Exclusive: Dem bill would revive nursing home staff minimums

Axios – Thursday, February 12, 2026
By Maya Goldman

Senate Democrats on Thursday are reviving a Biden-era effort to set the first-ever national minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The Trump administration last year rescinded a policy that would have created baseline staffing rules for long-term care settings in response to widespread reports of patient harm due to understaffing.

Administrators pulled the rule after nursing home executives donated millions to a Trump-aligned super PAC, the New York Times reported last month. A federal judge in Texas had also previously tossed out the regulation.

Zoom in: A bill led by Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden of Oregon would require nursing homes to have a registered nurse on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Each resident in a nursing home would also get at least three and a half hours of nursing care per day, his office told Axios.

Both mandates were included in the Biden-era regulation.

The intrigue: The bill would designate $800 million annually for state inspections of nursing homes and other health providers, and to support enforcement activities.

It also requires that states reinvest a “significant portion” of fines levied on nursing homes back into long-term care workforce development.

Unions representing nurses and home care workers, along with senior citizen advocacy groups, have endorsed the bill, per Wyden’s office.

The other side: The nursing home industry has called staffing mandates unworkable without more funding.

“This unrealistic regulation threatened to close nursing homes and displace vulnerable residents,” Clif Porter, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living, said in a December statement after the rule was scrapped.

Republicans in Congress disagreed with the Biden minimum staffing requirement, too, and they’re unlikely to back this new bill in its current form.

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