Republican congressman Derrick Van Orden speaks for Wisconsin's 3rd District in the House of Representatives, and November 3, 2026 is the date voters there decide whether he keeps it. Seven times in 2025 his yes was decisive as the House advanced the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the one-vote passage on May 22 among them, and he then voted for the final version on July 3; KFF's estimate of what the resulting law costs Wisconsin in federal Medicaid dollars is $6.745 billion over the decade.
About Derrick Van Orden
- Full name
- Derrick Van Orden, Republican; the Clerk of the House lists him under Wisconsin's 3rd District
- Current role
- Member of the U.S. House for the 3rd District of Wisconsin, with seats on the Agriculture, Armed Services and Veterans' Affairs committees
- In office since
- Representing the 3rd District since he took office on January 3, 2023
- Seeking
- Re-election to the 3rd District seat, with general election day set for November 3, 2026
- Key votes
- A decisive yes on the H.Con.Res. 14 budget plan (February 25, 2025); a decisive yes when the House first approved H.R. 1 (May 22, 2025); a yes on concurring in the Senate's H.R. 1 (July 3, 2025); a yes on H.Res. 1156 commending the law's tax provisions (April 16, 2026)
What Derrick Van Orden Is Responsible For
- Medicaid and BadgerCare. Had Van Orden voted no, H.R. 1 would have failed in May 2025 on a 215-to-214 count, and his July 3, 2025 yes helped finish a law that pulls $6.745 billion of federal Medicaid support out of Wisconsin, support behind the coverage of 144,000 Medicaid enrollees in Wisconsin's 3rd District. A BadgerCare work rule begins January 1, 2027, and the state health department counts about 63,000 members at risk of being dropped.
- Health coverage. Budget office figures that KFF reports show the law Van Orden voted for adding 10 million people nationwide to the uninsured by 2034, with 76,000 of the newly uninsured in Wisconsin by KFF's own projection.
- Hospitals and rural health. Caps on provider taxes and state-directed payments are in the final law Van Orden voted for on July 3, 2025, which followed his deciding 2025 budget votes. KFF finds roughly $969 million a year of federal spending on Wisconsin hospital care sitting above the new limit, and $1.7 billion of the decade's Medicaid cut lands on rural Wisconsin.
- Food assistance. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the law Van Orden voted for leaves SNAP $187 billion smaller through 2034. Wisconsin's own bill for administering FoodShare is up $32.4 million now that the state covers 75%, and roughly 43,700 recipients have new work rules to meet.
- Medicare. A green-card test in section 71201 of the law Van Orden voted for pushes some enrolled immigrants with lawful status off Medicare, and the law's lighter tax on benefits sets the hospital trust fund on course to be depleted by the second quarter of 2033, three months before the trustees' previous date, a fund Wisconsin's 1,315,539 enrollees relied on in 2024.
- Nursing homes and elder care. Under the law Van Orden voted for, federal regulators cannot enforce nursing-home staffing minimums through September 30, 2034, and financing that helps pay nursing homes and hospitals is capped. For 55% of Wisconsin's 17,668 nursing-home residents, Medicaid is the main payer.
- Social Security. Trimming the tax on benefits costs Social Security $168.6 billion through 2034, the chief actuary found, a change Van Orden voted for; once the retirement trust fund falls short, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that the 24% cut that follows shrinks the average Wisconsin check by $513 a month.
- The child tax credit. Because the credit Van Orden voted for still phases in with earnings, 30,000 children in Wisconsin's 3rd District, 21%, receive less than the full amount, as Columbia's Center on Poverty and Social Policy calculates.
- Taxes and the deficit. In the budget office's distributional analysis of the law Van Orden voted for, a household in the top tenth comes out about $13,600 a year ahead and one at the bottom about $1,200 behind; in April 2026 he also voted for H.Res. 1156, which bills the law as a working-family tax cut.
- Student loans. Wisconsin borrowers moved off SAVE into the repayment plan created by the law Van Orden voted for pay $2,009 more a year on average, by a Center for American Progress estimate, and new graduate borrowers lost Graduate PLUS loans.
- Veterans. Section 10102 of the law Van Orden voted for took veterans out of SNAP's time-limit exemptions, a change felt in the households of some of Wisconsin's 18,000 veterans on SNAP, and its Medicaid work rule's veterans exemption covers only those rated totally disabled.
- Planned Parenthood. The clinic network lost a year of federal Medicaid payments under the law Van Orden voted for; by the organization's own count, close to 30 of its health centers shut during that year and Medicaid visits dropped by a quarter, over 250,000 visits.
- Energy bills and jobs. Repealing clean-energy and home-efficiency credits, as the law Van Orden voted for does, could add roughly $300 to an average Wisconsin home's yearly energy costs by 2035 in an Energy Innovation projection CNBC reported, and Energy Innovation forecasts 760,000 lost jobs nationally by 2030.
- Immigration enforcement money. The American Immigration Council tallies $170.7 billion for immigration and border enforcement in the law Van Orden voted for, and NPR reported in March 2026 that "nearly 70,000 people are in ICE detention, the highest number in several years".
- The consumer bureau. Funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau now tops out at 6.5% of a Federal Reserve benchmark rather than 12% under the law Van Orden voted for, which the Congressional Research Service figures at $446 million for fiscal 2025, down from an $823 million ceiling.
- Silencers and short-barreled guns. The law Van Orden voted for did away with the $200 federal tax that applied to silencers, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns; once a court ruled that registering them no longer had a legal basis, the ATF dropped the registration requirement on October 9, 2026.
How This Page on Derrick Van Orden Is Sourced
Each vote cited here links to the Clerk of the House roll call behind it, for instance the one-vote House passage of H.R. 1. Figures for Wisconsin and the 3rd District link to their own sources, such as KFF's congressional district Medicaid data and the Social Security Administration's district statistics, and national figures link to the Congressional Budget Office, KFF, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and others. This page was last updated on October 27, 2026, from the House roll calls and those sources.
Frequently Asked Questions About Derrick Van Orden
What is Derrick Van Orden's record under Trump?
In 2025 Derrick Van Orden cast yes votes on the budget resolutions, the rules, House passage and final passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with seven of his votes decisive, including the May 22 passage by one vote. KFF puts the resulting Medicaid loss for Wisconsin at $6.745 billion over ten years, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts the SNAP cut at $187 billion nationally. He went on to vote for a resolution praising the law in April 2026.
Could the Big Beautiful Bill have cleared the House if Derrick Van Orden had voted no?
No, not in May 2025: Derrick Van Orden was one of 215 yeas against 214 nays on the House version, so his no would have sunk it. He was also decisive on both budget resolution votes and on two July 2, 2025 procedural votes for the final version. He then voted for final passage on July 3, 2025, 218 to 214.
How much federal Medicaid money does Wisconsin give up under Derrick Van Orden's vote?
Working from the budget office estimate, KFF calculates that the law Derrick Van Orden voted for cuts what Wisconsin receives in federal Medicaid funds by $6.745 billion across a decade, 8% below what it was due; KFF also expects 76,000 more uninsured Wisconsinites in 2034. Medicaid enrollment in Wisconsin's 3rd District was 144,000 in 2025.
How does the BadgerCare work requirement in Derrick Van Orden's vote affect adults in western Wisconsin?
The law Derrick Van Orden voted for makes BadgerCare Plus adults ages 19 to 64 with no children under 19 at home show 80 hours a month of a job, volunteering, training or half-time school, or an exemption, to stay covered. The state health department expects the rule to reach about 200,000 adults and to put some 63,000 at risk once it starts on January 1, 2027.
What did Derrick Van Orden's vote do to food assistance in Wisconsin?
Derrick Van Orden's vote went to a law that cuts SNAP $187 billion through 2034, and months earlier his deciding February 2025 budget vote fixed a $230 billion target for the SNAP committee. Wisconsin has carried 75% of FoodShare's administrative costs since October 1, 2026, and about 43,700 recipients now face expanded work rules.
Did Derrick Van Orden stand by the Big Beautiful Bill after it became law?
He did: on April 16, 2026, Derrick Van Orden was a yes on H.Res. 1156, adopted on a 219-to-207 tally, a resolution that labels the law the "Working Families Tax Cuts." Yet the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, studying 2026, concluded that "For the poorest fifth of Americans, the average tax change from OBBBA is a small tax increase."
Last updated: 2026-10-27