678
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 beneficiaries would exclude, for example, a Medicare intermediary (such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield), a result both parties disavow. For present purposes it cannot be disputed the providers themselves derive significant advantage by satisfying the participation standards imposed by the Government. 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 benefits under a federal program—"a grant, contract, subsidy, loan, guarantee, insurance, or other form of Federal assistance." 18 U. S. C. § 666(b). This language indicates that Congress viewed many federal assistance programs as providing benefits to participating organizations. Coupled with the broad substantive prohibitions of subsection (a), the language of subsection (b) reveals Congress' expansive, unambiguous intent to ensure the integrity of organizations participating 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 payments are not ones to which the section applies. One inference from this formulation is that the described payments would have been benefits but for the subsection (c) exemp-
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