Edwin Osorio for common sense ideas

Edwin Osorio for common sense ideas 26 years defending America’s workers. From the SSA to Congress, I’ll fight for fair wages, retirement security & labor dignity.

Trickle-up prosperity means every family shares in the American Dream.

08/21/2026

In every area of life, when something breaks we fix it or replace it with something better. If your television breaks you get a new one. If your refrigerator breaks you repair it or buy a better model. The principle is universal and it is sensible.

Only in government do we abandon it entirely.

When we are unhappy with Congress — and we are deeply unhappy with Congress, consistently rating it below 30% approval — we do not fix it. We replace a broken refrigerator with another broken refrigerator and then express surprise when our food is still spoiling. If McDonald's had a 20% customer satisfaction rating it would close. If Home Depot or Walmart delivered the quality of service that Congress delivers to the American people they would be out of business within a fiscal quarter. In the private sector the consequence of failure is extinction. In government the consequence of failure is reelection. How is this possible? The answer is tribalism. And tribalism is one of the most powerful and most dangerous forces in human psychology. We look at Congress as a whole and see an institution that has failed us. But we look at our own representative and see one of the good ones. It is always the other side's members who are corrupt, incompetent, and self-serving. Our member is different. Our member is fighting for us. The cognitive dissonance required to hold both of these beliefs simultaneously — Congress is broken AND my congressman is excellent — is staggering. And yet most Americans hold it without examination. George Carlin said it plainly: garbage in, garbage out. We put politicians into office who are motivated primarily by their own self interest — access to money, the intoxication of power, the prestige of the position — and then we are shocked when they govern in their own self interest. We created the conditions. We should not be surprised by the results. It takes genuine courage and genuine self-awareness to be equally critical — or more critical — of your own tribe than of the opposing one. Because the moment you criticize your own side you risk being labeled a traitor, a sellout, an enemy. The tribe demands loyalty above honesty. And most people, when forced to choose between the two, choose loyalty. But here is the truth that no political consultant will ever tell you. If every voter held their own representative to the same standard they hold the other party's representatives, Congress would look completely different within two election cycles. Not because the rules would change. Not because the money would disappear. But because the politicians who currently thrive on tribal protection would suddenly find themselves without it. The most radical act available to an American voter is not crossing party lines. It is applying the same critical standard to everyone regardless of which jersey they wear. We get what we deserve. We have been getting it for a very long time. And we will continue getting it until enough of us decide that our team's broken refrigerator is still a broken refrigerator.

08/04/2026

Common Sense Idea #3
What if working Americans no longer paid federal income tax?
For more than a century, we’ve accepted the federal income tax as though it has always existed.
It hasn’t.
Before the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, the United States operated for much of its history without a permanent federal personal income tax. That doesn’t mean every aspect of that era should be recreated, but it does remind us that our current system is not the only way to fund the federal government.
So here’s my question…
Why do we continue taxing work?
Every raise.
Every promotion.
Every overtime shift.
Every second job.
The harder you work, the more federal income tax you pay.
I think there’s a better way.
Over the past several months, I’ve developed a comprehensive proposal called the American Freedom Tax Act.
The basic principle is simple:
Stop taxing work. Start taxing consumption.
Under my proposal, the overwhelming majority of working Americans would no longer pay federal personal income tax. Instead, they would keep what they earn and contribute to the federal government primarily through their spending decisions.
The proposal doesn’t ignore fairness or fiscal responsibility.
It protects Social Security with a dedicated funding stream.
It includes a modest 2% marginal federal income tax only on annual income above $1 million.
It requires corporations to continue paying a minimum federal tax.
It protects lower- and middle-income families through an annual rebate issued during their birthday month.
And yes, every one of those ideas has already been thought through in detail.
This isn’t a slogan.
It’s a complete legislative framework.
Over the next several posts, I’ll explain why I believe this approach could simplify the tax code, make taxation more transparent, encourage saving and investment, reduce the need for short-term government borrowing, and let working Americans keep more of what they earn.
You don’t have to agree with me.
But I hope you’ll ask yourself one question:
If we were designing the American tax system from scratch today, would we really build the one we have now?

07/29/2026

I want to say something to Democrats heading into this election season that I think needs to be said plainly and without sugarcoating. The polls are clear. Donald Trump is underwater with American voters on virtually every major issue. The economy. Foreign policy. Healthcare costs. The Iran war. Tariffs. Housing affordability. His personal favorability. On paper, Democrats should be positioned for a historic midterm wave. But elections are not won on paper. And Democrats have a dangerous habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Here is the threat. If Republicans successfully convince the American public that a vote for Democrats is a vote for abolishing prisons, eliminating the Senate, dismantling the Supreme Court, nationalizing private businesses, and granting blanket amnesty to every undocumented person in the country including violent criminals — Democrats will lose. Not because those things are true. But because perception in politics is often more powerful than reality. And the far left fringe of the Democratic Party provides just enough ammunition for that caricature to stick. This is not a hypothetical. We have seen it happen before. Voters who were deeply unhappy with the status quo in 2020 and 2022 still voted Republican in down-ballot races because they were frightened by the phrase defund the police. A three word slogan that most Democratic candidates never endorsed cost the party seats it should have won easily. Here is the political reality that every Democratic candidate must internalize before November. American voters will not choose what they identify as a socialist over the devil they already know. They will not choose chaos on the left over chaos on the right. They will not choose radical transformation over familiar dysfunction. Unhappy voters do not automatically vote for change. They vote for the option that frightens them least. Democrats do not need to be everything to everyone. They need to be one thing clearly and consistently: the party of working people, common sense, and accountable government. Lower drug prices. Affordable housing. Healthcare you can actually use. An economy where the middle class grows instead of shrinks. Jobs that pay enough to live on. They do not need to relitigate every social justice debate from the last decade. They do not need to defend every position taken by every activist on social media. They need to talk to the person who is working two jobs and still can't afford rent. The small business owner who is being crushed by tariffs. The farmer who lost their export market to a trade war. The parent who can't afford their child's insulin. Those people are not looking for a revolution. They are looking for relief. If Democrats give them that message clearly, honestly, and without apology, they will win in November. If they allow themselves to be defined by their most extreme voices instead of their most practical ideas, they will hand this administration another two years of unchecked power. The stakes could not be higher. And the margin for error could not be smaller.

07/26/2026

Common Sense Idea #2: Give Every Member of Congress a Baseball Card

Think about baseball. If statistics didn’t exist, how would we know whether a player was great, average, or mediocre? We would have to rely on the games we happened to watch, the highlights someone chose to show us, and what other people told us. We wouldn’t know how many home runs a player hit, how often they struck out, their batting average, how many games they missed, or how they compared with everyone else in the league.

Statistics also tell fans what better looks like. We know which player we want our team to sign in the offseason because we can compare their performance with the players we already have.

Why shouldn’t voters have the same information about Congress?

In a democracy, voters are essentially the hiring committee for our elected representatives. But think about how strange the hiring process is. When a law firm hires an attorney, lawyers who understand the profession evaluate that candidate. When a hospital hires a doctor, medical professionals understand what qualifications and performance to examine. Voters are asked to make one of the most consequential hiring decisions in America without having that same specialized knowledge.

Campaign literature isn’t a résumé. It’s advertising.

So let’s give every member of Congress and the Senate the equivalent of a baseball card combined with a nutrition label—a standardized, nonpartisan Congressional Dashboard showing what they have actually done.

How many votes did they attend? How many did they miss? How often did they vote with their party and against it? How many bills did they sponsor? How many did they cosponsor? How many actually became law? What have they done on healthcare, prescription drug prices, taxes, wages, voting rights, gun policy, civil liberties, Social Security and other issues Americans care about?

We could even borrow from baseball. A modest piece of legislation might be a single. Significant legislation could be a double or triple. Successfully leading transformational legislation into law could be a home run. Helping another member advance important legislation could be an assist.

And just as baseball has statistics such as OPS+, where 100 represents average performance and numbers above or below 100 tell us how a player compares with the league, we could develop objective congressional performance measures. A voter shouldn’t merely know what their representative did—they should be able to see how that performance compares with the other members of Congress.

But being a representative involves more than voting in Washington.

How many town halls did your representative hold? What subjects did they discuss? Were those meetings genuinely open to constituents? When you call their office, can you reach an actual person, or do you repeatedly get voicemail? How responsive is the office when constituents need help?

And then there is money.

How much did the politician raise? Who were their largest donors and funding sources? What industries financed their campaign? What percentage came from small-dollar donors? And how frequently did their votes align with the interests of their major financial supporters?

That last statistic wouldn’t prove that anyone purchased a vote. It would simply put the information in front of us and allow voters to draw their own conclusions.

Imagine being able to compare your representative in Queens with a representative in Ohio, Texas, California—or the district next door. Maybe your representative is exceptional. Maybe they are average. Maybe they are falling far short. Maybe another member’s record makes you say, “That’s what I want my next representative to look like.”

Most Americans don’t have hours every week to research congressional votes, campaign-finance reports and hundreds of pieces of legislation. They’re working, raising children, caring for relatives and trying to pay their bills.

We shouldn’t make democracy a second full-time job.

Food manufacturers give us nutrition labels so we can understand what’s inside the package. Baseball gives us statistics so we can understand performance across an entire season instead of relying on the few games we happened to watch.

Let’s do the same thing for democracy.

Don’t tell me you fight for working people. Show me the statistics.

Don’t tell me you’re independent. Show me your voting record.

Don’t tell me whom you represent. Show me who finances your campaigns and what you actually do in office.

Put the record on the back of the card and let the voters decide.

That’s Common Sense Idea #2.

07/23/2026

Common Sense Idea #1

Welcome to Edwin Osorio: Common Sense Ideas.

Although my congressional campaign has ended, my commitment to improving our country has not. One thing I learned from running for Congress is that America doesn’t suffer from a shortage of good people or good ideas. It suffers from a political system that often makes it difficult for those people and ideas to succeed.

So let me begin with my first Common Sense Idea.

As a former federal employee, I always found it interesting that we have an annual “Open Season” for choosing our health insurance. For a limited period, employees compare plans, ask questions, gather information, and then make an informed decision. Once Open Season ends, everyone gets back to work.

What if we treated political campaigns the same way?

Imagine a defined three-month campaign season before Election Day. During those three months, candidates could advertise, debate, hold town halls, meet voters, and fully explain their ideas. When Election Day arrives, the campaign ends—and governing begins.

Primaries would require their own rules, but the basic principle is the same: campaigning should have a beginning and an end.

Running for Congress taught me that our current system overwhelmingly favors candidates with the most money and the ability to campaign almost nonstop. That makes it incredibly difficult for qualified people with fresh ideas—but limited financial resources—to compete.

A shorter campaign season wouldn’t eliminate money from politics overnight, but it could begin shifting the focus away from who can spend the most and toward who has the best ideas.

That’s my first Common Sense Idea.

What do you think?

07/23/2026

I want to share a thought that occurred to me and I think it deserves serious consideration. Trump's $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund — named after the year of America's founding and created through a sham lawsuit against his own government that a federal judge just voided as an act of bad faith — was designed to protect Trump and his allies from legitimate law enforcement. A judge struck it down. The money should never have existed in the first place. But here is the irony that I cannot stop thinking about. That fund, redirected to its rightful purpose, is actually one of the best ideas anyone has proposed for dealing with what this administration is doing to public servants. Because the weaponization of the justice system is real. It is just pointed in the opposite direction from what Trump claims. Jack Smith — a career nonpartisan prosecutor who did his job faithfully and fearlessly — is now facing a criminal referral from the House Judiciary Committee. His attorneys called it a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system against a career public servant who followed the facts and the law. Smith himself acknowledged it could happen that he would be indicted simply for angering Trump by doing his job. Former FBI Director James Comey has been criminally charged. His case was dismissed because the prosecutor bringing it lacked lawful authorization — the appointment itself was illegal. But Comey has still had to hire lawyers, appear in court, and defend himself from charges Jack Smith himself called retribution prosecutions. New York Attorney General Letitia James was criminally charged. Her case collapsed in court with a federal judge finding a disturbing pattern of prosecutorial misconduct. But the legal fees, the stress, the reputational damage — those costs do not disappear when the case does. Miles Taylor — the former Department of Homeland Security official who wrote the anonymous New York Times op-ed and the book A Warning about Trump's first term — has been targeted. Former prosecutors who worked on the Trump cases were fired. Career FBI agents who did their jobs have been investigated. Election workers across the country are being threatened. Jack Smith specifically warned this week that those workers are going to be put under great pressure heading into the midterms. Every one of these people has incurred or will incur enormous legal costs simply for doing their jobs — jobs they were required by law and by oath to do. So here is my proposal. Congress should create a legitimate, properly authorized Anti-Lawfare Fund — not a slush fund built through a sham lawsuit against the president's own government, but a properly legislated legal defense fund for public servants who are prosecuted, fired, or targeted in retaliation for performing their official duties lawfully and in good faith. The principle is simple. If this administration is going to use the machinery of the federal government to pursue retribution prosecutions against people who did nothing wrong, then the American people — through their Congress — should ensure that those people have the resources to defend themselves. Trump created a $1.776 billion fund to protect himself from justice. The least we can do is create something to protect the people he is pursuing in its place. The irony is almost too perfect. He named his slush fund after the founding of American democracy. Let's use that same principle to actually defend it.

06/24/2026

Here in New York City it’s very sad to see the Democratic Party capitulating to its fringes. 

04/06/2026

Today, I want to share an important update with everyone who has supported me throughout this journey. After months of working on a campaign predicated on standing up for the Middle Class and giving voice to the voiceless, I was ultimately unsuccessful in securing a place on the ballot for New York’s 7th Congressional District. While that outcome is not what I had hoped for, I want to be clear about something: this campaign was never defined solely by whether my name appeared on a ballot. It was defined by the people I met, the conversations I had, and the ideas we built together and still live within us.
Over a short period of time, I personally spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers and gathered roughly 1,000 signatures. I stood on street corners, outside train stations, in parks, and along busy avenues, engaging directly with working people, listening far more than I spoke. That experience alone has changed me. It has made me a better citizen, a better listener, and a stronger advocate for the values I believe in. This campaign was built with very limited resources. The overwhelming majority of our support came from friends, people who believed in me enough to contribute what they could. I am deeply grateful for that. I also want to acknowledge the support we received from organized labor, including a meaningful contribution that reinforced what I have always believed: that this country was built on labor, and the path forward for America runs through the strength of its workers and its Middle Class. At the same time, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the reality of the process itself. New York’s election system imposes stringent requirements that can be difficult for first-time, grassroots candidates to overcome without significant infrastructure and funding. That is not an excuse, it is simply part of the landscape. And navigating it has given me a clearer understanding of both the challenges and the opportunities that exist within our democratic system.
What matters most to me is that the core of this campaign does not end here. I ran on the belief that government should be grounded in empathy, integrity, and common sense. That we must stop treating people as abstractions and start recognizing their lived experiences. That we should be focused not just on diagnosing problems, but on offering real, forward-looking solutions, solutions that improve the daily lives of working families. Ideas like a four-day workweek, restoring balance between work and life, strengthening labor, and building an economy that works from the middle out and the bottom up resonated deeply with the people I met. That tells me something important: these ideas matter and they deserve to be part of the conversation moving forward. So while I may not be on the ballot, I am not stepping away. I remain committed to finding ways to contribute, whether that means working with candidates who are willing to embrace real solutions, continuing to advocate for policies that uplift working people, or exploring new avenues to bring these ideas to life.
To everyone who signed a petition, stopped to talk, offered encouragement, donated, or simply wished me well, thank you. A special thank you goes out to Laura Taylor O’Boyle, Ivanhoe Gadpaille, and Bob MacGowan who were willing to outside their comfort zone and donated a commodity far more valuable than money: Time. My campaign was powered by all of you. This is not the end. It is simply the next step. Edwin Osorio

03/26/2026

I believe in providing opportunity without forced redistribution. By strengthening Unions and protecting the right to collectively bargain, we ensure that workers negotiate for their fair share of the wealth they create. This is how you grow the Middle Class and stabilize the economy for the long term. Support a candidate who understands the mechanics of prosperity by donating at

03/25/2026

I believe in labor over capital because labor creates value. Capital should serve the economy, not dominate it.

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