The Stakes
The homepage references "$4 trillion in asset sales" as the Phase 1 funding mechanism that, alongside operating surpluses and 1% borrowing, finances the entitlement buyout. That figure isn't sourced. This page works it out.
The realistic privatization universe — defensible against primary-source data, with explicit political-feasibility scoring — totals between $1.7 trillion and $2.6 trillion, centered around $2.1 trillion. Roughly half the figure used elsewhere on this site.
That gap matters. The buyout's financing structure depends on this number being approximately right. If it is overstated by $2 trillion, the Phase 1 plan needs adjustment. The honest version is in this page; the cross-page reconciliation is in motion.
The methodology is the credibility move. Each asset gets a primary-source valuation with a low-end and high-end figure. Each category gets a political-feasibility score — Low, Medium, or High. Where the political constraint is binding, this page says so explicitly. Where the asset is genuinely monetizable, the dollar figure is anchored to government data, market comparables, or both. No single number is a marketing claim.
Six categories of federal assets and operations:
- Federal real assets — land, buildings, vehicles, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
- Operational privatization — air traffic control, TSA, Amtrak, USPS
- GSE conservatorship release — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest single defensible item on the page
- Federal credit portfolios — student loans, SBA, USDA, FHA, Export-Import Bank
- Continuing commercial operations — TVA and the Power Marketing Administrations
- Intellectual property and licensing — federal patents and government commercial operations
The biggest single defensible item is the GSE conservatorship release. The biggest political constraint is on federal land disposal. The biggest negative-valuation surprise is USPS. None of those is what most privatization advocacy leads with, which is precisely why this page is necessary.
Federal Real Assets
The mental image of federal privatization, for most people, is selling government-owned real estate — land, buildings, vehicles, oil reserves. That category exists, and the dollar figure is meaningful, but the headline number depends almost entirely on a single political question: how much BLM land is realistically sellable.
| Asset | Realistic range | Political feasibility |
|---|---|---|
| BLM surface lands | $50B – $200B | Low–Medium |
| BLM subsurface mineral rights | $50B – $200B | Medium |
| GSA federal buildings (excess/underutilized) | $30B – $80B | Medium |
| National Park commercial concessions | $5B – $15B | Medium |
| Strategic Petroleum Reserve | ~$27B | Medium (strategic role) |
| USPS real estate (separate from operations) | $10B – $30B | Medium |
| Federal vehicle fleet (surplus only) | $1B – $3B | High |
| Subtotal | $170B – $555B |
The Bureau of Land Management surface holdings — roughly 247 million acres of federal land across twelve western states1 — present the widest range. The American Enterprise Institute's analysis estimated that selling 544,000 acres of land in Nevada and Utah could generate $100 billion over a decade.2 The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee's 2025 estimate, for a broader 2–3 million acre disposal, was $5–10 billion over the same period.3 The 100x per-acre price spread is real — both can be defended honestly because they describe different disposal pools. Near-urban acres trade at $100,000 or more per acre; rural acres trade at $1,000–5,000.
The political constraint is binding. The 2025 "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" mandated a 2–3 million acre disposal in its initial form. The House version was rejected after Republican opposition.4 Federal land sales are politically harder than the dollar math suggests, and the 2025 evidence reinforces that.
Subsurface mineral rights are a separate question. BLM manages mineral rights on roughly 700 million acres — substantially more than its surface holdings.1 These are typically monetized through ongoing leasing programs (oil and gas, coal, geothermal) rather than one-time sales. The 2025 leasing program generated $356 million in oil and gas alone.4 One-time monetization of the broader subsurface portfolio is theoretically defensible at $50–200 billion but technically and politically complex.
The General Services Administration manages 360 million square feet of federal real estate, with a maintenance backlog reaching $370 billion as of FY 2024.5 Recent disposal yielded $182 million across 90 buildings — a useful empirical baseline for the disposable fraction. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds 409 million barrels valued at approximately $27 billion at $65 per barrel.6 Concessions, vehicles, and postal real estate fill out the rest.
Where this category fits the civic argument: federal land sales to states or local buyers move management closer to the people who actually use the land. National Park commercial concessions transfer operations to private operators while keeping public access. These are real applications of the principle. BLM mineral rights monetization is cleanup, not empowerment. Honest framing matters more than rhetorical consistency.
The realistic subtotal: $170 billion to $555 billion.
Operational Privatization
Not asset sales — transferring federal operations to private market actors. Some yield one-time monetization. Most yield ongoing operating savings. One yields neither.
| Asset | Realistic value | Political feasibility |
|---|---|---|
| Air Traffic Control privatization | $20B – $50B (one-time) | Medium-High |
| Amtrak Northeast Corridor extraction | $5B – $30B (one-time) | Medium |
| TSA via Screening Partnership Program | $2B – $3B/yr ongoing | Already happening |
| USPS | $0 (special case — see below) | High demand, no buyer |
| One-time subtotal | $25B – $80B |
Air traffic control privatization has clean precedent. Canada moved its ATC to NavCanada, a private nonprofit, in 1996 for CA$1.5 billion. The United Kingdom privatized as NATS in 2000.7 The U.S. system is roughly 10–20x larger by traffic volume, suggesting a $20–50 billion order of magnitude. No authoritative U.S. valuation exists in the policy literature; this is a genuine gap. The 2018 reform attempt failed politically despite support from the administration, most airlines, the controllers' union, and many policy organizations. This category fits the civic argument: NavCanada moved operational accountability from political appropriations to user fees, and its safety record has compared favorably with the FAA's by some measures.
Amtrak has a sharper structure. The Northeast Corridor is operationally profitable; long-distance routes are not.8 If the NEC infrastructure were monetized as a separable entity — track, signaling, real estate — its value as a going concern is in the $5–30 billion range. The non-NEC routes are not assets in the privatization sense; they are subsidy programs in different clothing.
TSA is already in motion. The FY 2027 budget proposes a 14% TSA workforce reduction with $477 million redirected to expand the Screening Partnership Program.9 This is not an asset sale and produces no one-time monetization. Ongoing savings are estimated at 15–20% of TSA cost — $2–3 billion per year — once SPP expansion completes. The civic application is modest but real: airport-by-airport contracted screening replaces a federal personnel system with local accountability under federal standards.
USPS: No Rational Buyer
The Postal Service sits in a separate column. FY 2025 net loss: $9 billion. Accumulated losses since 2007: more than $109 billion. $15 billion Treasury borrowing limit reached.10 No private buyer pays a positive price for an operation in this position absent relief from the legacy retiree health benefit obligations that drive much of the structural loss. Privatization, in any honest sense, means structural reform of the program — not asset sale proceeds. This page does not pretend otherwise. Most privatization advocacy includes USPS in headline figures; that practice is the kind of arithmetic the rest of this site is meant to avoid.
GSE Conservatorship Release
The largest single defensible asset on this page is invisible from most privatization advocacy: $500 billion to $700 billion in Treasury claims on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that release from conservatorship would monetize.
The reason this asset is unfamiliar is that most readers, and most privatization advocacy, focus on selling things the government owns physically. The GSE recovery is different: Treasury already holds the financial claims; release from conservatorship monetizes them.
Treasury holds three distinct components in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:
| Component | Realistic value |
|---|---|
| Senior preferred shares (liquidation preference + accrued dividends, both GSEs) | $540B – $650B |
| Warrants for 79.9% of common stock (both GSEs) | $150B – $250B |
| Capitalized commitment fee | ~$100B |
| Combined realistic recovery | $500B – $700B |
The senior preferred shares were structured during the 2008 financial crisis when Treasury injected capital into both GSEs to prevent collapse. Treasury's claim — currently around $193 billion liquidation preference plus $147 billion in accrued dividends for Fannie Mae alone, with Freddie Mac proportional11 — sits ahead of all other shareholders. In 2012, an amendment to the Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements (the "Net Worth Sweep") had the GSEs paying nearly all profits to Treasury as dividends. Cumulative Treasury receipts already exceed the original $187.5 billion injection. The senior preferred liquidation preference still grows due to ongoing dividend accruals.
The warrants are the second component. As part of the 2008 rescue, Treasury received warrants entitling it to purchase 79.9% of each GSE's common stock at a nominal price. The warrants expire in September 2028.12 If exercised at release from conservatorship, with the GSEs trading as ordinary public companies, Treasury receives near-total ownership of two of the largest U.S. financial institutions. Analyst estimates for the warrant value vary widely depending on assumptions about post-release capital structure and book value, but $100 billion is a defensible floor for the Fannie Mae warrants alone, with proportional value for Freddie Mac.
The capitalized commitment fee is the third component — Treasury's ongoing line of credit to the GSEs has a value if extended into perpetuity, estimated around $60 billion for Fannie Mae and proportionally for Freddie Mac.12
Why this is high-confidence relative to the other categories on this page: these are not political "could we sell it?" questions. Treasury already owns the claims. They sit in functioning capital markets. The question is when and how to monetize them, not whether they exist.
The risks are real. Markets need to absorb significant common-stock float during release. Housing finance system disruption is a non-trivial transition risk. Outstanding shareholder lawsuits over the 2012 Net Worth Sweep — most prominently Collins v. Yellen — could affect the mechanics of monetization. The Trump administration has explicitly signaled privatization intent in 2025; Treasury Secretary Bessent, FHFA Director Pulte, and the President have all referenced release. Political feasibility is High.
The civic argument applies cleanly here. The Net Worth Sweep transferred GSE profits to Treasury indefinitely — an arrangement that has functioned as a quasi-tax on housing finance for over a decade, with no congressional appropriation involved. Release from conservatorship returns the GSEs to ordinary shareholders, ends the open-ended sweep, and converts a politically-managed financial arrangement into a market-managed one. Treasury monetizes its claim on the way out. This is structural privatization in its strongest form: the federal government has been operating two of the country's largest financial institutions through executive-branch agreements for seventeen years. The case for ending that arrangement is independent of the buyout-funding case.
A small clarification on the prior framing: earlier discussions of this category referenced "Sallie Mae." Sallie Mae has been entirely private since 2014; the federal exposure is in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, where Treasury still holds the claims worked out above.
Federal Credit Portfolios
The federal government holds trillions of dollars in loan portfolios. Privatization in this category means selling those portfolios to private market buyers — at significant discounts to face value, almost always.
| Portfolio | Face value | Realistic sale value | Political feasibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal student loans | $1.67T | $830B – $1.08T | Medium |
| FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund | $188.9B capital ($1.6T active insurance) | $50B – $100B (privatization premium) | Low |
| Export-Import Bank exposure | $34.8B | $5B – $15B | Low-Medium |
| SBA portfolio | ~$50B+ | $15B – $30B | Low-Medium |
| USDA Rural Development loans | $30B+ | $15B – $25B | Low-Medium |
| Subtotal | $915B – $1,170B |
The federal student loan portfolio dominates the category. Outstanding balance: $1.67 trillion across 42.3 million borrowers as of 2025.13 Government breakeven analysis estimates the portfolio's minimum sale price at approximately $1.08 trillion — the floor below which a sale would result in a net cost to the Federal Government, a constraint built into the Department of Education's FCRA-based subsidy accounting.14
The market clearing price is below the breakeven floor. As of December 2025, 11% of the portfolio was in default — $180 billion in distressed value. 76% of borrowers in active repayment status are current. 42% of borrowers in repayment-status are enrolled in income-driven repayment plans, where eventual repayment is tied to income trajectories and exposed to forgiveness provisions like Public Service Loan Forgiveness. These figures describe overlapping populations, not exclusive categories — a borrower making timely IDR payments counts as both "current" and "in IDR."13 McKinsey's 2019 analysis for the Department of Education estimated that 45% of the portfolio was not expected to repay, a figure broadly consistent with current default and IDR-enrollment data.
A private buyer's pricing model differs from the federal model in one critical respect: private buyers can reprice IDR plans within contract law, while the federal government cannot. The legal latitude here is uncertain and would likely be litigated. The realistic sale range — $830 billion to $1.08 trillion — reflects this uncertainty: the low end assumes aggressive buyer-side discounting; the high end assumes the government breakeven floor holds. Above $1.08 trillion is potential upside if private repricing exceeds federal constraints, but this is not load-bearing.
The other federal credit portfolios are smaller individually. The FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund holds $188.9 billion in capital against $1.6 trillion in active insurance.15 Privatization here is not a portfolio sale in the conventional sense — the fund secures private mortgages, not federal loans. A privatization premium estimate is $50–100 billion, with significant complexity and Low political feasibility. SBA, USDA Rural Development, and Export-Import Bank portfolios are realistic at $5–30 billion each — meaningful but not dominant. Each has specific constituency politics that put feasibility in the Low-Medium range.
This is cleanup framing, not citizen empowerment. Selling the student loan portfolio doesn't return education to the people — students still owe the same amounts under different servicers. The case for divestment is fiscal: removing $1+ trillion of credit risk from the federal balance sheet and eliminating the cost of an entire federal lending apparatus. Worth doing on those grounds. Not worth dressing up as something larger.
Continuing Commercial Operations
Federal entities operating as quasi-businesses. Privatization here means converting publicly-owned operations to investor-owned firms.
| Entity | Annual revenue | Realistic enterprise value | Political feasibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tennessee Valley Authority | $13.7B | $15B – $30B | Medium-Low |
| Bonneville Power Administration | $3.7B | $5B – $12B | Medium-Low |
| Western Area Power Administration | smaller | $2B – $5B | Medium-Low |
| Southeastern + Southwestern PMAs | smaller still | $1B – $3B combined | Medium-Low |
| Subtotal | $25B – $50B |
The Tennessee Valley Authority reported $13.7 billion in operating revenue and $1.4 billion in net income for FY 2025.16 At standard utility multiples (10–15x net income or 1.5–2x revenue), enterprise value is $15–30 billion. The Bonneville Power Administration reported $3.7 billion in revenue with $74 million in net revenue — much thinner margins consistent with its self-funded nonprofit-utility character.17 The other Power Marketing Administrations are smaller still.
Important caveat: TVA does not receive taxpayer subsidy. It is self-funded through power sales. Privatization here transfers ownership and access to capital markets, but doesn't reduce federal spending. The case rests on whether public power should compete with private utilities on equal terms, and whether ratepayers benefit from market-based capital structure. Reasonable people disagree.
The civic argument is restrained for this category. Converting TVA from a federal corporation to a publicly-traded utility doesn't return power generation to the people of the Tennessee Valley — it transfers ownership from one institutional structure to another. The Power Marketing Administrations face the same pattern, with regional stakeholders that have benefited from preferential rate structures for decades. The case for or against privatizing public power rests on regulatory, operational, and ratepayer arguments — not on populist ones. Reasonable people disagree about the right answer; this page does not pretend to resolve it.
Intellectual Property and Licensing
The federal patent portfolio (NIH, DoD, DOE) and commercial operations like the Government Printing Office.
| Asset | Realistic value | Political feasibility |
|---|---|---|
| Federal patent portfolio | $5B – $20B (multi-year licensing) | High |
| GPO and other commercial operations | $1B – $5B | High |
| Subtotal | $5B – $25B |
These are genuinely small relative to the rest of the page. The federal patent portfolio is hard to value precisely — it is a multi-year licensing model rather than a lump-sum sale, and the realizable revenue depends on commercial demand for specific patents over time. GPO and similar commercial operations have small footprints and limited monetization potential.
This category is included for completeness, not for impact. It does not change the page's total range materially. Listed honestly — small and modest — rather than inflated to feel more substantial than it is.
The Total Range
| Category | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Federal real assets | $170B | $555B |
| Operational privatization (one-time) | $25B | $80B |
| GSE conservatorship release | $500B | $700B |
| Federal credit portfolios | $915B | $1,170B |
| Continuing commercial operations | $25B | $50B |
| IP and licensing | $5B | $25B |
| Total | $1,640B | $2,580B |
| Midpoint | ~$2.1 trillion |
Three swing factors dominate the range.
The student loan portfolio swings $250 billion depending on whether private repricing of IDR plans is legally and politically feasible. This is the single largest sensitivity in the page.
BLM lands — surface plus subsurface combined — swing roughly $300 billion depending on the sellable definition. The Senate ENR scenario (2–3 million acres, $5–10 billion over a decade) and the AEI-style aggressive near-urban scenario (urban-edge acres at $100K+ per acre) describe different policy realities. Each is defensible. Neither has been politically achievable in 2025.
GSE warrant valuation swings $100+ billion depending on housing market conditions at release and execution mechanics.
The $4 trillion claim used elsewhere on this site is roughly twice the realistic figure. That gap is real, and surfacing it is the point of this rebuild. A $2 trillion privatization universe with primary-source backing for every figure is a more durable funding argument than a $4 trillion universe held together with handwave. The math is harder; the page is firmer.
What This Means for the Plan
The homepage's 10-Year Plan and the federal-spending page both reference "$4 trillion in asset sales" as the Phase 1 buyout funding mechanism. This page concludes that figure is overstated by approximately $2 trillion. That is a plan-level finding, not a page-level one.
The 4-year Phase 1 buyout window is a fixed parameter of this site's plan. With privatization delivering ~$2.1 trillion instead of $4 trillion over those 4 years, the funding gap is roughly $1.9 trillion — about $475 billion per year of additional financing.
Three options exist for filling the gap. One is foreclosed; two remain.
Foreclosed: Extend the buyout from 4 years to 6–8 years. This is the cleanest mathematical fix, but it contradicts the 4-year window that the rest of the plan treats as fixed. Not pursued.
Option A: Larger 1% borrowing during Phase 1. The debt peak rises from $61 trillion in Year 4 to approximately $70 trillion or higher. The plan still converges, but the rate-cooperation assumption becomes more load-bearing — every basis point of rate slippage costs more on a larger principal. See Why 1% Interest Is Achievable for the break-even analysis.
Option B: Higher operating-surplus contribution to the buyout. The NST surplus over federal spending currently funds ongoing debt paydown. Redirecting more of that surplus to the Phase 1 buyout slows Phase 2 (debt reduction post-buyout). Phase 2 stretches longer; debt-free 2069 might shift to 2071–2073.
The honest answer is likely a combination of A and B, calibrated to keep the debt peak below a level that doesn't break the rate-cooperation argument. The cross-page reconciliation will determine the specific calibration.
The homepage and federal-spending references will be updated to reflect this analysis. Cross-page reconciliation is in motion.
Sources & Footnotes
- Bureau of Land Management, Public Land Statistics 2024 (released July 2025). 247.3 million surface acres across 12 western states; mineral-estate management on roughly 700 million acres. blm.gov. ↩
- American Enterprise Institute analysis of BLM disposal in Nevada and Utah, 2024. Estimated $100 billion over a decade from 544,000 acres. Cited in Scientific American, 2025. ↩
- Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee 2025 estimate for the disposal provisions of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." Projected $5–10 billion over fiscal years 2025–2034 for 2–3 million acre disposal. Reported by Outdoor Alliance, June 2025 and Center for American Progress. ↩
- Bureau of Land Management, Progress on Public Lands: BLM 2025 Trump Administration Accomplishments, January 20 – December 31, 2025. 22 oil and gas lease sales generated $356.6 million; 4 coal sales $47 million; geothermal leases $24 million. blm.gov. House rejection of the OBBBA disposal provisions reported by NPR. ↩
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Federal Real Property: Reducing the Government's Holdings Could Generate Substantial Savings, GAO-25-108159 (2025). Federal real property has been on GAO's High-Risk List since 2003. Maintenance backlog reached $370 billion in FY 2024. gao.gov. Recent GSA disposal of 90 buildings yielded $182 million per GSA, December 2025. ↩
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, weekly U.S. ending stocks of crude oil in the SPR. Inventory at 409 million barrels as of April 2026; valuation at approximately $65 per barrel. eia.gov. ↩
- Cato Institute, Cato Handbook for Policymakers (9th edition, 2022), chapter on air traffic control. NavCanada privatization for CA$1.5 billion (1996); NATS UK privatization (2000). cato.org. ↩
- Amtrak, Management Discussion, Analysis, and Audited Financial Statements, FY 2025. Northeast Corridor operationally profitable; long-distance routes loss-making. amtrak.com. ↩
- Transportation Security Administration, FY 2027 Congressional Budget Justification (June 2025). Proposed 14% workforce reduction; $477 million redirected to Screening Partnership Program expansion. dhs.gov. ↩
- United States Postal Service, FY 2025 Annual Report. Net loss $9 billion FY 2025; accumulated losses exceeding $109 billion since 2007; $15 billion Treasury borrowing limit reached. usps.com. Coverage from Federal News Network. ↩
- U.S. Department of the Treasury, Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Q3 2024 data). Senior preferred liquidation preference plus accrued dividends. fhfa.gov. ↩
- National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Maximizing Value for All Stakeholders (2025). Treasury warrant valuation analysis (estimated $100+ billion for Fannie alone, $150–250 billion combined); capitalized commitment fee estimate (~$60 billion Fannie, proportional Freddie); September 2028 warrant expiration. ncpers.org. ↩
- U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Data Center, December 2025 reports. $1.67 trillion outstanding portfolio across 42.3 million borrowers; 11% portfolio in default; 42% of repayment-status borrowers in IDR plans (overlapping with the "current" population, not exclusive); 76% of active-repayment borrowers current. studentaid.gov. ↩
- The $1.08 trillion breakeven figure derives from the Department of Education's FCRA-based subsidy cost analysis, which is internal to ED and not directly published as a standalone document. The figure is documented in two credible secondary sources: Project on Predatory Student Lending, What a Sale of the Federal Student Loan Portfolio Could Mean (May 2025), ppsl.org; and the November 16, 2025 letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren to Secretary McMahon, warren.senate.gov. Both reference the same federal analysis. The breakeven concept reflects the requirement that any portfolio sale not result in a net cost to the Federal Government — a constraint built into FCRA accounting for federal credit programs. Direct citation of the underlying ED model is not publicly available; this footnote acknowledges that the figure reaches the page through credible secondary sources. ↩
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2025 Annual Report to Congress on the Financial Status of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. MMI Fund capital of $188.9 billion; capital ratio of 11.47%; 8.1 million active forward mortgages with $1.6 trillion in unpaid principal balance. hud.gov. ↩
- Tennessee Valley Authority, FY 2025 financial results (announced November 2025). Operating revenue $13.7 billion; net income $1.4 billion. prnewswire.com. ↩
- Bonneville Power Administration, 2025 Annual Report. Revenue $3.7 billion; net revenue $74 million; capital expenditures $1.08 billion. bpa.gov. ↩