All your verbiage around it to the side, if you look at the pages of the "screen prints of the report" it doesn't 'read' like any of the Rand reports I've read. It uses 'us’ and ‘we’ in place of 'the US'. Also 'toxic currency'.

I've also never seen a Rand report cheerleading for a Democratic majority (kind’a wish they were on the Dem side, though — would certainly have remembered one).

My take: it's a fairly well executed 'dangle'. No idea if you (the author) are in on it or not.

Anyone else: don't go on whether Rand denies authoring this. Don’t go on anything I say. Go read some other Rand reports (two or three to get a 'feel' for the corporate style guide). Then read this. Same? For me, it was not. I'm not a linguistics expert, but in my career I’ve had some to-do with tech writing and style guides.

Now, is it possible the Rand committee writing this (assuming they did) were told to "make it not look like the guide" - but Occam's Razor says the simpler explanation (not actually from them) is probably right.