On September 25, 2024, Bilirakis was one of 82 House members — all Republicans — to vote no on the bill that took FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund out of emergency rationing. Helene made landfall in Florida the following night. Five days later he published a guide telling constituents how to apply for FEMA money.
The 'Defending Freedom Fighters Trust Fund' would have put $5 million behind a Florida presidential candidate's legal defense, administered by the department Patronis ran. Even Ron DeSantis said no.
Simple Health sold sham health insurance to more than 400,000 people and took in more than $190 million. Its CEO is serving 25 years in federal prison. Florida's Chief Financial Officer took money from it and a related company three times — and kept taking it after a state attorney general issued a national fraud alert.
H.R. 9009 deletes one subsection of federal law, built around a single sentence: 'it shall be unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun.' That subsection is also what makes Glock switches illegal.
Bean filed the 80-hours-a-month Medicaid work requirement in December 2024 and again in February 2025 — months before it became law. His version was broader than the one that passed, and 92% of the people it targets are already working, caregiving, sick, or in school.
Bean and Pete Sessions launched the House DOGE Caucus in November 2024 calling the national debt a wakeup call. Twenty months later the debt is $3.9 trillion higher, the caucus has stopped meeting, DOGE itself expired, and Bean's plan to revive it is unused office space.
Bean's Abolish the CMMI Act would wipe out the Medicare office that runs the dementia caregiver program, the diabetes prevention program, and two of the four payment models that actually saved Medicare money. Four months later it still has zero cosponsors.
The state's own economists put a number on what Amendment 3 would take from Florida's cities and counties. Donalds, the amendment's loudest champion, is now attacking the estimators — without offering a number of his own.
In a 2023 markup he demanded all assistance be slowed. His amendment deleted the humanitarian exemption for food, medicine and medical devices. A year later, House Republicans made him chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.