program (universal catastrophic with means-tested premium support is a related but distinct architecture). Patient-advocacy organizations across many disease areas (American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, etc.) are component-level allies on specific aspects.

# Pillar Five: Universal Childcare

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Five establishes universal childcare access through a 1.3 percent total payroll contribution (0.8 percent employer; 0.5 percent employee) that funds high-quality childcare access for children from infancy through pre-K. Aggregate cost approximately $180 billion per year at full implementation (Quebec model adapted to US scale). Detailed substantiation in the Universal Childcare Pillar section of the master document and in supporting documents.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

No hard dependencies on other pillars. Soft dependency on Pillar Eight (Universal Paid Family Time): the two pillars are complementary but each can be adopted independently. Soft dependency on Pillar Six (Universal Mental Health Access): childcare and mental health interact through child development outcomes, but neither requires the other. Pillar Five is the most independently-adoptable pillar of the platform's adjacent-pillars cluster.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Five does not require Pillar One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, or Eight. It does not require the sovereign fund, the wage floor, or the high-earner architecture. A borrowing organization can adopt just the universal-childcare mechanism with appropriate scaling and contribution-rate adjustments.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) childcare workforce capacity analysis (Pillar Five's full implementation requires substantial childcare workforce expansion; the platform acknowledges the 12-year buildout assumption may be optimistic; an 18-year buildout is more conservative); (b) state-level implementation design (childcare delivery is largely state and local); (c) family-choice versus center-based-care policy choices; (d) interaction with existing Head Start and state pre-K programs; (e) provider-payment design (similar issues to Pillar Four); (f) communications strategy.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: National Women's Law Center; Center for American Progress; MomsRising; the Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board (which has published on childcare as economic infrastructure); the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC); ZERO TO THREE. Bipartisan elements: business-community organizations sometimes support childcare access for workforce-availability reasons. Strong natural alignment exists; this pillar is one of the easier to advance through advocacy organization adoption.

# Pillar Six: Universal Mental Health Access

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Six establishes universal voluntary mental-health access through a 0.8 percent total payroll contribution (0.5 percent employer; 0.3 percent employee). Aggregate cost approximately $200 billion per year at full implementation. Mechanism: expanded provider network, voluntary access without copay or prior authorization for outpatient services, integrated with primary care. Detailed substantiation in 05_Universal_Mental_Health_Access_Substantiation.docx.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

No hard dependencies. Soft dependency on Pillar Four (Universal Healthcare): mental health and physical healthcare are integrated under Pillar Four's broader system, so adopting Pillar Six without Pillar Four creates parallel-system implementation complexity. Soft dependency on Pillar Five (Universal Childcare): child mental-health access depends partly on childcare provider screening and referral, but this can work without Pillar Five through other primary-care channels.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Six does not require Pillar One, Two, Three, Five, Seven, or Eight. It can be adopted as a standalone mental-health-parity-plus expansion. The 0.8 percent total contribution rate can be scaled to whatever delivery architecture a borrowing organization chooses.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) mental-health workforce capacity analysis (psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed counselors, peer support specialists; current workforce is undersized for universal access); (b) interaction with mental-health-parity legal framework (Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act); (c) integration design with primary care; (d) crisis-response system integration (988 lifeline; mobile crisis units; emergency department interactions); (e) substance-use-disorder treatment integration; (f) state-licensing-portability analysis (mental health practitioners are state-licensed).

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI); Mental Health America; The Kennedy Forum; the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention; Treatment Advocacy Center; National Association of Social Workers; American Psychological Association; American Psychiatric Association. Strong alignment exists across mental-health-advocacy ecosystem; the workforce-capacity caveat means many organizations would want to pair adoption with workforce-development advocacy. Patient-led organizations (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, Anxiety and Depression Association of America) are valuable component-level allies.

# Pillar Seven: Civic Infrastructure

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Seven establishes a federal commitment to physical and digital civic infrastructure: highways, bridges, transit, airports, freight rail, broadband, identity-protection systems, modernized civic engagement infrastructure (voter registration; campaign finance), and tax preparation simplification. Funded by the Federal Infrastructure Fee on businesses (location-based plus employee-based plus revenue-surcharge components for businesses above $50M annual revenue) plus sovereign-fund returns. Aggregate commitment is in the range of $282 billion per year at full implementation. Detailed substantiation distributed across multiple supporting documents including 05_Physical_Civic_Infrastructure_Substantiation.docx, 05_Universal_Broadband_Access_Substantiation.docx, 05_Federal_Infrastructure_Fee.docx, 05_Identity_Theft_Reduction.docx, 05_Modernize_Civic_Engagement_Integrated_Argument.docx.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

Hard dependency on the Federal Infrastructure Fee mechanism: the pillar's primary funding comes from the Fee, so a borrowing organization adopting Pillar Seven would need either the Fee or a substituted equivalent revenue source. Soft dependency on Pillar One (sovereign fund): some Pillar Seven commitments draw on sovereign fund returns, but the Fee can fund the bulk independently. No hard dependencies on other pillars.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Seven does not require Pillars Two through Six, Eight, the wage floor, the high-earner architecture, or the Community Contribution Plan structurally. A borrowing organization can adopt just the civic-infrastructure-commitments-funded-by-business-fee mechanism.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) Federal Infrastructure Fee legal review (incidence; constitutionality of the per-employee component; small-business exemption design); (b) state-level cooperation requirements (transportation infrastructure is largely state-administered with federal funding); (c) digital infrastructure delivery design (broadband: tier-1-cooperative-and-municipal-first preference described in the substantiation document); (d) civic-engagement modernization political analysis (election administration is highly contested politically); (e) tax-preparation-industry transition (the $30 billion tax-prep industry is a concentrated political opposition).

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations vary by component: for transportation infrastructure, the AASHTO, APTA, transit advocacy organizations, public-sector unions (AFSCME, SEIU public sector); for broadband, Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Open Technology Institute, rural broadband cooperatives; for identity protection, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Consumers Union, the Identity Theft Resource Center; for civic-engagement modernization, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Election Assistance Commission consultative bodies, election-administrator professional associations; for tax preparation simplification, the Tax Policy Center, ProPublica's tax-prep coverage as journalistic ally. The component-by-component nature means Pillar Seven is best adopted in pieces by different aligned organizations rather than as a whole.

# Pillar Eight: Universal Paid Family Time

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Eight establishes universal paid family leave through a 0.4 percent combined payroll contribution (split as 0.25 percent employer / 0.15 percent employee). Aggregate cost approximately $40 to $60 billion per year at full implementation. Mechanism: federally administered paid family and medical leave covering child bonding, family caregiving, and own-medical-recovery, calibrated similarly to FAMILY Act modeling and adjusted from existing state programs (California PFL, New Jersey FLI, New York PFL, Washington PFL). Detailed substantiation in the Universal Paid Family Time pillar document, added in v3.2.0.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

No hard dependencies on other pillars. Soft dependency on Pillar Five (Universal Childcare): the two pillars work together to support working families; adopting one without the other creates known coverage gaps in the family-support architecture but each can be borrowed independently. Soft dependency on Pillar Six (Universal Mental Health): mental-health-related medical leave is part of Pillar Eight's coverage but works without Pillar Six.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Eight does not require Pillar One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, or Seven. It can be adopted as a standalone universal-paid-family-leave proposal with the contribution rate appropriate to whatever overall fiscal architecture the borrowing organization adopts.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) federal-state coordination design (existing state PFL programs would integrate with rather than be replaced by the federal program; what becomes of state-level contribution structures); (b) employer-administration interaction design (small employers and self-employed workers); (c) leave-eligibility-determination mechanism (medical certification; job-protection interaction with FMLA); (d) interaction with disability insurance systems (state and federal); (e) communications strategy addressing 'is this another mandate' framing for employer-side audiences.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: A Better Balance; the National Partnership for Women and Families; Family Values @ Work; the Center for American Progress (which has done substantial paid leave policy work); MomsRising; the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee; Easter Seals (caregiving for adult children with disabilities); AARP (caregiving for aging parents). Center-right alternative framing has some traction with: AEI's family policy program; some employer organizations support paid leave for workforce-retention reasons. This pillar has perhaps the strongest pre-existing advocacy infrastructure of any platform pillar; the FAMILY Act has had Congressional sponsorship across multiple sessions.

# Pillar Nine: Universal Long-Term Care

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Nine establishes universal access to long-term services and supports through a 1.0 percent combined payroll contribution (0.6 percent employer; 0.4 percent employee). Aggregate revenue approximately $250 billion per year; benefit cost approximately $525 to $700 billion per year at full implementation, with the gap closed by federal Medicaid LTC substitution (approximately $200 billion currently), state-level LTC substitution (approximately $120 billion currently), and high-earner-architecture backstop. Coverage includes home and community-based services, institutional care, adult day services, respite care, family caregiver support, assistive technology, and care coordination. Eligibility is based on functional assessment without asset spend-down or income test. Detailed substantiation in 05_Universal_Long_Term_Care_Substantiation.docx.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

Soft dependency on Pillar Four (Universal Healthcare Access): the boundary between long-term care and medically-coded healthcare follows the existing Medicare/Medicaid distinction; Pillar Nine works better with Pillar Four but does not require it. Soft dependency on Pillar Six (Universal Mental Health Access): individuals with cognitive or psychiatric components to their care needs benefit from coordinated care planning; Pillar Nine works without Pillar Six but coordination is structurally easier when both are in place. Soft dependency on Pillar Eight (Universal Paid Family Time): family caregivers benefit from Pillar Eight's wage replacement during caregiving leave; Pillar Nine's family-caregiver-employment options work without Pillar Eight but coordination is easier with it. No hard dependencies on other pillars; Pillar Nine can be borrowed as a standalone universal-long-term-care proposal.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Nine does not require Pillar One (Community Contribution Plan), Pillar Two (Wage Floors), Pillar Three (Sovereign Education Fund), Pillar Five (Universal Childcare), or Pillar Seven (Civic Infrastructure). It does not require the sovereign fund. It does not require the Federal Infrastructure Fee. The pillar can be adopted as a standalone universal-LTC mechanism with the contribution rate calibrated against whatever overall fiscal architecture the borrowing organization adopts.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) actuarial validation of contribution-rate calibration (the 1.0 percent rate is plausible based on international comparisons but credentialed actuarial review is needed for stress scenarios); (b) institutional design for federal-state coordination (LTC delivery is currently substantially state-administered); (c) provider-payment-rate design (rates set too low produce network gaps; too high inflates costs); (d) family-caregiver-employment policy specifics (compensating family members for direct care has both labor-economics and family-policy dimensions); (e) cognitive-impairment-specific care design (dementia-related care benefits from gerontology expertise); (f) workforce-development strategy alongside benefit rollout (Pillar Nine cannot promise benefits faster than workforce can deliver them); (g) communications strategy addressing 'is this nationalizing nursing homes' framing concerns and asset-spend-down-elimination as the headline structural improvement.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: AARP (the largest constituency-based advocate for older adults; long-standing engagement on LTC); Caring Across Generations (coalition of caregivers and care-receivers; LTC is a primary focus); Justice in Aging (legal advocacy on aging-related policy issues); Center for Medicare Advocacy; Long Term Care Community Coalition; Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (LTC affects the disability community as well as the aging community); ARC (advocacy for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, many of whom rely on LTC services); SEIU (represents many direct care workers); the National Domestic Workers Alliance (represents many home care workers). Bipartisan elements: caregiving is one of the few policy areas where bipartisan engagement has been historically possible (the FAMILY Act for paid leave, while passed only by Democrats, has had bipartisan policy interest; LTC has similar bipartisan-engagement potential because aging affects all political constituencies). Center-right framing might find traction with: AEI's aging policy program; certain elements of the Heritage Foundation that have engaged on Medicaid reform; the Bipartisan Policy Center's healthcare program. Pillar Nine has perhaps the most actively-engaged existing advocacy infrastructure of any platform pillar, given AARP's scale and the Caring Across Generations coalition's organization.

# Pillar Ten: Federal Housing Investment

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Ten establishes federal housing investment at approximately $145 billion per year aggregate commitment at full implementation (approximately $70 billion absorbed from existing federal housing programs plus approximately $75 billion incremental new commitment). Five components: (1) universal rental assistance for households below approximately 50% area median income, eliminating the Section 8 waitlist; (2) federal-state conditional grants for housing supply expansion (grant access tied to state-level zoning reform conditions); (3) public housing capital investment to address deferred maintenance and modernization; (4) supportive housing for special populations including chronically-homeless individuals; (5) Housing First federal funding for state and local homelessness response. Detailed substantiation in 05_Federal_Housing_Investment_Substantiation.docx.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

Hard dependency on a federal revenue source for the incremental commitment: Pillar Ten's net new federal commitment of approximately $75 billion per year requires either the platform's high-earner architecture (graduated income surcharge plus wealth surcharge plus wealth tax) or substituted equivalent revenue. A borrowing organization adopting Pillar Ten without the high-earner architecture would need to substitute another revenue source. Soft dependency on Pillar Six (Universal Mental Health Access): supportive housing for special populations integrates with mental health services; Pillar Ten works without Pillar Six but coordination is structurally easier when both are in place. Soft dependency on Pillar Nine (Universal Long-Term Care): supportive housing for aging individuals with functional limitations integrates with long-term care services; Pillar Ten works without Pillar Nine but coordination is easier with it.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Ten does not require Pillar One (Community Contribution Plan), Pillar Two (Wage Floors), Pillar Three (Sovereign Education Fund), Pillar Four (Universal Healthcare), Pillar Five (Universal Childcare), Pillar Seven (Civic Infrastructure), or Pillar Eight (Universal Paid Family Time). It does not require the sovereign fund. It does not require the Federal Infrastructure Fee. The pillar can be adopted as a standalone federal-housing-investment proposal under whatever overall fiscal architecture the borrowing organization adopts, subject to the hard dependency on a substitutable revenue source for the incremental commitment.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) housing economics review of the supply-side framework (does federal conditional-grants leverage actually drive state and local zoning reform; what supply elasticity assumptions are reasonable; how does universal rental assistance interact with rental market prices); (b) institutional design review of the federal-state conditional-grants framework (existing precedents; accountability mechanisms); (c) legal review of conditional grants under South Dakota v. Dole and subsequent doctrine; (d) housing-administration review of universal rental assistance implementation (HUD administrative capacity; voucher-acceptance enforcement); (e) supportive-housing program design review (Housing First evidence base; integration with mental health and substance use treatment systems); (f) construction-workforce-capacity analysis (whether the trades can deliver supply-side investment without unacceptable cost inflation); (g) tribal-nation and territorial coordination details for housing on tribal lands and in U.S. territories; (h) communications strategy addressing the supply-side-versus-rental-assistance debate and the public-housing-skepticism legacy.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC; the leading affordable-housing advocacy organization; produces the Out of Reach and the Gap reports that Pillar Ten draws on); Up For Growth (the leading housing supply advocacy organization; has produced the four-to-seven-million-unit shortage analysis Pillar Ten cites); Enterprise Community Partners (national affordable-housing developer and advocate); Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC; community development organization with substantial housing focus); Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP housing policy program); Bipartisan Policy Center (housing program with substantial bipartisan engagement); Brookings Institution Hamilton Project housing work. YIMBY-aligned organizations include California YIMBY, Welcoming Neighbors Network, and the various state-level YIMBY organizations that have emerged in the past decade. Housing First and supportive housing advocates include Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), National Alliance to End Homelessness, and Community Solutions. Public housing advocates include the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO) representing public housing authorities. The advocacy ecosystem for Pillar Ten is broad and includes both progressive and bipartisan-leaning organizations; the supply-side conditional-grants component has cross-ideological appeal because it engages both the affordability-focused-progressive and free-market-friendly framings.

# Pillar Eleven: Climate Architecture

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Eleven establishes an economy-wide upstream carbon price on fossil fuels (start $50/ton CO2e, mature $100/ton CO2e over ~10-year transition; coverage ~75-80% of U.S. emissions; border adjustment for imports). Revenue ~$150-200B/yr at start, ~$300-400B/yr at mature price (declining over time as decarbonization occurs). Revenue allocated 50/50: half to per-capita carbon dividend (~$600-700/adult/yr at maturity; ~$2,000/family of four/yr); half to clean-energy infrastructure (~25%), transmission grid modernization (~10%), just-transition support (~10%), and innovation (~5%). Detailed substantiation in 05_Climate_Architecture_Substantiation.docx.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

No hard dependencies on other pillars. Pillar Eleven is fiscally independent: all carbon-price revenue is recycled to households as dividend or invested in specified clean-energy and just-transition programs, with net federal-bottom-line impact zero. Soft dependency on Pillar Seven (Civic Infrastructure): Pillar Eleven's Component Three (transmission grid modernization) complements Pillar Seven's broader infrastructure commitments; the two pillars work together better than either does alone but each can be borrowed independently. Soft dependency on Pillar One (Community Contribution Plan): the platform's broader fiscal architecture provides context for Pillar Eleven's just-transition support but Pillar Eleven works without Pillar One. Pillar Eleven is one of the platform's most independently-adoptable pillars because of its fiscal independence.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Eleven does not require Pillar One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Eight, Nine, or Ten. It does not require the high-earner architecture, the sovereign fund, or the Federal Infrastructure Fee. It can be adopted as a standalone economy-wide-carbon-pricing-with-hybrid-revenue-allocation proposal. The fifty-fifty split between dividend and investment is the platform's canonical but is open to revision; borrowing organizations could adopt different splits (e.g., the Climate Leadership Council's pure-dividend approach or a different investment-heavy approach) without affecting the rest of the platform.

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) climate-economics review of the price trajectory against social cost of carbon estimates and emissions trajectory targets; (b) international trade law review of the border adjustment mechanism (WTO compatibility is an active legal question); (c) institutional design for Treasury dividend distribution (existing refundable-credit infrastructure provides foundation); (d) institutional design for the federal clean-energy investment fund (existing precedents include LIHEAP, Highway Trust Fund, proposed Clean Energy Accelerator); (e) just-transition program design with credentialed labor-economics input and labor-union engagement; (f) complementary-policy design for non-priced emissions (agriculture; industrial process emissions; fluorinated gases); (g) state-program coexistence design (federal price as floor; state programs continue to operate); (h) communications strategy addressing 'is this a tax' framing concerns (carbon pricing is a corrective price not a revenue-raising tax; the dividend mechanism makes this concrete) and the dividend-versus-investment trade-off honestly.

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations include: Citizens Climate Lobby (the principal grassroots advocate for carbon-pricing-with-dividend; long-running advocacy of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act); Climate Leadership Council (bipartisan policy organization advocating the Carbon Dividends Plan; its co-founder list spans both parties' establishment); Resources for the Future (climate-economics research with substantial carbon-pricing analytical work); World Resources Institute; Environmental Defense Fund (climate program with substantial market-mechanism work); Natural Resources Defense Council (broader climate program). Center-right alternative framing has substantial alignment with: the Climate Leadership Council itself (which is explicitly bipartisan); the American Enterprise Institute's energy and environment program (some affiliated scholars have advocated carbon pricing as the cleanest mechanism); the Niskanen Center (climate program advocating carbon pricing). Left-environmentalist framing has alignment with: the Sierra Club and 350.org (with caveats; some grassroots climate organizations prefer regulatory and direct-investment approaches over carbon pricing); the Climate Justice Alliance (with more substantial caveats; environmental-justice critique of carbon pricing focuses on the localized-pollution and offset issues that the platform's upstream-pricing approach partially but not fully addresses). Just-transition advocates include the BlueGreen Alliance (labor and environmental coalition) and various Appalachian and Western state community organizations engaged on fossil-fuel-community transition. The advocacy ecosystem for Pillar Eleven is one of the most ideologically diverse of any platform pillar; the carbon-pricing-with-dividend framing has demonstrated bipartisan engagement potential while the just-transition and investment components address concerns from the labor-and-environmental-justice side.

# Pillar Twelve: Immigration Architecture

## What This Pillar Provides

Pillar Twelve establishes comprehensive immigration reform across six components: (1) pathway to legal status for ~11M long-resident undocumented immigrants over 12-15 years with vetting, fees, English-language proficiency, and earned naturalization track; (2) legal immigration modernization including expanded employment-based green cards (140K to 300K annually), elimination of per-country caps, expanded family-based allocations; (3) asylum and refugee processing capacity expansion with backlog elimination and refugee admissions framework restoration to historical norms (~100-125K annually); (4) workforce visa reform (H-1B auction-based or wage-prioritized; H-2A year-round availability with pathway-to-status; new shortage-occupation categories for healthcare workforce); (5) integration support with federal English-language instruction, civic integration, and naturalization preparation; (6) border management modernization focused on ports of entry. Aggregate gross federal commitment ~$30-50B/yr at full implementation. Net fiscal impact: positive on 10-20 year horizon per Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring of comparable proposals. Detailed substantiation in 05_Immigration_Architecture_Substantiation.docx.

## Dependencies on Other Platform Elements

No hard dependencies on other pillars. Soft dependency on Pillar Six (Universal Mental Health Access): asylum-seeker mental health support and integration mental health services benefit from Pillar Six's broader access framework, but Pillar Twelve works without Pillar Six. Soft dependency on Pillar Nine (Universal Long-Term Care): the direct care workforce expansion that Pillar Twelve's healthcare-workforce visas support is integrated with Pillar Nine's workforce strategy, but each pillar operates independently. Soft dependency on Pillar Ten (Federal Housing Investment): housing supply expansion is one of the implementation considerations for the population growth that pathway-to-status produces, but Pillar Twelve does not require Pillar Ten. No hard dependencies; Pillar Twelve can be borrowed as a standalone comprehensive immigration reform proposal.

## What This Pillar Does Not Require

Pillar Twelve does not require Pillars One through Eight, Ten, or Eleven. It does not require the high-earner architecture, the sovereign fund, or the Federal Infrastructure Fee. The pillar can be adopted as a standalone comprehensive immigration reform proposal under whatever overall fiscal architecture the borrowing organization adopts, given that Pillar Twelve's net fiscal impact is positive (gross expenditure offset by tax revenue increases over the medium-to-long horizon).

## Adoption Considerations

A borrowing organization would need: (a) immigration economics review of fiscal impact projections (drawing on CBO scoring of comparable proposals; updated analysis from credentialed immigration economists for specific calibration); (b) legal review of pathway-to-status mechanisms (constitutional and administrative-law review of procedural details); (c) USCIS administrative-capacity review (whether the agency can reliably scale to handle registration cohort plus modernized legal immigration plus asylum backlog elimination plus integration support); (d) workforce-economics review of visa reforms (whether proposed H-1B reforms produce intended labor-market effects; whether agricultural workforce reform supports rural economies; whether healthcare workforce visa expansion meets staffing needs); (e) border-management review (whether ports-of-entry investment produces claimed security improvements; whether cooperation with Mexico and Central America can be structured for durability); (f) integration-program effectiveness review (English-language and civic integration program designs benefit from credentialed evaluation); (g) tribal-nations consultation for cross-border tribal nations (Tohono O'odham Nation specifically); (h) communications strategy addressing 'amnesty' framing (the pathway is not amnesty in any meaningful sense; vetting, fees, English-language, earned process); 'border security' framing (Component Six addresses border security substantively while focusing on actual threat landscape); and 'jobs' framing (workforce visa expansion in shortage occupations is wage-supportive on net per empirical evidence).

## Natural Advocacy Ecosystem

Aligned organizations span an unusually broad coalition. Immigrant-community-led organizations include the Center for American Progress immigration program; United We Dream (DACA-recipient led); the National Immigration Law Center; the American Immigration Council; the National Immigration Forum. Legal/professional include the American Immigration Lawyers Association; National Immigrant Justice Center. Faith-based include Catholic Charities and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network; HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society; works on refugee resettlement); Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service; the Evangelical Immigration Table (representing evangelical Christian immigration reform advocacy). Business-aligned include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the Business Roundtable; New American Economy. Labor-aligned include the AFL-CIO and SEIU (which have evolved toward broadly supportive positions on comprehensive reform); the United Farm Workers (agricultural workforce). Bipartisan-leaning include the Bipartisan Policy Center immigration program; the Niskanen Center; the Cato Institute (libertarian-leaning supportive of immigration broadly). Migration policy analytical include the Migration Policy Institute (analytical leader in the field); the Pew Research Center demographics work. The advocacy ecosystem for Pillar Twelve is one of the most ideologically diverse of any platform pillar; the comprehensive reform framework draws on consensus across mainstream immigration policy analysis even though the political environment for reform has been challenging. The coalition required for legislative passage has been demonstrated viable multiple times (S.744 in 2013 passed the Senate with bipartisan support); the lesson from the 2013 cycle and from subsequent attempts is that legislative progress requires alignment across multiple constituencies, which the broad advocacy ecosystem can support if engaged.

# Cross-References

This document closes the Milestone C2 final gap identified in 05_What_Done_Looks_Like.docx (the platform's decision framework for endpoint criteria). It draws on the substantiation documents for each pillar (referenced in the relevant pillar sections above), the Open Issues Registry's canonical decisions documented under OPEN-1 (contribution rates) and OPEN-2 (high-earner architecture), and the Sources and Derivation Convention (05_Sources_And_Derivation_Convention.docx) for the empirical-source taxonomy.

An advocacy organization or other policy practitioner interested in adopting a specific pillar should: (a) read the pillar's section above for adoption guidance; (b) read the pillar's primary substantiation document for substantive content; (c) consult the Open Issues Registry for known limits and external-expertise needs; (d) engage the lead author through the contact mechanism in the master We The People Platform document for specific questions or for substantive engagement on adoption design.