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Appendix B. Method and limits

How the figures were sourced. Every document was downloaded from a government website on October 5, 2026 and saved in full in the investigation's sources/official/ folder, with its URL, retrieval date and description in data/downloads_*.tsv. The text of each document was extracted into data/text/ (pdftotext for PDFs; tags stripped for web pages; Excel tables converted to text). Each figure or factual statement in this report is recorded as a claim in data/claims_*.jsonl: the statement, its value, the source file, the PDF page, and the exact words of the document that state it. scripts/check_claims.py confirms that each quoted passage appears on the cited page, that every saved file has a download record and a text extraction, and recomputes the sums and shares the report uses (data/derived.json), checking that recomputed totals agree with the printed ones. Page numbers in this report are PDF page numbers (the first page of the file is page 1), not the printed page numbers.

Principal sources. 2026 Annual Reports of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees (June 2026); CMS 2026 premium fact sheets, Part D bid memo and CY2026 Rate Announcement; SSA tax-rate, taxable-maximum and COLA pages; 31 U.S.C. 1301-1555 and 2 U.S.C. 681-688, 901a-939, 26 U.S.C. 1411, 3101, 3111 and 3121 (U.S. Code, 2024 edition, GovInfo); P.L. 117-103 and P.L. 119-75; OMB Circular A-11 (August 2025), Memorandum M-20-21, Historical Tables (FY2027 Budget) and PAYGO reports; Treasury's GTAS file format, FAST Book, Combined Statement and Monthly Treasury Statement pages, and the FY2025 Financial Report of the U.S. Government with GAO's audit report; USAspending.gov glossary, data dictionary, DEFC list and federal-account API responses; CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook 2026-2036, Monthly Budget Reviews, accuracy review and Expired and Expiring Authorizations report (2026); GAO's Antideficiency Act and Impoundment Control Act pages, FY2025 ADA compilation and April 8, 2025 letter; the D.D.C. opinion of July 21, 2025 and D.C. Circuit order of August 9, 2025; the DoD Inspector General's FY2025 audit report; CRS reports IF13256, RS22796, IN12538, IF12627, R45106, RS20129 and R44582. The full list is in References.

Limits.

  • Calendar and fiscal years. Trustees Report figures are calendar years; CBO, OMB and Treasury figures are fiscal years. Where the report compares the two (general revenue for Parts B and D against total outlays) it says so.
  • cbo.gov refused automated requests from the network used. The five CBO reports were retrieved as unmodified original files from the Internet Archive's captures of their cbo.gov addresses; the capture addresses are recorded in the download log, and each can be compared with the copy on cbo.gov.
  • Restoration of the apportionment website. No government document saved here states the date OMB restored the public apportionment database after the August 2025 order, so the report does not state one.
  • Premiums paid by Medicaid. The Trustees Report counts Part B premiums "paid by or on behalf of" enrollees and does not say how much Medicaid pays; the report does not estimate it.
  • Statutes are from the 2024 edition of the U.S. Code on GovInfo (uscode.house.gov was down for maintenance). Amendments enacted after that edition were checked only where the report relies on them (P.L. 118-42 for the 2032 Medicare sequester, as recorded in the 2024 edition's notes).
  • No people were contacted and no public-records requests were filed.

Revision history. Revision 1, October 6, 2026. Not yet independently reviewed.