Bill sets up task force to recover jobless fraud money.
H.R. 8873 — Recover COVID Unemployment Fraud in Banks Act · Filed by Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) · 2 cosponsors · Introduced May 19, 2026 · Passed chamber
Your members of Congress
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What it does
The bill creates a task force to find jobless money obtained through fraud or paid wrong. It gives the government 10 years to charge people with jobless fraud. The longer time window applies to old cases too, even if the deadline had passed.
Who it affects
People who lied to get jobless money may face charges. Banks and state groups that hold unclaimed money must help find and return the funds. Taxpayers benefit because the government gets back money lost to fraud.
One thing to notice
The bill lets the government charge people for fraud cases that were too old to charge before.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
2 cosponsors: 1 Democrats, 1 Republicans.
- May 19, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- May 19, 2026 — Referred to House Committee on Ways and Means and Senate Committee on Finance · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means”
- May 21, 2026 — Markup held in committee · Congress.gov: “Committee Consideration and Mark-up Session Held”
- May 21, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Ordered to be Reported in the Nature of a Substitute by the Yeas and Nays: 41 - 0”
- Jun 29, 2026 — Passed the House · Congress.gov: “On motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended Agreed to by voice vote. (text: CR H4269-4270)”
- Jun 29, 2026 — Floor vote scheduled · Congress.gov: “Mr. Smith (MO) moved to suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 1 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $45,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 14 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 0% of bills with any report.
Beth Van Duyne, who sponsored the bill, received $1,186,522 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (sbe Council) — $45,000 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- task force — A group set up to work on a specific problem.
- fraud — Lying or tricking to get money or benefits you should not have.
- 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 (8,949 characters) on Jul 5, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,522 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 Jun 2026 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 2026-09-22.
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