Nursing Home Donations and the Staffing Rule That Disappeared

Why This Matters for NY-23

In 2024, the federal government finalized the first-ever minimum staffing standard for nursing homes. University of Pennsylvania researchers estimated the rule would prevent approximately 13,000 nursing home resident deaths per year. In July 2025, Langworthy voted to block it for a decade. In the years surrounding that vote, a Long Island nursing home operator — whose 106-facility network includes more than 50 facilities below the staffing standard the rule would have required — contributed at least $68,700 in directly traceable donations to Langworthy’s campaign committees.

We cannot prove any connection between the donations and the vote. That’s not what this page claims. What it documents — from public FEC filings, CMS data, and congressional records — is a pattern. Readers can evaluate it.

The Rule: What Was at Stake

Published: May 10, 2024 (89 Fed. Reg. 40876)

The Biden administration’s nursing home minimum staffing rule established the first federal floor for how much nursing care residents must receive:

• 0.55 registered nurse hours per resident per day
• 3.48 total nurse hours per resident per day
• A registered nurse on-site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

The rule was specifically designed to address the lowest-performing facilities — those with the highest rates of preventable harm and the thinnest staffing levels. A policy analysis by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute — Rachel M. Werner, MD PhD and Norma B. Coe, PhD — estimated the mandate would prevent approximately 13,000 nursing home deaths annually. (The analysis was published as a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren in July 2024, not as a peer-reviewed journal article.)

The nursing home industry opposed the rule from the start. The American Health Care Association (AHCA), the industry’s primary trade group, called it “an impossible standard” and argued enforcement would force facilities to close.

The Vote: Langworthy’s Record

July 3, 2025 — Roll Call 190 Bill: One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21) Langworthy vote: YES — Langworthy made floor remarks in support of the bill before the vote and publicly called the outcome “a generational win for the American people.” The vote passed 218–214. Official roll call: clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025190.

Section 71111 of P.L. 119-21 prohibits CMS from implementing the nursing home minimum staffing rule until September 30, 2034 — a 10-year moratorium. CBO estimated the provision’s cost to operators at approximately $23 billion; that figure represents the staffing investment the industry would have been required to make.

On December 3, 2025, CMS formally repealed the staffing standards by interim final rule, citing P.L. 119-21 as the legislative basis. The rule became void on February 2, 2026.

Sources: clerk.house.gov Roll Call 190 (Jul. 3, 2025); P.L. 119-21 § 71111; WGRZ reporting on Langworthy floor statement; CMS interim final rule, Dec. 3, 2025.

The Money: Following the Donations

FEC bulk contribution records (indiv22.txt, indiv24.txt, indiv26.txt, and committee transfer files) show the following contributions to Langworthy’s affiliated committees from Benjamin Landa and Judy Landa of Lawrence, NY, across the 2022–2026 election cycles:

Directly traceable contributions to Langworthy’s two named committees — Langworthy for Congress (C00817932) and the Langworthy Congressional Victory Committee (C00832188) — total at least $68,700 across the 2022–2025 cycles. Landa appears in FEC records under two employer listings: “The Premier Network” (his management company) and individual nursing home entities.

Every dollar was contributed before the July 3, 2025 vote. The largest single tranche — $25,000 combined ($12,500 each from Benjamin and Judy Landa) — arrived March 31, 2025, three months before Roll Call 190.

Landa is a nursing home operator. His total federal political giving across all recipients from 2019 through 2026 exceeds $5.2 million, including $5,000,000 to MAGA Inc. (a Trump Super PAC) contributed in August 2025, after the OBBBA vote.

Source: FEC bulk files indiv22.txt, indiv24.txt, indiv26.txt; committee names verified against FEC cm22.txt–cm26.txt.

The Facilities: What the Data Shows

CMS ownership records identify 106 facilities across 10 states where Landa holds a named ownership interest, all matched in CMS Care Compare (April 2026 snapshot).

More than half of Landa’s facilities fall below the 0.55 RN hours-per-resident-per-day minimum that P.L. 119-21 blocked from being enforced. Every facility in the network carries CMS’s abuse icon.

Source: CMS Care Compare April 2026 snapshot; CMS ownership file; verified against FEC indiv files for Landa ownership attribution.

A Note on What the Data Does — and Doesn’t — Show

What is documented:

• Langworthy voted YES to block federal nursing home staffing standards for 10 years (Roll Call 190, July 3, 2025). That is a public congressional record.
• Benjamin and Judy Landa contributed at least $68,700 to Langworthy’s named campaign committees across 2022–2025, all before the vote. That is in public FEC filings.
• 55% of Landa’s 106 facilities fall below the RN staffing floor the vote blocked; every facility in the network carries CMS’s abuse icon. That is in public CMS Care Compare data.

What is not documented:

• Any explicit connection between the donations and the vote.
• Any communication between the donor and the congressmember about this legislation.
• Any quid pro quo of any kind.

Campaign contributions from the nursing home industry to members of Congress who vote on nursing home policy are legal and routine. The pattern documented here — large contributions from an operator whose facilities fall below a standard, followed by a vote blocking that standard — is the kind of pattern that campaign finance data can show. Whether it represents anything beyond coincidence is not something public records can answer.

All data from public primary sources: FEC.gov bulk files, CMS data.cms.gov, Congress.gov. Methodology available on request.