Mike Crapo · TranslatePolitics.com

Senate

Morning Business

2026-08-04

“This day is to remember missing soldiers. I want to thank the government group that looks for missing soldiers. They brought some bodies home. I will keep pushing for a bill to help them do their job.”

Official Congressional Record

Madam President, I join the POW*MIA Awareness Rally Corp. of Pocatello, ID, in acknowledging National POW/MIA Recognition Day this September 18, 2026. I am grateful for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's, DPAA, steady and often challenging work to meet its responsibility of recovering America's servicemembers. Each year, the DPAA leads the creation of a poster commemorating National POW/MIA Recognition Day, as ceremonies are held across the country to honor those who were held captive and returned, as well as those who remain missing. The year's poster reads, ``Warrior Ethos: `I will always place the mission first . . . I will never leave a fallen comrade.' '' Second Lieutenant Charles Atteberry, a World War II servicemember from Parma who had been missing and unidentified for 80 years, is one of the Idaho servicemembers most recently returned home. Through the U.S. military's use of DNA testing, Lt. Atteberry was identified from a mass grave in Taiwan and returned to Idaho in 2025. Lt. Atteberry's brother Lloyd also served in the military as a pilot during World War II and is still considered missing in action since he was reportedly shot down in 1943. On June 10, 2026, the DPAA also accounted for U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Harold T. Thompson, 24, who was killed during World War II. The DPAA reported, ``In the winter of 1944, Thompson was assigned to the 718th Bombardment Squadron, 449th Bombardment Group, in Italy. On Jan. 30, he was serving as a gunner aboard a B-24 Liberator bomber on a mission to Udine, Italy. The plane was shot down while returning from its mission and was last sighted north of the Isle of Morgo off the Italian coast near the town of Grado. Three crew members made it out of the plane before the crash, but only one survived. The other seven members, including Thompson, were believed to have still been in the aircraft when it crashed.'' As we celebrate Idahoans' return home, we maintain hope for the return of Idaho's other servicemembers, including the eight who remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam war. This includes Major William Ellsworth Lemmons, who was on a visual reconnaissance mission in South Vietnam on June 18, 1967, when the aircraft he piloted failed to return from the mission for unknown reasons and was declared missing. Major Lemmons is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC. I thank America's servicemembers, veterans, and their families for their extraordinary commitment to our country, as I remain deeply grateful to those who keep attention on bringing every American servicemember and the DPAA and its partners working steadily to provide the fullest possible accounting of missing U.S. personnel to their families and our country. To support these efforts, I continue to use every opportunity to press for enactment of the Bring Our Heroes Home Act. This legislation would help eliminate obstacles preventing families and caseworkers from accessing the records needed for recovering America's POWs and MIA. We honor America's missing servicemembers and those they served beside by never giving up in our pursuit of finding them and bringing them home.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Senate

Authority for Committees to Meet

2026-07-16

“I have some committees that want to meet today. The leaders say that's okay. I'm telling you when these committees will meet and what they will do.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. President, I have eight requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination. The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination. The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a business meeting. The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations. The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 11 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations. The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination. The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 16, 2026, at 9 a.m., to conduct an executive business meeting.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Senate

Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services of the Department of Health and Human...

2026-07-16

“Wyden is wrong. We need this AI program. It can help us fight fraud. It will find bad claims. It will save us money. It will make things better for patients. My friends should not stop this program.”

Official Congressional Record

Madam President, in response to the discussion that my colleague from Oregon has just engaged in, far too often, our Nation's healthcare system incentivizes low-value, high-cost services. For years, bipartisan policy makers throughout Capitol Hill and across administrations have endeavored to disrupt this flawed paradigm, especially in the Medicare Program. Unfortunately, despite progress to incorporate new value-based payment arrangements, Medicare's underlying reimbursement structure continues to rely heavily on the volume of services provided, rather than the quality of care. In addition to failing patients and providers, Medicare's perverse financial incentives contribute to massive waste and abuse. Well- meaning clinicians often face opaque coverage guidelines that can result in denied reimbursements, while malicious actors exploit bureaucratic vulnerabilities to defraud the program. Through the wasteful and inappropriate service reduction model--work WISeR--CMS is testing whether enhanced technology can help address these systemic failures. For a limited set of nonemergency services with a documented history of abuse and overuse, providers in select States must submit claims for review. Claims that meet existing Medicare coverage requirements are quickly approved, offering providers payment predictability. When issues arise, board-certified clinicians--not technological machines, board-certified clinicians--intervene to make the final decision. The potential benefit of this ``detect and prevent strategy'' is substantial. For example, Medicare spending on skin substitutes, one of the chosen WISeR model services, increased and--hear this--increased from $256 million in 2019 to $10 billion in 2024. It doesn't even take a technological machine to tell you that something is wrong there. Proactive, technology-based scrutiny could have detected this outlier spending growth and protected both patients and taxpayers. Regrettably, misinformation about this model has sparked fears of delays in essential patient care and additional burdens on providers. Later today, the Senate will proceed to a resolution to stop this important work of the WISeR model. Every Member of this body agrees that patients should have access to high-quality care, providers deserve predictable payment for services, and avoidable waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare should be stopped. Ending this pilot program prematurely will deprive CMS of a useful tool to accomplish each of those goals. And I urge my colleagues to consider the facts and oppose this resolution. I yield the floor.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗

Senate

Recognizing a Home for Every Child

2026-07-14

“I want to cheer for a program that spends money in my district. I am proud that I helped pass a tax cut.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. President, I commend the Administration for Children and Families, ACF, for its achievement in securing the participation of all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico in the A Home for Every Child Campaign. This milestone represents a meaningful bipartisan accomplishment: every jurisdiction choosing to join a voluntary effort focused on improving the lives of vulnerable children and families. At a time when consensus can be difficult to achieve, this campaign demonstrates that leaders across the political spectrum can unite around the fundamental goal of ensuring every child has a safe, stable, and loving home. This initiative is rooted in Idaho, where it is transforming the child welfare system and resolving the shortage of quality foster homes. The Gem State's model has improved foster care outcomes by achieving higher home-to-child ratios, prioritizing kinship recruitment, and preventing both unnecessary placements into care and burnout by current foster families. With the support of every State, that innovative approach is now being successfully implemented at the national level by Dr. Alex Adams, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Family Support, who previously served as Idaho's Health and Welfare Director. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I was proud to help enact the Working Families Tax Cuts that made the adoption tax credit partially refundable up to $5,000, helping offset the costs of adopting a child. And the Trump administration announced plans to help foster youth participate in the Trump Accounts created in the law to help the next generation build wealth, with Idaho pledging to adopt policies that will allow all its foster youth the same opportunity. By strengthening collaboration between the Federal Government and States, ACF is helping transform outcomes for children and families while establishing a model for strategic Federal-State partnerships. I thank the foster families across Idaho and the country who provide the stability and love every child deserves. I commend ACF, participating State and Territorial leaders, and all those working to make this vision a reality.

View on ourcommons.ca ↗