Sen. John Kennedy Says He’ll Work Through Christmas to Pass a $240 Billion Fraud Crackdown

Most senators are already counting the days until the holiday break. John Kennedy is counting the days until the gavel changes hands, and he wants his party to spend every one of them working.

The Louisiana Republican walked onto the Senate floor Wednesday and told colleagues he is ready to stay in Washington through Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day if that’s what it takes to confirm President Trump’s nominees and pass two things before Democrats take control of the chamber in January: a budget bill that needs only Republican votes, and a $240 billion crackdown on fraud in federal programs.

“This was not a normal midterm election,” Kennedy said, in video of his floor remarks. And he had no patience for anyone in his own conference already writing off the lame duck. “If your conclusion is that we shouldn’t try reconciliation because it might be hard to get the votes, then congratulations, you’re stupid.”

The hand-washing lesson

Kennedy has a gift for turning Senate procedure into something you’d hear at a bait shop, and he didn’t waste it. “A smart man washes his hands after he urinates,” he said. “A wise man doesn’t urinate on his hands. We need to stop urinating on our hands.”

Translated out of Louisiana: quit making messes you’ll have to clean up later, and use the one tool that still works. “The only way we can actually do that in the remaining time we have left,” he said, “is through reconciliation with just Republican votes.”

Reconciliation is the budget process that lets the Senate pass tax and spending changes with a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. With Republicans holding the chamber until January, 50 GOP senators plus Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie could send a package to the president’s desk without a single Democrat. It is how Republicans passed the big tax and spending law in July 2025. Once the new Senate is sworn in, that door closes.

The catch is that reconciliation has strict rules. Every provision has to change federal spending or revenue, so a lot of policy wish-list items can’t ride along. Kennedy acknowledged the squeeze. “You can’t put 12 things into a four-thing box,” he said, arguing Republicans should agree on defense spending and one more priority rather than fight over everything at once. “If we fail, we fail, but at least we will have tried.”

Ernst’s $240 billion fraud bill

The second ask is more straightforward. Kennedy called on leadership to put Sen. Joni Ernst’s Protecting American Taxpayers Act on the floor, pass it, and “use the savings from abolishing or undermining that fraud to pay down our debt.”

The bill, S. 4952, is an 88-page package that bundles more than a dozen anti-fraud measures from Republican senators. Ernst introduced it July 13, and it has sat on the Senate calendar ever since. Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, a cosponsor, says it is “projected to save taxpayers $240 billion if enacted.”

Some of what’s inside is plain common sense, according to Ernst’s own summary of the package:

Child care and similar programs would pay providers as reimbursements, only after a service has actually been delivered, instead of up front. One version of that idea, from Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, is called the WALZ Act, a pointed nod to the fraud scandals that hit Minnesota’s social-service programs under Gov. Tim Walz.

Unspent COVID relief money, which Ernst puts at more than $65 billion, would be clawed back. People convicted of defrauding the Small Business Administration couldn’t get its help again. The statute of limitations on pandemic loan fraud would be extended, so the crooks still out there can be caught.

Agencies would be ordered to recover every improper payment and report how much they actually got back each year. Inspectors general could pay bonuses to employees who uncover fraud. The president’s annual budget would have to show improper-payment rates program by program, along with what’s being done to fix them. States running welfare programs would be held to the same improper-payment laws as federal agencies.

Ernst has been pushing this for months. When the Senate left town at the end of September without passing it, she didn’t mince words.

Ernst, who isn’t seeking reelection, has also argued that fraudsters take more than $1.4 billion from taxpayers every day. That is her estimate, and the $240 billion savings figure is a projection, not a score from the Congressional Budget Office. But the underlying problem is not in dispute. Federal agencies themselves report well over $100 billion in improper payments every year.

A senator who wanted more fight

Kennedy’s speech didn’t come out of nowhere. A day earlier, Senate Republicans reelected John Thune as leader after a push to delay the vote failed. Kennedy was on the side that wanted to wait.

Thune has since promised to keep the Senate in session to move judicial nominees and avoid a shutdown, and he has filed to speed up votes on several of Trump’s court picks. Kennedy’s message is that nominees alone aren’t enough. The House Freedom Caucus is making the same case from the other side of the Capitol, with its own list of priorities it wants locked into law while Republicans still control both chambers.

The math on the calendar is unforgiving. The new Congress is sworn in Jan. 3, which is 53 days from Wednesday. Every week spent arguing over what fits in the box is a week Republicans won’t get back, and a fraud bill that has already been written, scored by its backers and parked on the calendar since July doesn’t need much more work. It needs a vote. Kennedy is offering to give up his Christmas to get one.