Bill extends time to prosecute jobless pay fraud to 10 years.
H.R. 1156 — Pandemic Unemployment Fraud Enforcement Act · Filed by Jason Smith (R-MO) · 25 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 10, 2025 · Passed chamber
Your members of Congress
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What it does
The bill lets prosecutors charge people with jobless pay fraud for 10 years. The old time limit was 5 to 6 years. It covers three jobless pay programs from the crisis. Both criminal cases and civil cases can use the longer time. The bill pays for itself by taking back 5 million dollars.
Who it affects
Law enforcement can now investigate fraud cases for a longer time. Workers who got jobless pay may face cases longer after the crisis. The public gets money back when fraud is found.
One thing to notice
The longer time to charge people applies to fraud from 2020 and 2021. Cases that were too old to charge under the old rules can now be charged.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
25 cosponsors: 25 Republicans.
- Feb 10, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Feb 10, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Ways and Means · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means”
- Feb 12, 2025 — Markup held in committee · Congress.gov: “Committee Consideration and Mark-up Session Held”
- Feb 12, 2025 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Ordered to be Reported in the Nature of a Substitute (Amended) by the Yeas and Nays: 24 - 18”
- Mar 11, 2025 — Passed the House · Congress.gov: “On passage Passed by the Yeas and Nays: 295 - 127 (Roll no. 68).”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
4 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 7 reports from Dec 2025 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $227,627 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 21 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 72% of bills with any report.
Jason Smith, who sponsored the bill, received $2,860,780 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Associated General Contractors of America — $216,377 in 1 report
- Job Creators Network — $11,250 in 2 reports
- Nebraska Hospital Association — $0 in 2 reports
- Uwc — $0 in 2 reports
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (3,772 characters) on Jul 10, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,358 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-19.
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