Our Policy Positions

This may be the most important issue of all.

People do not trust government right now, and they have good reason. Trust is not rebuilt with slogans. It is rebuilt when leaders tell the truth, keep their word, act like public service is not a business opportunity, and actually solve problems.

The numbers tell the story. Pew reported in late 2025 that just 9% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 26% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they trusted the federal government to do what is right just about always or most of the time. That is not just low. It is a warning sign.

And people are not imagining the corruption problem. A 2025 study out of UC San Diego found that simply exposing people to reports of congressional stock trading significantly reduced trust in Congress and people's willingness to comply with the law, regardless of party. That tells you how deep the damage goes. When people think lawmakers are using public office for private gain, faith in the whole system starts to collapse.

Tony believes public office is a public trust. Members of Congress should not be trading individual stocks while writing laws that can move markets. They should not be hiding behind giant omnibus bills nobody reads. And they should not be rewarded for spending more time on TV than solving problems.

Trust also has to be rebuilt outward. America needs to rebuild trust with allies who need to know our word means something. And we need to rebuild trust with each other here at home, left and right, by lowering the temperature and proving that disagreement does not have to mean dysfunction.

• Ban Congressional Stock Trading — Tony supports blind trusts and real reform, not half-measures.
• Make Congress More Transparent — Voters deserve to know what is in a bill, who benefits, and where their representatives stand.
• Measure Leaders by Results — Talk is cheap. Results are what matter.
• Rebuild Trust at Home and Abroad — America needs to be trustworthy again, to our own people and to our allies.
• Show Government Can Still Work — Tony wants early, visible reforms that prove public service can still deliver.

For a lot of families in Georgia, something feels broken.

You can do everything right. Work hard. Pay your bills. Try to save a little. And still feel like you're falling behind.

Groceries cost more. Rent or mortgages are higher than they've ever been. Childcare can feel like a second rent payment. Health insurance keeps going up, even if you rarely use it.

And the truth is, most families don't have a safety net anymore. One bad break, a car repair, a medical bill, and everything starts to slide.

That didn't used to be the case.

There used to be a sense that if you worked hard, you could build something stable. Not perfect, but stable. That feeling is slipping away for a lot of people.

At the same time, the people at the very top are doing better than ever. That gap keeps getting wider, and everyone can feel it. Not just in their bank account, but in their sense that the system is no longer built for them.

That's not sustainable.

A country like ours depends on working families being able to stand on solid ground. When that foundation starts to crack, everything else follows.

For too long, the focus in Washington has been on the idea that if things go well at the top, it will eventually work its way down.

It hasn't.

It's time to turn that around and put working families back at the center of our economic policy.

Because when working families are doing well, everything else starts to work again.

Top Level Focus: More details in the sections below, but in general how do we fix this

• Lowering the Cost of Living — Families are getting hit from every direction. Housing, childcare, healthcare, and energy are all taking a bigger bite out of the same paycheck. We need to focus on bringing those costs down in real, tangible ways.
• Making Work Pay Again — People are working just as hard as ever. In many cases, harder. But it does not feel like it's getting them ahead. That has to change. Work should lead to stability, not constant stress.
• Restoring Fairness — Too often, the system allows large corporations to raise prices or shift costs without consequence. That leaves working families carrying the burden. Markets should work for people, not the other way around.
• Rebuilding Stability — This goes beyond any one issue. Education, healthcare, infrastructure, and fiscal policy should all be focused on one goal: helping families build a stable, predictable future.
• Working Together to Fix It — This is not a partisan issue. Everyone feels it. The question is whether we are willing to stop arguing and actually fix it.

For working families in Georgia, childcare is not a side issue. It is one of the biggest bills they face every month.

The average annual cost of center-based infant care in Georgia is $11,066, nearly 30% more than average in-state tuition at a public university. For many families, especially when two parents are working full time, childcare now eats up a huge share of the household budget before they even pay the mortgage, buy groceries, or fill the tank. The government studies this problem, and according to our own federal affordability benchmark, only about 1 in 6 Georgia families can afford infant care. Yet, nothing is being done to fix this problem.

This is not just an inconvenience. It is a direct hit to working families. It means parents putting off having children, stepping out of the workforce, draining savings, or going into debt just to keep a job.

Despite all of this, McCormick has made extending the Trump's wealthy-first tax cuts a major economic priority. Independent analysis shows the biggest benefits of extending these cuts would flow disproportionately to higher-income households and major business interests. In fact, Big Business has publicly praised McCormick for fighting to extend those tax breaks because it lines their pockets. The Tax Policy Center found that households making about $450,000 or more would receive nearly half of the benefit, about 45%, while middle-income households would get about $1,000 on average. That is exactly what is wrong with Washington. The people in the middle get the crumbs.

Tony will fight to make childcare affordable so that having a family doesn't mean choosing between working and going broke.

• Reinstate the Child Tax Credit That Cut Child Poverty in Half — We already know what works. McCormick and Congress failed to finish the job. The expanded Child Tax Credit helped drive a 46% drop in child poverty in 2021, cutting the rate from 9.7% to 5.2%. That was one of the clearest examples in recent memory of government actually making life better for working families. And yet Washington let it slip away. If this is a priority, then the people we send to Congress need to get it done. McCormick was there. He could not get the job done. Tony will fight for a stronger, lasting Child Tax Credit because no child in Georgia should grow up in poverty while Washington argues and families suffer.
• Make Childcare Tax-Deductible for Working Families — Tony's family lived this. With two young kids and a small business to build, they saw firsthand how crushing childcare costs can be. Then tax time comes, and Washington pretends that $6,000 is a realistic childcare bill for a family with two kids. Every working parent in Georgia knows that is absurd. That is not a serious reflection of what childcare actually costs, and it is not serious relief. If parents are paying for childcare so they can go to work, those costs should be tax-deductible up to the real market cost of care. Tony supports making childcare expenses fully tax-deductible up to the real cost of care, because working families should not be taxed on the money they have to spend just to go to work and earn a paycheck. Washington knows how to write tax rules that help the wealthy. It is time to write them for the working class too.
• Expand the Employer Childcare Credit — If Washington is going to hand out tax breaks to big businesses, those tax breaks should be targeted at actually helping working families. The federal Employer-Provided Childcare Credit is designed to reward employers who help cover childcare costs for their workers. That is exactly the kind of business incentive government should be using. If a company wants a tax break, it should get one for investing in its people, not just for padding the bottom line. Tony will fight to expand and strengthen this credit so more employers help working parents stay in the workforce, support their families, and build a stronger middle class.
• Raise the Minimum Wage and Index It to Inflation — The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. The federal tipped cash wage has been stuck at $2.13 since 1996. That is not an economic policy that respects work. That is Washington telling working people to do more with less, year after year. Tony supports raising the minimum wage and indexing it so workers do not keep losing ground every year Congress fails to act. And servers, bartenders, and hospitality workers deserve better than a tipped wage system that leaves too many people one slow shift away from not making rent. A mom working as a server at the local restaurant should not be forced to rely solely on the generosity of customers to feed her kids.

When Congress had the chance to keep health insurance affordable, Rich McCormick chose the insurance premium hike.

McCormick voted for the December 2025 House healthcare bill that let the enhanced ACA premium tax credits expire. Then, when the House voted on January 8, 2026 to restore those subsidies for three years, McCormick voted no. He did not just stand by while premiums rose. He cast the votes that helped make it happen.

Those subsidies were helping about 22.4 million people, roughly 92% of Marketplace enrollees in 2025. KFF estimated that without them, subsidized enrollees would see premium payments rise by an average of 114% in 2026. That is not a small increase. That is a cost explosion for working families trying to keep coverage.

And McCormick did not hide the ball. He publicly argued that "we can't fix healthcare by pouring more subsidies into a broken system." That may be his view. But for Georgia families staring at doubled premiums, that vote was not theory. It was a bill.

Tony will fight to lower costs, protect coverage, and make sure McCormick's healthcare votes follow him into November.

Premiums have more than doubled for many consumers as a result. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians in GA-07 are paying the price. Tony will be a firewall.

• Restore the ACA Subsidies McCormick Voted to Kill — McCormick voted for the December 2025 House bill that let the enhanced ACA tax credits expire, then voted against the January 2026 bill that would have restored them for three years. Tony will fight to restore and make permanent the premium tax credits that kept coverage affordable for millions of Americans.
• Protect Pre-Existing Condition Coverage — This is not negotiable. No insurance company should be able to deny you coverage because you got sick. Tony will fight to protect those safeguards and oppose any effort to weaken them. McCormick's own healthcare platform calls for significantly deregulating healthcare and pushing a "true free-market solution." That is not the direction working families need.
• Lower Drug Prices — Americans still pay far too much for prescription drugs. Tony supports letting the government negotiate drug prices and using every available tool to bring down what families pay at the pharmacy counter. McCormick talks about drug costs. Talk is cheap; Georgia families need results, not talking points.
• No Medical Bankruptcy — No family should lose its savings because someone got cancer, had a stroke, or needed emergency surgery. Tony will push reforms that cap out-of-pocket costs and protect families from financial ruin when they get sick.
• Protect Medicaid — McCormick voted for the 2025 House budget framework that set up massive federal spending cuts while extending tax cuts. KFF says the House instructions required at least $880 billion in cuts from the committee that oversees Medicaid, with nearly all of those cuts expected to come from Medicaid. Tony will not vote to balance Washington's priorities on the backs of children, seniors, and working families who rely on Medicaid.

Georgia's housing crisis did not happen overnight. Housing costs have climbed across Georgia's 7th District, and lower-cost rents have been rising much faster than luxury rents. At the same time, big investors have bought up a huge share of single-family homes throughout Georgia, making it harder for working families to buy their first home or find a decent place to rent. McCormick's answer? More tax breaks for developers. Tony's answer is to actually fix it.

• Build More Affordable Housing — Tony will fight for federal housing grants and direct investment in affordable housing construction across Georgia, with an emphasis on communities that have been priced out of their own neighborhoods.
• Protect Renters from Large Landlords — Large investors now own more than one in four single-family rentals in metro Atlanta, one of the highest rates in the country. Tony will support federal action to curb bulk buying of starter homes and protect renters from abusive corporate practices.
• Close the Loopholes That Let Developers Game the System — Too often, tax breaks and housing incentives look good on paper but do not produce enough homes regular working people can actually afford. Tony will push for real accountability so taxpayer dollars create real affordability.

Secure borders and compassionate reform are not opposites. We need both.

Let's be loud and clear about that. Democrats should never leave room for anyone to pretend we support open borders. We do not. America needs a secure border. We need to stop human trafficking. We need to stop fentanyl and other illegal drugs from crossing into this country. We need to know who is coming in, and we need orderly, lawful pathways for people who are trying to do it the right way.

But politics is full of people who would rather talk tough than fix anything. Tony opposed the wall because it was political theater, not a real answer to a complicated problem. We do not solve serious national problems with symbols. We solve them with smart policy, modern systems, and leaders who actually understand the issue.

Tony does.

As an immigration lawyer, he has spent years inside this system. He has seen the parts that work, the parts that fail, and the parts that destroy people's lives for no good reason. He has seen honorable veterans deported. He has seen U.S. citizens and potential U.S. citizens wrongly caught up in enforcement. A GAO review found that ICE arrested 674, detained 121, and even removed 70 potential U.S. citizens between fiscal year 2015 and the second quarter of 2020. GAO also found ICE issued detainers for at least 895 potential U.S. citizens during that period. That is not a minor paperwork problem. That is a government system making life-changing mistakes.

Tony also knows the legal side is badly broken. At the end of December 2025, the immigration court backlog stood at nearly 3.38 million active cases, including roughly 2.34 million asylum cases already waiting for hearings or decisions. That is not a functioning system. That is chaos by delay. People trying to follow the law can spend years in limbo while building businesses, raising families, and doing everything they were told to do.

And the enforcement side needs real accountability too. In fiscal year 2024, ICE had an average daily detained population of more than 37,000 people across more than 100 facilities, and GAO found DHS still lacks clear performance goals and measures to judge whether detention oversight is actually working. If the government is going to detain people, it has to meet high standards, and it has to be accountable when it fails.

McCormick's public posture on immigration has been the usual "open-border crisis" rhetoric. On his own House website, he frames the issue almost entirely through that lens and highlights bills like the REMAIN in Mexico Act and a bill to restrict birthright citizenship. Tony's view is different. He believes in border security, but he also believes a serious country should have a serious legal system that works. You should not have to choose between enforcing the law and fixing the law. We can do both.

More than half a million DACA recipients are still living in uncertainty, even though they grew up here, work here, and pay taxes here. Tony will fight for a permanent solution for Dreamers because they are already part of the fabric of this country.

And when Washington had a chance in 2024 to move a bipartisan border bill with tougher enforcement and major border changes, politics won. Reuters reported that the Senate deal was immediately declared "dead on arrival" by House leadership and faced opposition from Trump as well. Tony will not play politics with border security or with people's lives.

• Secure the Border Smartly — Tony supports real border security that targets trafficking, cartel activity, and illegal drugs, not empty symbolism.
• Fix the Legal System — No one trying to follow the law should have to wait years for basic answers. Tony will push to modernize and digitize the system so it actually works.
• Bring Accountability to Enforcement — ICE and DHS need stronger oversight, better training, and real consequences when they make serious mistakes.
• Protect Dreamers — Dreamers deserve permanent protections and a real path forward.
• Lead on Real Reform — Tony will not treat immigration like a talking point. He will work directly with lawyers, frontline professionals, and federal agencies to fix what is broken.

Tony did not learn national security from cable news or a talking points memo. He flew combat missions for this country. He served alongside allied militaries. He worked directly with partners like the Royal Australian Air Force in the Indo-Pacific. He knows from experience that America is stronger when we stand with our allies, keep our word, and lead from the front.

That is why he takes this personally when politicians talk like our allies are a burden.

No one is saying our friends should not carry their weight. They should. But leadership is not about trashing your allies in public, threatening to walk away from NATO, or treating partnerships like a protection racket. Leadership is about trust, stability, and credibility. That is how you deter wars. That is how you keep Americans safe.

And the facts matter here. In 2025, NATO said all allies were expected to meet or exceed the alliance's longstanding 2% of GDP defense spending target. That is a dramatic change from 2014, when only three allies met that benchmark. European allies and Canada have been increasing defense spending for years. So the right message today is not that alliances are weak. The right message is that alliances work when America leads them well.

Tony also believes in backing our democratic allies when it matters. The House passed the Ukraine Security Supplemental in April 2024 by a bipartisan vote of 311 to 112. McCormick voted yes on that bill. That matters because it means the strongest contrast here is not to pretend McCormick is anti-Ukraine when he is not. The strongest contrast is that Tony brings lived military experience, steadiness, and a deeper understanding of alliances than the usual political chest-thumping.

McCormick's own national security page is heavily focused on "peace through strength," military buildup, and China. Tony agrees strength matters. But true strength is not just spending more or sounding tougher. It is knowing how to keep alliances healthy, how to show up for partners, and how to use diplomacy and force together, not as opposites.

This matters in Europe. It matters in the Indo-Pacific. And it matters for families here at home, because broken alliances and bad strategy do not stay overseas. They hit supply chains, prices, energy markets, and the broader economy.

• Rebuild Trust with Allies — America must lead again by being steady, serious, and trustworthy.
• Stand Strong in the Indo-Pacific — Tony knows firsthand how important that region is to both our security and our economy.
• Use Alliances as Force Multipliers — Alliances make America stronger, not weaker.
• Support Ukraine and Democratic Partners — Authoritarians should never get to redraw borders by force while America looks away.
• Prevent Nuclear Threats — Tony supports tough diplomacy backed by credible force to ensure countries like Iran never obtain nuclear weapons.

Tony served this country. He knows what that commitment means. He also knows what it feels like to come home and deal with a system that does not move fast enough, does not communicate clearly enough, and too often makes veterans fight for care they already earned.

That is not right.

Veterans should not have to spend months waiting on appointments, battling red tape, or wondering whether the government is about to change the rules on benefits they depend on.

And that is not a hypothetical. In early 2026, the Trump administration rolled out an interim VA rule that would have changed disability ratings by taking medication and treatment effects into account in ways critics said could lower disability ratings and compensation. The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee's top Democrat warned the rule would lower disability ratings and compensation awards for disabled veterans by not taking their baseline conditions into account. After major backlash, the VA said it would not enforce the rule in the future. Veterans should never have been put in that position in the first place.

The VA's broader staffing and access problems are real too. Reuters reported in March 2025 that the Trump administration planned to cut more than 80,000 VA jobs as part of a larger downsizing effort. And GAO reported in both 2025 and 2026 that the VA still had not fully fixed longstanding problems with appointment scheduling, community care coordination, staffing, and wait-time metrics. GAO noted that VA health care has been on its High-Risk List since 2015, in part because of outdated systems and modernization failures.

Tony does not need a briefing book to understand that. He has lived it. He knows what it feels like to wait. He knows what it feels like when the system seems built around bureaucracy instead of veterans.

That is why this is personal to him.

And this is where McCormick's politics matter. McCormick has tied himself closely to Trump and to the broader agenda coming out of Washington. But when veterans' care and benefits are threatened, Tony believes Georgia needs someone who will stand up, speak clearly, and put veterans first every time.

• Protect Veterans' Benefits — Tony will oppose any move that cuts or weakens earned disability benefits.
• Fix Access to Care — No veteran should wait months for basic care because the system is outdated or understaffed.
• Modernize the VA — The VA needs better scheduling, better staffing, and systems that actually work.
• Treat Mental Health Like Health Care — Invisible wounds are real. Veterans deserve timely mental health care and crisis support.
• Stand Up for Military Families — Families carry the burden too, and they deserve stronger support with housing, jobs, and education.

People are exhausted by politics as performance art. They are tired of the yelling, the culture-war nonsense, and the constant cycle where everybody raises money off problems nobody seems interested in solving.

Tony believes leadership means working with people you disagree with when that is what it takes to get something done. That is not weakness. That is maturity. That is responsibility.

And the public is ahead of Washington on this. Pew found in 2025 that a wide majority of Americans say it is important for elected officials in both parties to admit when they are wrong. Smaller but still clear majorities say it is very important that officials be willing to compromise with the other party and treat counterparts with respect. Among Democrats, 78% said it is very important for Republican officials to be willing to compromise. Among Republicans, 71% said the same about Democratic officials.

That does not mean compromising on core values. It means being serious enough to distinguish between what is negotiable and what is not. It means finding overlap where it exists, building coalitions where you can, and refusing to let political theater become an excuse for total failure.

Tony's whole approach is built around that idea. On affordability, veterans' care, immigration reform, and restoring trust, he wants to be the kind of member of Congress who can tell the truth, take a hard stand where needed, and still work with the other side when it serves Georgia.

• Work Across the Aisle — Tony will work with anyone who is serious about solving problems.
• Focus on What Can Pass — Good ideas matter, but results matter more.
• Reward Honesty and Respect — Politics should not require treating the other side like the enemy.
• Build Coalitions Around Real Issues — Affordability, veterans' care, immigration, and public trust should not be impossible to work on together.
• Replace Theater with Results — Georgia does not need another performer in Washington. It needs a worker.