Proposal № 068 of 250 · Released September 9, 2026
The Mint Dividend
The Federal Reserve earned $107 billion in 2021 and sent almost all of it to the Treasury, where it vanished into that year's spending, as more than a trillion dollars had before it. The profit of issuing the world's money is the return on an asset every citizen owns. Route it to the fund as principal instead. The timing is unusually honest: the Fed has sent nothing since 2022 and owes itself $243 billion before it sends anything again, so the rule can be written now and cost nothing until it bites.
The problem
The most profitable business in the United States is the one nobody thinks of as a business: issuing the dollar. The Federal Reserve pays nothing on the currency in circulation and a policy rate on bank reserves, and it earns interest on the trillions of Treasury and mortgage bonds it holds against them. The difference is profit, and by law almost all of it is remitted to the Treasury each year. In 2021 the Reserve Banks earned an estimated $107.8 billion and sent $107.4 billion to the Treasury. Between 2012 and 2021 they sent more than $800 billion; over the last decade and a half, more than $1 trillion.
Every dollar of it was spent in the year it arrived. The remittance is booked as miscellaneous receipts in the general fund, reduces that year's deficit by the same amount, and leaves no trace. № 015 made the same observation about the airwaves: the biggest asset sale in history, $81 billion, funded six days of government. The seigniorage of the dollar is the same kind of asset, the return on a public monopoly, and it is treated the same way: as found money, gone by the next morning.
The timing of this proposal is unusual, and worth being plain about. In September 2022 the Fed's interest costs rose above its income as it raised rates, and the Reserve Banks stopped remitting. Instead they began recording a deferred asset, the running total of what they will have to earn before remittances resume, and by December 2025 it stood at $243 billion. The Fed is now earning again, but it will send the Treasury nothing until that sum is covered, which on current projections is a matter of years. There is, for the moment, no remittance to redirect. That is exactly the moment to write the rule: it can be passed now, when it costs the budget nothing, and it takes effect when the money returns.
The proposal
The Mint Dividend: once the Federal Reserve's deferred asset is extinguished and remittances resume, the profit the Federal Reserve remits to the Treasury each year, together with the seigniorage on coinage, is deposited in the American Permanent Fund as principal, phased in over ten years from one-quarter to the whole. The Fed's mandate, independence and accounting are untouched. What changes is the address on the cheque.
How it would work
- The trigger. Nothing happens until the deferred asset reaches zero and the Reserve Banks resume weekly remittances under existing law. The proposal does not touch the deferred-asset mechanism, which is the Fed's own device for absorbing losses without a bailout, and it does not ask the Fed to remit sooner.
- The phase-in. In the first year remittances resume, one-quarter of them is deposited in the fund and three-quarters go to the general fund as now; the fund's share rises by 7.5 points a year until, in the tenth year, all of it is principal. The phase-in exists because the general fund has been counting on this money, and a sudden hole of $50 to $100 billion in a budget already borrowing heavily is the kind of shock that gets a good rule repealed.
- The Debt Covenant governs. № 023 permits no borrowed dollar to enter the fund. Seigniorage is not borrowed; it is earned on assets the Fed already holds. But routing it away from the general fund does, all else equal, raise the deficit by the same amount, and this proposal says so rather than pretending otherwise. Under the covenant, while debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP, the fund's own earnings go to the debt, so the transaction is, on the country's consolidated balance sheet, a movement of an asset from a drawer marked "spent" to a drawer marked "kept," with the interest on it paying down what was borrowed.
- Coinage too. The Mint's seigniorage, the difference between the face value of coins and their cost, is small and has been shrinking, and the penny's production ended in 2025 because it cost more than a cent. Whatever remains is deposited on the same schedule. The principle is the point.
- No hand on the Fed. The Fed's remittance is a residual: whatever is left after it pays its expenses and its interest and builds its small surplus. The fund receives that residual and has no claim to any particular amount, no voice in the balance sheet, and no seat at the policy table. A Fed that earns nothing for a decade, as it has since 2022, sends the fund nothing, and the fund's rule is that this is fine.
- On the Shareholder's Report. Each year's deposit appears on № 050's report as a line: seigniorage of the dollar, deposited as principal, with the running total. Citizens will learn, for the first time, what the currency earns for them.
The numbers
What it would have been. Had the rule been in force since 2008, with the phase-in complete, roughly $1 trillion of Fed remittances would now be principal in the fund rather than spent, and at an index return that principal would be worth substantially more today. That is a fund of Norway's size, built from a receipt the country never noticed it had.
What it will be. Remittances before 2022 ran $50 to $100 billion a year depending on rates and the size of the balance sheet; a smaller balance sheet in future means a smaller residual, perhaps $30 to $60 billion in a normal year. Over the ten-year phase-in the fund receives on the order of $200 billion; thereafter, tens of billions a year, forever, at no cost to any taxpayer and with no change to any tax.
What it costs the budget. The same amount, in the years it arrives, as a reduction in miscellaneous receipts. This is the honest price and it is not small: at full phase-in, a normal year's deficit is $30 to $60 billion higher than it would otherwise be. The proposal's answer is that the money is an asset the public owns and that an asset spent is an asset gone; but the reader who thinks the deficit matters more is not wrong to think so, and № 023 is written for that reader.
The honest objections
"This just moves money from one government pocket to another and calls it a dividend." It moves money from a pocket that spends it to a pocket that keeps it, which is the entire difference between income and wealth. The general fund's receipt is gone at year's end; the fund's principal is there in a century. Every permanent fund in the world was built by exactly this decision, made once and kept.
"Diverting remittances raises the deficit, so the country borrows to fill the fund, which № 023 forbids." The strongest objection and it deserves a straight answer. The dollar diverted is not borrowed; it is earned. But its absence from the general fund is real, and item 3 concedes that the deficit is higher by that amount. The covenant's second lock, that the fund's earnings go to the debt while debt is high, means the diverted dollar is still working on the debt, through the fund rather than through the Treasury, and is still there afterward. A reader who finds that too clever should support the phase-in and a slower start. The alternative, to keep spending the receipt, is the one the country has chosen for a century, and it has left nothing.
"The Fed will be pressured to earn more for the fund, and seigniorage is a motive for inflation." This is the classic danger of a government that profits from its currency, and the answer is item 5: the fund receives a residual it has no power to influence, the Fed's mandate is untouched, and the deferred-asset years show the residual can be zero for a long time without anyone at the fund being able to do anything about it. A Fed that inflated to fill the fund would destroy the value of the fund's own bond holdings, which is the same discipline that binds it today.
"Why not just use it to pay down the debt directly?" Because that is what the general fund already does with it, in theory, and the record of a century is that the money is spent, not saved. Routing it through the fund under the Debt Covenant pays the debt with the interest and keeps the principal. Paying the debt with the principal leaves nothing when the debt is paid.
"The deferred asset means this is a promise about money that doesn't exist yet." Correct, and that is the argument for passing it now. A rule written when the money is absent is written on the merits; a rule written when $100 billion a year is on the table is written by whoever wants the $100 billion.
Sources
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, press releases on Reserve Bank income and remittances to the Treasury, January 2022 and January 2023; Monetary Policy Report, February 2025
- Federal Reserve statistical release H.4.1, deferred asset as of December 2025
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED Blog, "Federal Reserve remittances to the US Treasury," 2023
- Congressional Research Service, The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet (IF12147)
- U.S. Mint, annual report, seigniorage and the 2025 end of penny production
- Proposals № 001 (The American Dividend); № 015 (The Spectrum Dividend); № 023 (The Debt Covenant); № 050 (The Shareholder's Report)