MIAMI — Florida Gov.-elect Byron Donalds’ new policy chair is a lobbyist who has claimed credit for ensuring Obamacare subsidy extensions died in Congress last year.

Donalds named Tarren Bragdon as the policy chair of his transition team this week. He’s the founder and CEO of the Naples-based conservative think tank Foundation for Government Accountability and the president of its affiliated lobbying firm FGA Action, which has spent millions lobbying Congress to cut back federal spending on public healthcare and food assistance programs.

FGA and FGA Action’s efforts have long centered around limiting access to food stamps and blocking Medicaid expansion. The groups have also been involved in paring back child labor protections in state-level legislation, including in Florida.

But one of their biggest victories last year was killing Obamacare subsidy extensions in Congress — a move that impacted Miami-Dade County more than anywhere else in the country due the high share of Obamacare recipients.

“We launched a comprehensive engagement, polling, and research effort to reveal the truth, counter the scare tactics, and give Republicans political cover to hold the line,” the FGA wrote in its annual report. “Because of our efforts, congressional Republicans kept these credits out of the continuing resolution to fund the government.”

The partisan stalemate over rising Obamacare prices led to the longest government shutdown on record. Democrats eventually agreed to vote to reopen the government without subsidy extensions, and healthcare prices in the public marketplace rose dramatically last year, according to data compiled by KFF, a nonprofit organization that studies and reports on healthcare.

Bragdon’s key role in that effort, as well as getting cuts to food assistance programs into President Donald Trump’s landmark spending bill, offer new insight into the incoming Donalds administration’s priorities — including on critical issues Donalds did not frequently address during the election cycle.

One of the other recent federal legislative changes the FGA has touted in Trump’s landmark legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, also put steep financial penalties on states like Florida with high food-assistance payment error rates, a coming pressure point on the incoming Donalds administration.

That requirement could put Florida on the hook to find a way to pay for a $1 billion penalty in cost sharing for federal food aid, according to calculations by the Florida Policy Institute, or make significant eligibility cuts.

If Bragdon’s role in the Donalds administration is an indication, the latter appears more likely — even as some advocates had hoped Donalds would moderate on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ track record of blocking social safety net funding.

“It’s disappointing that clearly the governor-elect has not read any meaning into the recent election where I think the public was very clear that the high cost of healthcare, the high cost of food, was something they were very unhappy about,” said Joan Alker, a public policy researcher at Georgetown University who has studied Florida’s Medicaid program for more than two decades.

“I think the FGA has a one-track mind and that track is cutting healthcare, publicly funded healthcare, and nutrition,” she said. “I’ve never seen them diverge from that.”

Donalds’ transition team did not make Bragdon available for an interview and did not answer emailed questions about whether Donalds’ policy vision diverges from the FGA’s.

In a statement after his selection as the transition team’s policy chair, Bragdon said: “Floridians sent a clear message in November: they want lower property taxes, increased opportunity and higher paychecks, and a lower cost of living. Governor-elect Byron Donalds has committed to advancing big ideas, cutting through red tape and bureaucratic delays, spending tax dollars wisely, and bringing reforms and results quickly.”

A conservative lobbying juggernaut

The Foundation for Government Accountability was founded in 2011 in Naples, Florida, by Bragdon, a former Maine state representative. Donalds and his wife, Erika Donalds, also built their professional and political careers in Naples.

The FGA’s impact on healthcare and food assistance policy from its Southwest Florida headquarters is nationwide.

The nonprofit think tank has received financial support from conservative funding powerhouses like the Heritage Foundation-aligned State Policy Network, the Charles Koch Foundation and Trump’s transition think tank, America First Policy Institute, tax records show. In 2024, the FGA received $14.7 million in tax-exempt revenue and paid Bragdon a $478,000 salary.

Bragdon is also CEO of the group’s affiliated lobbying firm FGA Action Inc., which paid him another $78,000 for that role, according to tax filings. FGA Action, previously known as Opportunity Solutions Project, has spent more than $4.4 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies since 2018, lobbying disclosure records show.

Recent lobbying efforts by Bragdon — who has lobbied the House, Senate, White House and U.S. Department of Agriculture this year — focused on issues like “work requirements in food stamps” and “TANF child-only,” a reference to the federal Temporary Aid for Needy Families program.

As Alker, the Medicaid researcher, sees it, “Their funding is really from very right-wing billionaires who don’t want to pay taxes, so there’s a through line to their work, which is they want to limit healthcare and nutrition assistance.”

Florida Sen. Rick Scott praised Bragdon’s selection for Donalds’ transition team.

He told the Herald/Times in a statement this week that Bragdon “has been a tremendous ally in the fight to restore fiscal sanity in Washington and make healthcare more affordable for American families.” Scott has also been cited in FGA’s materials praising the foundation’s work lobbying Congress for steeper restrictions on Medicaid food assistance.

Chief among the FGA’s recent efforts was to get cuts to food assistance and Medicaid eligibility into Trump’s landmark spending legislation last year.

“Our in-house policy experts drafted model legislation for dozens of reconciliation provisions, of which 31 ultimately made it into law,” the FGA touted after the “Big Beautiful Bill” was signed into law.

Since the bill took effect, participation in Florida’s food assistance program dropped to a 17-year low, according to reporting by the Tampa Bay Times. Almost a quarter-million children in Florida lost their food benefits between August 2025 and August 2026.

Defining questions for the incoming Donalds administration

During an election cycle centered around affordability concerns, Donalds’ campaign presented smaller, bipartisan healthcare reforms like allowing out-of-network costs to count toward health insurance deductibles and requiring insurance companies to approve care faster as the core of his healthcare policy platform.

Meanwhile, Bragdon’s think tank and lobbying firm have long promoted a more sweeping goal: shrinking government spending on healthcare as much as possible.

On food and health, Donalds advocated for similarly limited regulatory changes like altering school lunch menus and cutting sales of candy and soda at school events in his campaign proposals. Bragdon’s career has long centered around a much more sweeping aim of cutting access to government-funded food aid.

Now, the central question as Bragdon leads Donalds’ policy team is the extent to which Donalds will be aligned with the goals of FGA.

One of the key provisions in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that the FGA has touted could become one of the defining questions of Donalds’ tenure as governor: how to manage the financial punishments for states like Florida with high food-assistance payment error rates.

Florida’s rate of underpaying or overpaying food assistance has steadily climbed as the state hollowed out staffing of its Department of Children and Family Services, in part to move staff into DeSantis’ Hope Florida project.

Under the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the state will be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars as a cost-sharing penalty issued by the federal government because of the frequency with which the state has overpaid or underpaid benefits.

The FGA praised that provision as a win in its 2025 annual report. “Every missed cross-check and fraudulent enrollee will hit state budgets directly. The era of consequence-free negligence is over,” the foundation wrote.

Donalds, and Bragdon as a key adviser, will now be the deciders of how Florida will face those new consequences.

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