FAQ

I am a big open-source fan and think about opening the project up from time to time.

This is a question I get a lot, and it always makes me smile - because it shows the tech bubble we live in. We instantly expect software developers who can navigate GitHub to be the best reviewers for anything. Here, that is not the case. The best contributors to BudgetHole.com are people who know the federal budget and follow US politics closely. Those folks rarely know what a pull request is. But they use RitualDissent just fine.

Honestly, BudgetHole.com has felt "too small" for its own open-source repo so far: under the hood it is really a plain HTML page with a bit of vanilla JavaScript - no large architecture, no framework, no build step.

What currently plays the role of a public repo is RitualDissent.com - that small colored circle in the lower right corner of every page on desktop (it is hidden on mobile because the pin-and-mark UX does not work well on touch screens). One click activates feedback mode: you can mark any spot on the page and drop a comment or a concrete text suggestion right there. My AI harness reads that human-in-the-loop feedback stream several times a day, researches, evaluates the suggestions - and, once I sign off, ships them straight into the site. The net effect is very similar to a GitHub repo, at maybe 1% of the overhead on my end.

For the actual policy options in the simulator, every change has to be curated by hand anyway - categorized, sourced, documented (see the changelog) - so a classic PR review process would only get me so far.

Short answer: not right now. But the idea is on the radar - if the project keeps growing or several people want to collaborate long-term, I will open the repo.

First off: thanks for offering - that means a lot. Having people ask on their own how they can support a civic-education project is the best kind of tailwind.

Financially and time-wise I am doing fine with BudgetHole.com right now. The site runs on a tiny server, costs almost nothing, and curating the policy options is something I enjoy. Any form of donation button or sponsorship would just add administrative and disclosure overhead without a real need.

What actually helps:

• Test and report bugs. Click around, try combinations, test on phone and desktop. If anything is broken, unclear, or looks fishy, please tell me.
• Content suggestions. Missing a reform option that you saw in a study or a policy paper? Is a description misleading? A source stale? That kind of feedback goes right in too.
• Word of mouth. If you find the project useful, share it with people who care about fiscal policy or civic education - family, colleagues, students, your network.

Feedback flows best through the RitualDissent tool - the small colored circle in the lower right corner on desktop (it is hidden on mobile because the pin-and-mark UX does not work well on touch screens). One click activates feedback mode, then you can mark any passage and drop a suggestion or comment right there. I go through all messages several times a day.

So: the best support is a good message. Thanks for engaging with this.

Fastest path is inside the simulator: hit "Pick a category" in the top right and choose "Suggest a policy option" at the bottom of the menu. A small form opens where you can enter your proposal and its source. It lands in the same feedback queue as everything else and I review it.

For a proposal to have a shot at inclusion it needs to meet two conditions:

• Credible source. Concretely: published estimates from CBO, JCT, GAO, or the Congressional Research Service; scored bills; policy papers from think tanks (Brookings, AEI, CBPP, Tax Foundation, Penn Wharton, Yale Budget Lab, Tax Policy Center); or high-quality news reporting that cites one of the above with a real number. Opinions without a numbers basis do not qualify.
• Traceable scoring. The source has to quantify the fiscal effect - i.e. state how many billion dollars of extra revenue or extra spending the change causes per year for the federal government. Ideally with a visible derivation (base, rate, elasticity assumptions, behavioral responses), not just a free-floating number.

The reason for these two conditions: this simulator is not a wish list, it is a collection of vetted reform options with realistically estimated budget impact. That is the only way proposals from different political directions can be meaningfully combined and compared.

What happens after you submit: I read the proposal, check the source, place it in the right category (interactions with existing sliders, delta value), and - if it fits - build it into the simulator with a changelog entry. The full process is transparently logged in the changelog.

Plain bug reports or UX suggestions should not go through the proposal form - use the colored circle in the lower right corner (RitualDissent, desktop only). That keeps the two feedback channels cleanly separated.

Yes. Since August 2026 the simulator carries Medicare for All as two coupled sliders - one for the federal cost, one for the financing package.

Why it is in the simulator, even though it is very large. The Lancet study by Galvani et al. (Yale School of Medicine, 2022) estimated that Medicare for All would prevent about 114,000 premature deaths every year compared with the status quo. That is people rationing insulin they cannot afford, late-stage cancer diagnoses in the uninsured, maternal deaths, and suicides tied to medical debt. That number is what pushed me to include the option despite its scale. When the largest health reform on the US table has a plausible six-figure annual life-saving effect, omitting it from a federal budget simulator because the dollar figure feels uncomfortably big means burying the tradeoff instead of showing it. UBI stays out further down this FAQ for a similar-scale reason - but UBI does not have an equivalent published mortality estimate. Medicare for All does. That is the difference.

How the two sliders work. Sanders' "Medicare for All Act" and the Jayapal-Dingell HR expand Medicare to every US resident and subsume Medicare, Medicaid, ACA marketplaces, TRICARE, and employer-sponsored insurance. The federal gross cost is roughly $3.4 trillion per year; after subtracting existing federal spending on Medicare (~$1.15T), the federal Medicaid share (~$0.6T), and ACA subsidies (~$0.05T), the net federal spending increase is about $1.6 trillion per year. That is the cost slider. The financing slider bundles the main revenue streams from Sanders' financing white paper - employer + household payroll surcharges, a wealth tax, corporate reforms, and an industry stakeholder fee - for about $1.6 trillion per year on the revenue side. Activate both and the net deficit impact is roughly zero. Activate only the cost slider and the simulator will honestly show you a $1.6 trillion deficit gap - that is what "unfinanced Medicare for All" looks like on paper.

Why some people argue it also saves money overall. The same Yale study estimated Medicare for All would save roughly $1 trillion per year in total US health spending - lower administrative overhead, national drug and provider price negotiation. That saving does not appear on the federal budget bar because most of it accrues to employers, employees, and households who no longer pay premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs. The federal budget frame captures the cost and the financing; the household savings are on top.

Interactions with other reforms. The health-system reform space is exclusive with the smaller stepping-stone options (Public Option, Medicare Buy-In for 55-64) - the simulator will auto-deactivate those if you pick Medicare for All, because they would be structurally obsolete. The financing slider also auto-deactivates several revenue options it already contains (payroll tax, employer-health tax exclusion, wealth tax variants, top marginal rate, corporate rate changes) so effects do not double-count.

If you want to dig into the numbers, Yale Budget Lab, Galvani et al. (Lancet 2022), the Urban Institute's "From Incremental to Comprehensive Health Insurance Reform", and Sanders' "Options to Finance Medicare for All" are the four best entry points.

Same methodological reason as Medicare for All. A fully universal UBI of ~$12,000 per adult per year, net of replacing existing means-tested benefits, costs roughly $3-4 trillion per year (Roosevelt Institute, Tax Foundation, and CBPP estimates broadly agree on the order of magnitude).

That would nearly double federal outlays and would only pencil out with a fundamental tax overhaul (VAT, wealth tax, or dramatically higher income-tax rates). Not a reform inside the existing frame - it is a new frame.

The simulator sticks to incremental options that stay meaningfully comparable. UBI belongs in its own analysis at its own scale.