Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 753.0

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FISCHER v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

care, and it follows that the beneﬁts of the program extend
in a broader manner as well. The argument limiting the
term “beneﬁts” to the program’s targeted or primary bene-
ﬁciaries would exclude, for example, a Medicare intermedi-
ary (such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield), a result both par-
ties disavow. For present purposes it cannot be disputed
the providers themselves derive signiﬁcant advantage by
satisfying the participation standards imposed by the Gov-
ernment. These advantages constitute beneﬁts within the
meaning of the federal bribery statute, a statute we have
described as “expansive,” “both as to the [conduct] forbidden
and the entities covered.” Salinas v. United States, 522
U. S. 52, 56 (1997).

Subsection (b) identiﬁes several sources as providing bene-
ﬁts under a federal program—“a grant, contract, subsidy,
loan, guarantee, insurance, or other form of Federal assist-
18 U. S. C. § 666(b). This language indicates that
ance.”
Congress viewed many federal assistance programs as pro-
viding beneﬁts to participating organizations. Coupled with
the broad substantive prohibitions of subsection (a), the lan-
guage of subsection (b) reveals Congress’ expansive, unam-
biguous intent to ensure the integrity of organizations par-
ticipating in federal assistance programs.

Subsection (c) of the statute bears on the analysis. The
provision removes from the statute’s coverage any “bona ﬁde
salary, wages, fees, or other compensation paid, or expenses
paid or reimbursed,
in the usual course of business.”
§ 666(c). Petitioner argues that the subsection operates to
exclude the payments in question because they are either
“compensation” or “expenses paid or reimbursed,” or some
combination of the two, and that the payments are made in
the “usual course of business.” We disagree.

The subsection provides that the speciﬁed sorts of pay-
ments are not ones to which the section applies. One infer-
ence from this formulation is that the described payments
would have been beneﬁts but for the subsection (c) exemp-