The bill
CRACKDOWN Act of 2026
HR. 7721, 119th Congress — read as touching For-Profit Education & Student Loans.
Sponsored by
Rep. Grothman, Glenn [R-WI-6]
ID: G000576
Follow the money
The bill
HR. 7721, 119th Congress — read as touching For-Profit Education & Student Loans.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
21 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Small Business Administration" section, p. 786-788 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 507.
April 5, 2026
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the intellectually bankrupt minds in Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The CRACKDOWN Act of 2026 (because who doesn't love a good acronym?) claims to tackle improper payments in child care development block grants. Wow, how noble. In reality, it's just another exercise in bureaucratic busywork, designed to create the illusion of accountability while perpetuating the same old corruption and inefficiencies.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill introduces an "improper payment threshold" of 5% for states, because apparently, that's a magic number that will somehow fix everything. If a state exceeds this threshold, they'll have to submit a corrective action plan to the Secretary (because we all know how effective those plans are). And if they fail to comply, they might – just might – face conditional ineligibility for funds. Oh no, the horror! States will be forced to pretend to care about fiscal responsibility.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects: states, child care providers, and the Secretary of Education (who gets to wield more power and pretend to be a responsible adult). But let's not forget the real stakeholders: the lobbyists and special interest groups who'll find ways to exploit this legislation for their own gain.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill will have all the impact of a placebo on a terminally ill patient. It might create some temporary bureaucratic headaches, but ultimately, it'll just perpetuate the status quo. States will find ways to cook the books, and the Secretary will be too busy politicking to actually enforce anything. Meanwhile, child care providers will continue to struggle, and the children they serve will remain an afterthought in this grand game of political theater.
In conclusion, the CRACKDOWN Act is a textbook case of legislative lip service – a meaningless exercise in pretending to address a problem while actually doing nothing to solve it. It's a symptom of a deeper disease: the chronic corruption and incompetence that plagues our government. So, let's give it up for Congress: they've managed to create another bill that's long on rhetoric and short on actual substance. Bravo, idiots.
Rep. Grothman, Glenn [R-WI-6]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Total contributions: $94,900
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Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 1 harmed.
Section 2(d) implies stricter oversight and potential ineligibility for funds under the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act, which could impact for-profit education providers that receive such funds; no direct benefit is apparent.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
AI Analysis:
"Both the bill and the Project 2025 SBA section emphasize federal accountability by setting thresholds for improper payments/fraud and imposing conditional eligibility or corrective actions, though they apply to different programs (child care grants vs. SBA loans)."
— 753 — Small Business Administration COVID-19 Lending Program Accountability and Cleanup. A major immediate priority for the next Administration should be a final accounting and accelerated cleanup of fraudulent COVID-19 loan and grant activity. As noted by the SBA IG, “managing COVID-19 stimulus lending is the greatest overall challenge facing SBA, and it may likely continue to be for many years as the agency grapples with fraud in the programs….”40 The next Administration should: l Consider bringing in private-sector support and expertise to close out these programs. Forgiveness and fraud must be dealt with as swiftly as possible, and law enforcement officials must pursue fraud vigorously. Entities receiving PPP loans that did not meet eligibility for forgiveness must be required to pay back the money. For example, under the CARES Act,41 PPP loan applicants generally were eligible only if, together with all their affiliates, they had no more than 500 employees. Numerous Planned Parenthood affiliates self-certified eligibility for PPP loans during the initial wave of loans that were governed by the CARES Act’s size requirement. Many Senators and Representatives asserted that these Planned Parenthood organizations were ineligible because— considered together with their affiliates—they exceeded the maximum eligible size.42 The Trump Administration SBA notified several Planned Parenthood PPP recipients of its preliminary determination of their ineligibility and of SBA’s authority to take various actions against applicants that falsely certified their eligibility.43 To date, despite continued oversight attempts by Members of Congress,44 the SBA has taken no action on the Planned Parenthood loans other than to forgive them, and in 2021, it approved new PPP loans to Planned Parenthood affiliates.45 l Cooperate with ongoing congressional oversight efforts and determine whether SBA has authority to reverse the forgiveness decisions. If it does have that authority, the SBA should reverse the forgiveness decisions for the subject loans, reiterate its preliminary determinations of ineligibility, investigate the matter more thoroughly, and take all appropriate action when its investigation concludes. Regardless of whether it reverses its forgiveness, if its investigation uncovers evidence that Planned Parenthood affiliates or any other loan recipients knowingly misrepresented their eligibility in their applications, the SBA should make appropriate referrals to the Department of Justice. — 754 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Disaster Loan Program and Direct Lending. The SBA’s disaster loan pro- gram provides low-interest loans to personal, business, and nonprofit borrowers following a federally declared disaster. The program suffers from problems of coordination with Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) disas- ter assistance. For example, disaster relief applicants have an incentive to avoid being approved for SBA disaster loans in order to increase the amount of FEMA assistance for which they are eligible. Moreover, the availability of disaster loans reduces individuals’ incentives to purchase disaster-related insurance. More than 90 percent of SBA disaster loans are loans to individuals such as homeowners, not to small businesses. In view of the challenges the SBA has experienced in its administration of this program, as well as the fraud and abuse in the EIDL COVID-19–related program and the IG’s concern that the systemic problems within this lending program undermine the SBA’s work, the next Administration should: l Work with Congress to assess the extent to which disaster loans should be offered by another agency rather than the SBA and explore private-sector channels for administering the loans. l Specify clearly that no new direct lending programs will be developed at the SBA. Eligibility of Religious Entities for SBA Loans. Current SBA regulations46 and SBA Form 197147 make certain religious entities ineligible to participate in several SBA loan programs. The Trump Administration proposed a rule that would remove the provisions on the ground that they violate the First Amendment.48 Subsequent Supreme Court decisions have made their unconstitutionality clearer.49 In an April 3, 2020, letter to Congress pursuant to 28 U.S. Code § 530D,50 the Trump Administration SBA advised that two such provisions violate the Free Exer- cise Clause of the First Amendment and that it therefore would not enforce them. On January 19, 2021, the Trump Administration SBA proposed a rule to remove all of the unconstitutional religious exclusions from its regulations.51 The SBA has not acted on the proposed rule. A similar religious exclusion once appeared in the regulation governing eligibil- ity for SBA Business Loan Programs,52 but it was removed in a June 2022 final rule that noted tension with the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent.53 That final rule announced that the SBA would nonetheless continue to make religious eligibility determinations for business loan applicants to comply with putative Establishment Clause requirements,54 but Supreme Court precedent and Office of Legal Counsel memoranda refute the notion that large government-backed loan programs raise any Establishment Clause concerns.55
AI Analysis:
"Both the bill and the Project 2025 excerpt emphasize strengthening accountability and reducing waste in HHS-administered programs, though the bill targets the Child Care and Development Block Grant while Project 2025 focuses on TANF, teen pregnancy prevention, and adoption reform."
— 476 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Pay damages to all medical professionals who were dismissed directly because of the CMS vaccine mandate. ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES (ACF) TANF. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program is a federal block grant that gives states significant flexibility to fund a broad array of programs aimed at helping low-income families break the cycle of poverty and achieve economic self-sufficiency. States use TANF to fund monthly cash assis- tance payments to low-income families with children as well as a wide range of services that include work activities, work supports and supportive services, child- care, administration and systems, tax credits, pre-K/Head Start, child welfare, and other services. The TANF program serves 1.8 million individuals. Since 1996, when the program was reformed, federal TANF outlays have been $16.5 billion. The state match is $14.9 billion, bringing the total state and federal TANF investment to $31.4 billion. The TANF statute requires that states engage 50 percent of single-parent fam- ilies in work for at least 30 hours a week (20 hours a week for single parents with children under age six, though states have the option to waive the requirement for families with children under the age of six, and most do). States also have 90 percent work requirements for two-parent families to engage in work for 35 hours per week. Because of the “Caseload Reduction Credit,” states’ work engagement targets are reduced if their assistance caseloads have fallen since 2005. As a result, 21 states had a work engagement target of zero percent in 2017. Generally, states apply their work requirement only to beneficiaries receiv- ing basic assistance, who account for 22.3 percent of TANF outlays. The Trump Administration proposed a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rule to “increase program integrity and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse” that would have prevented an individual from qualifying for SNAP simply because he or she received a pamphlet from the TANF program.60 This rule defined non-cash benefits as those that are worth at least $50 a month and received for at least six months. The tenets of this rule should be applied to the TANF program as well. This defi- nitional change would apply the TANF work requirements to any noncash benefit worth $50 a month and received for six consecutive months. To increase transparency, HHS should clarify how states, in their quarterly and annual reports, ought to track and audit the outcomes from how they spend TANF funds to meet the TANF program’s four statutory purposes. Additionally, TANF priorities are not implemented in an equally weighted way. Marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy are virtually ignored in terms of priorities, yet these goals can reverse the cycle of poverty in meaningful ways. CMS should require explicit measurement of these goals. — 477 — Department of Health and Human Services Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) and Personal Responsibility Educa- tion Program (PREP). TPP is operated by the Office of Population Affairs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health; PREP is operated by the ACF Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation. Both programs should ensure that there is better reporting of subgrantees and referral lists so that they do not promote abortion or high-risk sexual behavior among adolescents. CMS should ensure that Sexual Risk Avoidance (SRA) proponents receive these grants and are given every opportunity to prove their effectiveness. SRA programs, both at ACF and at OASH and both discretionary and mandatory, should be equal in funding and emphasis. Qualitative research should be conducted on both types of programs to ensure continuous improvement. In addition, certain provisions should be employed so that these programs do not serve as advocacy tools to promote sex, promote prostitution, or provide a funnel effect for abortion facilities and school field trips to clinics, or for similar purposes. Parent involvement and parent–child communication should be encour- aged and be a part of any funded project. Risk avoidance should be prioritized, and any program that submits a proposal that promotes risk rather than health should not be eligible for funding. Site visits should be revamped to ensure adherence to these optimal health met- rics, and a cost analysis of programming as compared to students served should be a metric in funding (taking into account that in certain cases, intensive programs will serve fewer students and can have more positive results). These same param- eters should apply to sex education programs at ACF. Any lists with “approved curriculum” or so-called evidence-based lists should be abolished; HHS should not create a monopoly of curriculum, adding to the profit of certain publishers. Furthermore, lists created in the past have given priority to sex-promotion text- books. HHS should create a list of criteria for evaluating the sort of curriculum that should be selected for any sex education grant programs, both at OASH and at ACF, with the aim of promoting optimal health and adhering to the legislative language of each program. Adoption Reform. There are roughly 400,000 children across the nation on the waiting list for foster care and 100,000 awaiting adoptive families, and the opioid/ fentanyl crisis is putting more at risk every day. Unfortunately, many of the faith- based adoption agencies that serve these children are under threat from lawsuits, or else their licenses and contracts have been halted because they cannot in good conscience place children in every household due to their religious belief that a child should have a married mother and father. HHS, through ACF and the Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources (ASFR), should repeal the unnecessary 2016 regulation61 that imposes nonstatutory sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination conditions on agency grants and return to the policy of maximizing the options for placing vulnerable children
AI Analysis:
"Both the bill and the Project 2025 policy emphasize federal accountability and the reduction of improper payments or fraud through thresholds, corrective action plans, and conditional eligibility, though they apply to different programs (child care grants vs. SBA COVID-19 loans)."
— 753 — Small Business Administration COVID-19 Lending Program Accountability and Cleanup. A major immediate priority for the next Administration should be a final accounting and accelerated cleanup of fraudulent COVID-19 loan and grant activity. As noted by the SBA IG, “managing COVID-19 stimulus lending is the greatest overall challenge facing SBA, and it may likely continue to be for many years as the agency grapples with fraud in the programs….”40 The next Administration should: l Consider bringing in private-sector support and expertise to close out these programs. Forgiveness and fraud must be dealt with as swiftly as possible, and law enforcement officials must pursue fraud vigorously. Entities receiving PPP loans that did not meet eligibility for forgiveness must be required to pay back the money. For example, under the CARES Act,41 PPP loan applicants generally were eligible only if, together with all their affiliates, they had no more than 500 employees. Numerous Planned Parenthood affiliates self-certified eligibility for PPP loans during the initial wave of loans that were governed by the CARES Act’s size requirement. Many Senators and Representatives asserted that these Planned Parenthood organizations were ineligible because— considered together with their affiliates—they exceeded the maximum eligible size.42 The Trump Administration SBA notified several Planned Parenthood PPP recipients of its preliminary determination of their ineligibility and of SBA’s authority to take various actions against applicants that falsely certified their eligibility.43 To date, despite continued oversight attempts by Members of Congress,44 the SBA has taken no action on the Planned Parenthood loans other than to forgive them, and in 2021, it approved new PPP loans to Planned Parenthood affiliates.45 l Cooperate with ongoing congressional oversight efforts and determine whether SBA has authority to reverse the forgiveness decisions. If it does have that authority, the SBA should reverse the forgiveness decisions for the subject loans, reiterate its preliminary determinations of ineligibility, investigate the matter more thoroughly, and take all appropriate action when its investigation concludes. Regardless of whether it reverses its forgiveness, if its investigation uncovers evidence that Planned Parenthood affiliates or any other loan recipients knowingly misrepresented their eligibility in their applications, the SBA should make appropriate referrals to the Department of Justice.
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.