12 bills. 12 months.
A complete first term.
Joshua Warren Sales enters Congress with twelve fully funded, legally architected bills — one for every month of his first term. All twelve are self-financing. None raise taxes on working families. Every dollar comes from the corporations and billionaires each bill is designed to constrain.
A factory worker pays Social Security tax on every dollar they earn. An investor living entirely off dividends pays nothing. A billionaire's heir can inherit a $500 million stock portfolio the morning after the funeral — tax free. This bill says income is income. The laborer who plants deserves the same treatment as the investor who harvests. Social Security is solvent for 75 years if everyone pays their share. This is not redistribution. It is the closing of a loophole.
The Mechanics- Removes the $184,500 wage ceiling so executives pay the same Social Security rate on every dollar as the worker earning $55,000
- Applies a 12.4% Social Security contribution to investment income above $100,000 — retirement accounts are fully exempt
- Closes the stepped-up basis loophole at death, with full protections for family farms and small businesses
- Generates ~$401B/year — enough to close the entire 75-year Social Security funding shortfall
The United States spends $14,885 per person on healthcare — more than any country on earth — and gets worse outcomes than nations spending half as much. The difference goes to insurance overhead, pharmaceutical pricing power, and billing complexity. The median TN-7 family pays $600–$1,200 a month for coverage they're afraid to use. This bill replaces that with $50 a month for full coverage. The math works everywhere else on earth. It works here.
The Mechanics- Progressive healthcare contribution tax — a family earning $80,000 pays ~$46/month, replacing $600–$1,200/month in current premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs
- Covers medical, dental, vision, and mental health — no deductibles, no networks, no surprise bills, one card
- Funded through existing Medicare/Medicaid redirection, employer payroll savings, and efficiency gains from eliminating insurance overhead (~$450B/year in administrative savings alone)
- Rural hospitals in TN-7 become financially stable — every patient who walks in carries coverage, eliminating the uncompensated care burden that has closed 17+ Tennessee hospitals
Richard Nixon stood before Congress in 1970 and declared that clean air, clean water, and open spaces should be the birthright of every American. Fifty years later, the promise hasn't been kept. Families in rural Tennessee drink water through lead pipes. The Tennessee Valley Authority was built because the private sector wouldn't serve rural America — this bill applies that same logic nationally. The land that feeds this country can power it too.
The Mechanics- Reforms TVA with mandatory clean energy conversion, rate accountability, and a congressional subpoena for the secret corporate rate cuts that overcharged TN-7 households ~$110/year
- Carbon penalty of $75/ton on fossil fuel utilities, escalating annually — utilities are prohibited from passing penalties to ratepayers
- Agricultural interconnection fast lane: farmers hosting solar or wind projects get grid connection in 18–24 months instead of the current 8-year average
- Mandates replacement of all 9.2 million lead service lines nationally — rural Tennessee counties receive first-priority federal funding
Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in the middle of a Civil War because he believed investing in working people's education was investing in the republic itself. Today, 43 million Americans carry student debt not because they made bad choices, but because the system was designed to extract from them. A welder, an electrician, and a nurse practitioner deserve the same investment from their government as a student at an Ivy League university. Every road to a good job deserves equal respect and equal investment.
The Mechanics- Cancels all federally held student loan debt — no income cap, no means test, no application required
- Guarantees free public higher education and free vocational and trades training for every American going forward
- Creates an automatic military-to-civilian credentialing pipeline — soldiers leave service with civilian certifications already in hand, included in their DD-214
- Funded by a financial transaction tax (0.5% on stocks, 0.1% on bonds) and a tiered endowment surtax on universities with assets over $1 billion — generates $150–210B/year against $104–126B/year in program costs
Wall Street investment funds bought millions of single-family homes across America not to live in them but to extract rent from the families who couldn't compete. A veteran in Montgomery County shouldn't be outbid on a home he earned the right to buy by a hedge fund that will never set foot in Tennessee. Homeownership is how working families build wealth. When corporations buy the homes, they buy the future too. This bill takes it back.
The Mechanics- Permanently bans corporations from owning single-family homes — existing holdings subject to mandatory 10% annual divestiture over a decade
- Divested homes transfer to Community Land Trusts and are sold to working families with permanent affordability restrictions — they can never return to corporate ownership
- Gives veterans cash-offer competitiveness, appraisal gap elimination, and a 72-hour priority bidding window before eligible homes hit the open market
- Generates $30–70B/year in permanent revenue — used first for housing, then national debt elimination, then property tax cuts for working homeowners
Four companies control 85% of the beef Americans buy. Six companies control what Americans watch and read. The farmer in Macon County takes whatever price the packers offer because there is nowhere else to go. The family paying more for ground beef in Clarksville never sees the farmer earn more — the spread goes to four corporations. David did not ask Goliath's permission to throw the stone. He just threw it.
The Mechanics- Any company controlling 40%+ of a market is presumed to hold monopoly power — structural breakups are the default remedy, not consent decrees and promises to behave
- Executives who participate in price-fixing face criminal prosecution up to 10 years and full disgorgement of personal compensation — corporate indemnification of criminal fines is prohibited
- Closes the revolving door between regulatory agencies and the industries they regulate — permanent ban for Cabinet-level officials, 10 years for senior staff
- Fort Campbell must source food locally where a Tennessee supplier is within 15% of the national bid — the same premium DoD pays in every other supply chain it manages
Rural America didn't fall behind because rural people stopped working hard. The arteries were cut. When the rail lines closed, the jobs followed. When the broadband never came — or came as a monopoly charging whatever it wanted — the remote workers went somewhere else. The interstate highway system was built with public money because private markets wouldn't build it. This bill applies the same logic to rail, broadband, and rural transit. If you don't have a car that runs and money to keep it running, you are effectively under house arrest.
The Mechanics- Restores five Tennessee rail corridors — including Clarksville/Fort Campbell to Nashville, Nashville to Memphis, and Nashville to Knoxville — operational within four years of enactment
- Builds a federally owned National Broadband Backbone that no corporation can buy or throttle — price cap of $65/month in rural counties, free for households below 200% of the federal poverty line
- Creates a permanent demand-responsive rural transit program for counties with no public transit — medical transport is a guaranteed priority trip type, not subject to availability
- Funded by right-of-way fees from Class I railroads on federally granted land and broadband monopoly accountability fees — generates $5.5–26B/year surplus
In 1946, veterans returned to McMinn County, Tennessee and took their elections back from a political machine by force. This bill does it by law. Every other bill in the Sales Plan fights a symptom of the same disease: a government purchased by concentrated wealth. This bill attacks the purchase mechanism itself. Joshua Sales ran this race accepting no corporate PAC money and no dark money. He won. This bill makes that system available to every candidate willing to run the same way.
The Mechanics- Proposes a constitutional amendment establishing that constitutional rights belong to natural persons, not corporations — money is not speech
- Creates the American Elections Fund — a 6:1 small-dollar matching program for candidates who accept no corporate PAC money and no dark money
- Requires real-time donor disclosure within 48 hours for all contributions over $200 — no more quarterly reporting that hides donations until after the election
- Imposes a lifetime lobbying ban on former members of Congress — you serve the people or you serve the lobbyists, not both
Predatory lenders cluster around Fort Campbell and rural Tennessee because they know exactly who lives there — people with steady paychecks, limited financial options, and nowhere else to turn. They charge 400% APR on a two-week loan. They rent a washing machine for three years until the family has paid five times its value and owns nothing. This is not a financial service. It is a trap. The Sales Plan has already addressed healthcare, housing, education, and wages. This bill addresses the financial predators positioned to capture whatever working families have left.
The Mechanics- Hard 18% APR cap on all consumer loans — all fees and charges count toward the APR calculation, closing the loophole that lets lenders rename interest as "service fees"
- Creates a mandatory predator-free buffer zone: no new payday lender, rent-to-own store, or predatory auto dealer may open within five miles of a military installation
- Extends Military Lending Act protections to all family members of active-duty service members — not just the service member themselves
- All civil penalties flow into a Community Lending Fund that capitalizes credit unions and CDFIs to offer honest small-dollar loans at or below 18% APR in underserved communities
A debt of honor doesn't expire. It doesn't require the creditor to prove the debt. The government has spent decades treating veteran benefits as a discretionary favor — something to be rationed, delayed, and denied until enough veterans die that the liability shrinks. Joshua Sales is a veteran. He knows what it means to come home changed. This bill converts a moral obligation into a legal one, with teeth, with deadlines, and with personal accountability for the bureaucrats who try to run out the clock.
The Mechanics- Reverses the burden of proof on toxic exposure claims — if you served in a designated theater, your illness is presumed service-connected. The VA proves it isn't, not the other way around. Benefits begin within 60 days
- Eliminates both the SBP/DIC offset and concurrent receipt rules that force surviving spouses to choose between benefits they earned through two separate service records
- Issues a one-time Gold Medal payment of $100,000 per year of service to every honorably discharged veteran — minimum $200,000, maximum $2,000,000. Not a bonus. Not a loan. A payment on a debt long overdue
- Funded by defense contractor joint liability for toxic exposure and a one-time 0.5% levy on financial institutions with assets over $50 billion — institutions that have benefited for decades from a stable nation defended by the people this bill finally pays
The villain in the American immigration crisis is not the undocumented worker. The villain is the corporation that recruited them, transported them, housed them in substandard conditions, paid them below minimum wage, and called federal authorities when they complained. Tennessee farms, construction sites, and meatpacking operations depend on this labor. The question has never been whether undocumented labor exists in this economy. The question is whether the people who profit from it face any consequences. Under the current system, they do not. This bill changes that.
The Mechanics- Criminal liability for executives who knowingly and systematically exploit undocumented workers — up to 10 years imprisonment, plus full disgorgement of all personal compensation earned during the violation
- Creates a rigorous earned pathway to legal status for individuals present 5+ years — requires back taxes, background check, and demonstrated community ties. This is not amnesty. It asks for time, taxes, character, and commitment
- Permanently codifies DACA protections into federal law — no future executive order can repeal them, and Dreamers receive a three-year path to citizenship
- Dissolves ICE's interior enforcement functions and redistributes them to FBI, U.S. Marshals, and Department of Labor — a judicial warrant is required for all arrests
The U.S. tax code is 6,871 pages long. It was written, revised, and carved up over a century by legislators responding to the requests of people who could afford to make requests. The result taxes labor efficiently and comprehensively, and taxes wealth selectively, at the discretion of those who hold it. This bill ends that arrangement. And when the national debt is paid off — which this bill is projected to accomplish within a generation — every adult American citizen receives an equal monthly dividend. Not means-tested. Not conditional. Equal shares. Because the wealth of this nation belongs to its people.
The Mechanics- Annual wealth tax: 0% under $10M, 2% on $10–50M, 4% on $50–100M, 5% above $100M — with full protections for family farms and small businesses
- Closes the Buy-Borrow-Die loophole — borrowing against appreciated assets above $10M triggers deemed realization and tax due that year, eliminating the strategy billionaires use to never pay taxes
- Restores the estate tax to Eisenhower-era rates: 77% above $500M — the same rate under which America built the greatest middle class in human history
- All wealth tax revenue dedicated exclusively to eliminating the national debt — projected within 25–32 years. Upon elimination, revenue converts automatically to the American Dividend: an equal monthly payment to every adult American citizen, estimated at $380–$480/month at initial distribution
Not Republican vs. Democrat.
Billionaire vs. Working Class.
These twelve bills are not a wish list. They are a governing agenda — fully funded, legally architected, and ready to be introduced on day one. Every dollar of revenue comes from the corporations and billionaires each bill is designed to constrain. None of it raises taxes on working families. The net surplus across the platform exceeds $250 billion annually.
The system is rigged. It was rigged deliberately, over decades, by people who benefited from the rigging. Un-rigging it is not radical. It is overdue.
The full legislative text of all twelve bills exists and is available to press, academics, and policymakers on request. This page is written for the people of TN-7, in plain English — because the people who have to live with these laws deserve to understand them.