Congress
Arrington, eager to appease fiscal hawks, proposes $28B boost to health fraud busting
The House Budget Committee chair and five other GOP lawmakers introduced legislation Tuesday that boosts funding to fight health care fraud by $28 billion through 2030.
The Anti-Fraud Fund Act led by Budget Chair Jodey Arrington of Texas and Rep. Blake Moore of Utah is in service of one of the Trump administration’s top second term priorities: targeting government fraud. And it comes at a time when fiscal hawks in the GOP are threatening to oppose new war funding President Donald Trump has requested because of the cost.
Arrington has sought to convince them the administration is doing its part to control the deficit by fighting fraud.
The bill offers an extra $28 billion to the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program, created in 1996 to fund Justice and Health Department investigations and health fraud education.
“This joint DOJ-HHS program has a 7:1 return for dollars saved for every dollar spent,” said Moore in a statement.
He added that the legislation will empower CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz to “bring accountability to Medicare and Medicaid providers.”
Other co-sponsors are Reps. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, Mike Carey of Ohio, Addison McDowell of North Carolina and Jay Obernolte of California.
The legislation comes as House Republican fiscal hawks express wariness about a party-line spending bill Arrington is shepherding. That spending measure would include $95 billion for the Iran war and aid for farmers, as well as other Republican priorities, but no offsets to cover the costs.
It also does not include any extra funding for combating fraud, which Arrington has touted to his committee members as a major cost saver; Vice President JD Vance has echoed that argument.
Arrington also told Blue Light News Tuesday he believes the House could put together yet another party-line reconciliation bill later this year — an idea floated by some in House GOP leadership — to assuage lawmakers who are angry their priorities are not in the war funding bill the House is now considering. That later bill could include more funding to fight fraud, he said.
“We have not tens, but hundreds of billions in savings on fraud prevention,” Arrington said. “This is not for this moment. We have to keep this [current reconciliation bill] so clean.”
The later bill could be passed in the lame duck session after the November midterm elections, he added.
The Congressional Budget Office, which determines whether bills save the federal government money, is developing a report to examine how more fraud-busting resources could offset new spending.
The legislation comes as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has ramped up fraud scrutiny in the government health care programs, primarily in blue states. CMS announced on Tuesday it has withheld more than $1 billion in Medicaid funding to both Minnesota and California over what it deems suspect payment claims.
Mia McCarthy contributed to this story.
Maine Democrat Troy Jackson has raised $1 million in the less than two weeks since he entered the race for Senate shortly after Graham Platner dropped out, his campaign told Blue Light News on Wednesday morning.
Jackson, the presumptive Democratic nominee, raised $613,000 of that haul since Sunday following the selection of the 601 delegates who will determine Platner’s replacement this weekend. More than 90 percent of those delegates have pledged to back Jackson.
The fundraising number is a strong showing for Jackson, who only raised a bit over $1 million in his entire run for governor earlier this year. But he still has a lot of work to do to catch up to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is sitting on an $11 million war chest.
Jackson’s campaign said they received 27,283 contributions from 24,669 individual donors. A University of New Hampshire poll released Tuesday showed Jackson with a narrow lead against Collins, 49 percent to 46 percent.
The Maine Senate seat is a must-win for Democrats hoping to retake control of the upper chamber. Collins is the only sitting Republican senator up for reelection in a state that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024.
President Donald Trump’s nominee for the No. 2 position at the Office of Management and Budget scored initial committee approval Wednesday as Senate Republicans work to confirm him.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to advance the nomination of Hal Duncan to serve as deputy director of the White House agency known as the “nerve center” of the federal government.
The Senate Budget Committee is also scheduled to vote Wednesday morning to approve the nomination.
Duncan has been serving in the role in an acting capacity since late last year, when Trump nominated then-Deputy Director Dan Bishop to serve as a U.S. attorney.
During his Senate vetting this summer, Duncan said he couldn’t rule out the use of any “fiscal tools,” including the pocket rescission tactic OMB employed last year to unilaterally cancel billions of dollars in foreign aid without Congress’ consent.
Duncan has also expressed an eagerness to finalize the Trump administration’s plans to put political appointees in charge of approving or scrapping awards for federal grants.
Lawmakers in both parties have raised concern about the impending regulation to change the grant approval process. Most notably, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) called this month for White House budget director Russ Vought to nix part of the proposal and extend the deadline for public comment, which closed last week.
Democrats have noted Duncan’s relative inexperience compared to other former top OMB officials, many of whom served as undersecretaries of other federal agencies or members of Congress before taking on the role. Duncan graduated with a bachelor’s degree less than a decade ago and worked as a Republican congressional aide before joining OMB last year.
A critical mass of House Republicans Wednesday are threatening to defy Speaker Mike Johnson and vote against a budget framework of party priorities.
Johnson will try to steer his chamber’s razor-thin majority toward backing the $95 billion funding plan for the Iran war and farm aid. The speaker can lose no more than two votes — assuming full attendance — as GOP leadership scrambles to win support from all corners of their conference before recess begins Thursday.
The White House and leaders are working hard to sway the remaining undecided Republicans by offering more details on the plan’s SAVE America Act election security provisions — a priority for President Donald Trump. They’re also promising a fourth reconciliation bill to sweep-in members’ wishlist items that were left out of Recon 3.0.
One member GOP leaders see as virtually immovable is Rep. Thomas Massie.
“It’s a slush fund for the unauthorized Iran war with a payoff to farmers who are suffering from fuel and fertilizer price hikes due to the war, as well as from Trump’s trade policies,” Massie told Blue Light News.
Rep. Warren Davidson has also told Blue Light News he plans to vote against the budget plan, noting he would need to see pay-fors to get on board.
We’re also watching Reps. Tim Burchett and Kevin Kiley. Kiley said Tuesday he is “very unlikely” to vote for the resolution and unlikely to be convinced otherwise. Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Barrett, who has voted to advance several Democratic-led Iran war powers resolutions this year, responded: “We’ll see.”
House GOP leaders are trying to boost buy-in by reading more members in on details of a more than $1 billion proposal to “enforce” the citizenship and voter ID mandates in the SAVE America Act provisions of the plan, along with other potential funding.
But what that “enforcement” would look like is at the center of heated talks with rank and file GOP skeptics and Republican leadership, according to four people who were granted anonymity to discuss private talks.
“I don’t know,” Johnson told Blue Light News Tuesday night when we asked him what he wants that enforcement policy to look like. “We’ve got a lot of negotiating to go through.”
Majority Leader Steve Scalise said “all that’s being worked out still.”
Dangling the promise of a fourth reconciliation bill to members is another tactic leaders are leveraging in negotiations.
Many Republicans remain skeptical about a post-midterms fourth reconciliation bill actually coming to fruition — and even more skeptical it’d include the provisions they want that didn’t make it into Recon 3.0.
“I’m not going to talk about reconciliation at all —3, 4, 10, 17,” House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith told Kelsey Brugger Tuesday when asked about GOP leaders’ 4.0 promise. His panel was notably left out of the latest plans.
Asked if he would still vote for the Recon 3.0 plans today, Smith said “I told you I’m not going to talk about reconciliation.”
Pros can read: Arrington, eager to appease restive fiscal hawks, proposes $7 billion boost to health fraud busting
What else we’re watching:
— DARLINE GRAHAM TO FORGE HER OWN PATH: Sen. Darline Graham was appointed to her late brother’s Senate seat to carry on his legacy — but Republicans don’t expect her to follow his exact trajectory. Graham will have to thread a tricky political needle as she works to get some of her brother’s pet projects passed while building her own profile after announcing a run for a full term with Trump’s blessing.
— CORNYN PEGS AMBASSADOR VOTES TO PEPFAR: Sen. John Cornyn has an ultimatum for the administration if they want Trump’s picks for two ambassadors advanced out of committee Wednesday. Cornyn says the administration must firmly reassure him it will release funds set aside for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the HIV and AIDS program credited with saving millions of lives in poor countries.
Jordain Carney, Gregory Svirnovskiy, and Aaron Pellish contributed to this report.
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