Republican US Rep. Rob Bresnahan promised constituents he wouldn’t trade stocks or cut Medicaid. Then he got donations from 20 billionaires to do just that.
Despite finding himself mired in controversies involving his personal wealth, a floodgate of billionaire donors has opened up for US Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Lackawanna) since taking office earlier this year.
Campaign finance reports show that in 2025, Bresnahan has received campaign contributions from 20 billionaires, who have a collective net worth of $194 billion.
Some of Bresnahan’s billionaire backers include Stephen Wynn, a casino and hotel magnate; Stephen Schwartzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group; Charles Schwab, an investment banker; and Leonard Blavatnik, a Ukrainian-born philanthropist with ties to Russian oligarchs—to name a few.
Mother Jones reported that a group of international scholars and Russian experts accused Blavatink in 2019 of using his philanthropies, which take money from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, to fund “leading academic and cultural institutions to advance his access to political circles,” and infiltrate US and UK political and economic establishments.
Prior to running for office in 2024, Bresnahan personally had an estimated net wealth between $5 million to $69 million. He became the chief financial officer of his grandfather’s construction company, Kuharchik Construction, at 19 and then entered a partnership with CAI Partners, a venture capital firm, in 2023.
After taking office in January, Bresnahan has become one of Congress’ most prolific stock traders despite campaigning for a ban on Congressional Stock Trading during the 2024 election.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that Bresnahan sold between $100,000 and $250,000 in bonds from the Allegheny County Hospital Development Authority for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center after it was announced that 10 rural hospitals were at risk of closing. This happened a month before Bresnahan voted for the first version of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
Because of Trump’s budget cuts, over 310,000 Pennsylvanians are estimated to lose their health care coverage because of the $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, and 140,000 residents estimated to lose food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Out of all of Pennsylvania’s congressional Republicans up for reelection in the 2026 midterm elections, Bresnahan’s district will be hit the hardest by Trump’s budget cuts. Over 21,000 of his constituents will lose their health care coverage while 11,500 will lose their SNAP benefits.
Ciara Williams, a junior political science major at Wilkes University and intern with Action Together NEPA, grew up benefitting from these programs. She described Bresnahan’s vote as “slap in the face.”
“ I still have my EBT card even though it doesn’t work anymore,” Williams said. “In middle school, we were at the Women’s and Children’s Resource Center. We were homeless for a while. We were in section eight housing in Scranton. We’ve had every help you can get, and honestly, it’s a slap in the face for people who are struggling just trying to get off their feet.”
She added, “[Bresnahan] likes to cosplay as working class. He has his flannel t-shirts, he wears them out, and he refuses to actually talk to the working class and understand what we go through. It’s really just lies upon lies and extremely disingenuous.”
