Date: 2026-08-03 Scope: First pass per §19's phase-gate — verify the ★ Anchor Table rows, prove the §0.2 literature-search pipeline, scan the §15 precedent additions. Go/no-go input for full execution.
Verdict: GO, with two prior-updates
No kill condition fired. The baseline data exists, the search pipeline works, and nothing found contradicts the protocol's structure. Two priors move:
1. The workforce-binds hypothesis just got its strongest evidence — before execution even started
Canada's CWELCC — the §15 addition this protocol's review called "the single most relevant live case" — is underdelivering on exactly the constraint this protocol treats as primary:
- 194,000 of 284,000 targeted new spaces delivered nationally (as of Sept 30, 2025); Ontario delivered ~36,000 of 48,000
- Ontario fees average ≈$19/day, not $10; the $10 deadline has been extended to December 31, 2026
- Ontario alone needs up to 10,000 more ECEs; centres report unfilled existing spaces because they cannot staff them
- 57% of new spaces are for-profit, and Ontario is pushing to lift the for-profit cap in its federal agreement — §12.5's rate-participation and for-profit-inclusion fight, observed live
Implication: §4 (workforce) and the Canada case in §15 should be executed early and deeply — they were already ranked high; this confirms it. The money arrived in Canada; the educators did not. That is H4.2's mechanism operating at national scale.
2. CBO already prices in state non-participation
The verified BBB score ($381.5B for childcare + pre-K, 2022–2031, vs. the $400B line item) embeds an assumption of substantial state non-participation — the official scorer treats §11.4's federalism problem as the base case, not a tail risk. Any §14 architecture without a federal fallback is being scored (fiscally and politically) as partial-coverage from day one. Strengthens H11.3 (fallback is the highest-value design feature).
Anchor verifications (rows completed in §20)
| Row | Result |
|---|---|
| 1. BBB cost | Verified with delta — $381.5B CBO score vs. $400B line item |
| 2. ARPA cliff | Verified with nuance — two-stage cliff: $24B expired 2023-09-30, $15B wound down through Sept 2024 |
| 3. Labor share | Widened — Treasury floor is 50–60%, center personnel commonly 70–80%; protocol's ⅔–⅘ was too narrow at the bottom |
| 5. Workforce baseline | Industry ≈1.05M jobs pre-pandemic (derived from BLS CES); the additional requirement remains §4's job |
| 12. Red-state pre-K | Confirmed — GA 1995 (first; lottery; mixed delivery), OK 1998 (funding formula; >70% of 4s, the nation's highest), FL ballot-approved, operating 2005 |
| 13. Canada | Verified and materially updated — see above |
Literature pipeline: proven, no connector required
OpenAlex's free API (no auth) returned the §0.2 canon on the first query — Baker–Gruber–Milligan (NBER w11832; 271 citations), Cornelissen et al. (JPE 2018), and the BGM long-run follow-up (AEJ:Policy 2019). Working pattern:
curl 'https://api.openalex.org/works?search=<terms>&per-page=25&select=id,title,publication_year,cited_by_count,doi'Semantic Scholar's API is the backup channel; NBER/RePEc via web fetch. No MCP connector for academic search exists in the registry as of this date, and none is needed.
Notes for full execution
- The red-state scan surfaced coverage rates (GA ~55%, OK >70% of 4-year-olds) that belong in the §15 comparison template — Oklahoma's funding-formula route (pre-K inside the school aid formula, no new program apparatus) is a delivery mechanism §14's K–12-extension architecture should study directly.
- Florida's exact amendment-vs-launch dates need pinning in the full §15 pass (row 12 note).
- Sources consulted are linked in the §20 table rows; all verifications used at least one primary or official source (CBO, ACF, Treasury, DECAL) per the §0.1 two-source rule, with press/aggregator sources as the second leg where applicable.