The bill
Locally Led Development and Humanitarian Response Act
HR. 6196, 119th Congress — read as touching Private Equity & Hedge Funds.
Sponsored by
Rep. Jacobs, Sara [D-CA-51]
ID: J000305
Follow the money
The bill
HR. 6196, 119th Congress — read as touching Private Equity & Hedge Funds.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
28 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Agency for International Development" section, p. 309-311 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Ordered to be Reported by the Yeas and Nays: 36 - 10.
March 25, 2026
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the intellectually bankrupt members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The Locally Led Development and Humanitarian Response Act (HR 6196) claims to promote a model of locally led development and humanitarian response, expanding engagement with local actors and increasing the local partner base. How quaint. In reality, this bill is a desperate attempt to rebrand the same old failed foreign aid policies with a trendy new label.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill proposes a slew of changes, including increasing direct funding to local entities, promoting local leadership, and simplifying access to US foreign assistance resources. Oh, please, do tell me more about how you plan to achieve this without actually addressing the underlying issues of corruption, inefficiency, and bureaucratic red tape. It's like trying to treat a patient with a Band-Aid when they need open-heart surgery.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects are involved: local partners, foreign governments, NGOs, and the US foreign assistance agency. All of these parties will be affected by this bill, but let's be real, they're all just pawns in a game of bureaucratic musical chairs. The real beneficiaries will be the contractors, consultants, and lobbyists who will feast on the carcass of taxpayer dollars.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill has all the potential to achieve what every other well-intentioned but poorly executed foreign aid initiative has: nothing. It will likely result in more waste, corruption, and inefficiency, with a side of feel-good rhetoric and empty promises. The only thing that might change is the branding on the aid packages, from "Country Ownership" to "Locally Led Development." Meanwhile, the underlying disease of bureaucratic incompetence and corruption will continue to metastasize.
In conclusion, HR 6196 is a textbook example of legislative placebo effect – it looks good on paper, but it's just a sugar pill designed to make everyone feel better without actually addressing the real problems. The diagnosis is clear: a bad case of " Politician-itis," characterized by symptoms of self-serving grandstanding, bureaucratic ineptitude, and a complete disregard for the well-being of the people they claim to serve. Prognosis: more of the same old nonsense, with a healthy dose of cynicism and contempt for the intelligence of the American people.
Rep. Jacobs, Sara [D-CA-51]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
This bill has 3 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
ID: K000397
Top Contributors
10
ID: L000599
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ID: S000344
Top Contributors
10
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 74 nodes and 37 connections (72 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $113,000
Showing top 25 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 1 harmed.
Section 7(c) limits local competition authority to awards not exceeding $25,000,000 and 10 percent of the amounts appropriated to the relevant foreign assistance agency each fiscal year, potentially reducing opportunities for private equity firms.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
AI Analysis:
"HR 6196 strongly aligns with Project 2025's objective to shift USAID's portfolio toward local organizations by increasing direct funding to local entities, promoting local leadership in program design and implementation, and building long-term self-reliance—core tenets of the localization model advocated in the policy."
— 277 — Agency for International Development commensurate improvements that have had lasting impact. The next Administra- tion should extend that localization model to all global health and humanitarian assistance in view of how local African entities have strengthened their capacity for direct management of U.S. programs. Correspondingly, USAID should aggressively ramp down its partnerships with wasteful, costly, and politicized U.N. agencies, international NGOs, and Beltway contractors. All new programs in Africa should build on existing local initiatives that enjoy the support of the African people. Latin America. U.S. foreign assistance throughout the Western Hemisphere is designed to respond to national security threats that emanate from the region, such as illicit drug and arms trafficking; illegal immigration flows; terrorism; pandemics; and strategic threats from China, Russia, and Iran. Over the past decade, the United States has provided billions of dollars in security, humani- tarian, and development assistance in Central America and the Andes, including $1 billion in food and non-food emergency aid to millions of Venezuelan refu- gees who have fled the Maduro dictatorship. USAID is always first to respond to natural disasters in Central America and the Caribbean and employs a network of dedicated experts in the region to deliver this assistance. During the COVID pandemic, the United States provided millions of doses of vaccines and other emergency health support. Yet years of foreign aid have failed to bring peace, prosperity, and stability to the hemisphere. Poverty, joblessness, and social unrest have led to leftist electoral victories from Mexico to Chile. These regimes are hostile to American interests and private enterprise, breed corruption, implement radical policies that will further impoverish their people and threaten their democracies, and are more open to striking partnerships with Communist China. Left-wing authoritarian kleptocra- cies in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela deny their people basic freedoms, violently and ruthlessly suppress any dissent, repress communities of faith, and generate such misery that hundreds of thousands of their citizens have attempted to cross our southern border over the past two years. No recent Administration has made any progress in reducing the chaos and desperation in Haiti. Conversely, Latin America is a major global source of energy and food, which generates substantial income that can finance internal social and economic devel- opment. The nations of the hemisphere share a natural and massive geographic trade and investment advantage through their proximity to the United States, supplemented by free-trade agreements. The United States remains the favored destination for higher education and business opportunities for Latin Americans. Successful diasporas in the United States serve as powerful economic, cultural, and political bridges to every country in the region. The Trump Administration focused on promoting trade and investment, especially in infrastructure, through an interagency effort called América Crece (America Grows), by which USAID played a key role in providing technical — 278 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise assistance to create a more enabling environment to attract private investment. The Biden Administration canceled the program. The next conservative Administration should reassess all programs of U.S. for- eign aid to Latin America and terminate those that have failed to achieve results after years of effort. Instead, USAID should: l Focus its resources on strengthening the fundamentals of free markets, such as clear property rights and a functioning judiciary, and on promoting labor and pension reforms, lower taxes, and deregulation in order to increase trade and investment within the region and with the United States as the genuine path to economic and political stability. l Challenge the socialist ideas that have captured too many of the region’s governments and their nations’ youth. l Fund partnerships with the private sector and support civil-society groups, including university centers and think tanks that advocate for pro–free market and democratic ideas. Finally, Latin America is the perfect proving ground for reducing USAID’s reli- ance on large U.S.-based implementers, and the agency should commit to shifting all of its portfolio in the region to local organizations by 2030. PERSONNEL The Trump Administration agenda for USAID was undercut from the outset both by recalcitrant career personnel and by inexperienced political personnel. The next conservative Administration should implement personnel policies from the beginning so that the agency can be effectively managed according to high stan- dards. The rapid deployment of reforms will require key experienced personnel installed quickly at USAID’s headquarters and missions. Delay will only impede progress. In general, areas of focus should be appointing effective lawyers in key positions, reforming career hiring/firing mechanisms, and getting a grip on the grantmaking process. The Administration should staff the Office of the General Counsel with at least four politically appointed attorneys (besides the General Counsel). The General Counsel should have two political deputies, one of whom should cover Human Capital and Talent Management (HCTM) and the other the Office of Acquisition and Assistance (OAA). The Administration should name a political appointee with long experience in federal personnel systems as USAID’s Chief Human Capital Officer and Director of HCTM. This appointee would help to scope and shepherd position descriptions,
AI Analysis:
"Both HR 6196 and the Project 2025 HUD section emphasize shifting authority and resources to local actors to improve efficiency and accountability, though one addresses international development assistance while the other focuses on domestic housing policy reform."
— 512 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise housing model. At best, any new public investments will provide maintenance funds to bring substandard housing units and properties up to livability standards but will still fail to address larger aims of upward mobility and dynamism for local housing markets where land can be sold by PHAs and put to greater economic use, thereby benefiting entire local economies through greater private investment, productivity and employment opportunities, and increased tax revenue. Any long-term view of HUD’s future must include maintaining the strong financial operations and reliable reporting that are needed to run a $50 billion- per-year agency. Before the Trump Administration, HUD effectively did not have a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for eight years, and HUD’s financial infrastructure inevitably deteriorated. The department’s auditors were unable to conclude that HUD’s internal operations were producing accurate financial reporting. The audi- tors had identified multiple material weaknesses and significant deficiencies in the department’s internal financial controls. Overall, the deterioration of HUD’s financial infrastructure led to a lack of accountability with respect to the use of taxpayer funds as well as to pervasive difficulties with operations and program implementation. However, by hiring a new CFO from the private sector with a proven track record of visionary leadership, HUD was able to implement an agencywide governance structure that improved its financial processes and internal controls and harnessed the power of innovative new technologies to bring a modernized business mindset to the agency’s financial infrastructure. By the end of the Trump Administration, for the first time in nearly a decade, HUD was able to address all of its previously identified material weaknesses, and the auditors were able to issue their first clean audit report on HUD’s financial statements and internal controls. Finally, and more fundamentally, Congress could consider a wholesale overhaul of HUD that contemplates devolving many HUD functions to states and localities with any remaining federal functions consolidated to other federal agencies (for example, by transferring loan guarantee programs to SBA; moving Indian housing programs to the Department of the Interior; moving rental assistance, mortgage insurance programs, and GNMA to a redesignated Housing and Home Finance Agency). Generally, this reform path could consolidate some programs, elimi- nate others that have failed to produce meaningful long-run results, and narrow the scope of many programs so that they are closer to what they were when they were created. — 513 — Department of Housing and Urban Development ENDNOTES 1. At a 1998 Senate hearing, then-HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo acknowledged that the department “faced a competence gap” and had “the dubious distinction of being the only federal agency designated as ‘high risk’ by the General Accounting [now Government Accountability] Office (GAO),” even referencing the Section 8 rental subsidy as “on the brink of becoming the next savings and loan scandal,” and explained how the department was stepping up enforcement efforts “focused on closing the competence gap by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.” See “Testimony of Secretary Andrew Cuomo before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies,” March 25, 1998, https://archives.hud.gov/ testimony/1998/tst32598.cfm (accessed March 4, 2023). 2. H.R. 7984, Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, Public Law No. 89-117, 89th Congress, August 10, 1965, https://www.congress.gov/89/statute/STATUTE-79/STATUTE-79-Pg451.pdf (accessed March 4, 2023). 3. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2023 Budget in Brief, pp. 2 and 7, https://www.hud.gov/ sites/dfiles/CFO/documents/2023_BudgetInBriefFINAL.pdf (accessed March 4, 2023). 4. For example, the Special Applications Center (SAC) located in Chicago, Illinois, was established in 1998 as a division of the Office of Public and Indian Housing to accept, review, and approve all nonfunded, noncompetitive applications and plans for demolition, disposition, and conversion of land subject to an annual contributions contract (ACC) in public housing. 5. The Secretary has delegated full authority for the Administration and enforcement of the Fair Housing Act to the Assistant Secretary of the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity but also has delegated limited assignment and decision-making authority to the General Counsel. 6. Effectively the HUD Chief Operating Officer and appointed by the President with Senate advice and consent. 7. The Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) is an independent adjudicatory office within the Office of the Secretary. Led by a Director who is appointed by the Secretary, it supervises the Administrative Judges of the Office of Appeals, the administrative law judges of the Office of Administrative Law Judges, and the OHA support staff. The HUD Secretary appoints administrative judges and administrative law judges in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. Chapter 5, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/part-I/ chapter-5 (accessed March 4, 2023). 8. HUD currently has a Departmental Equity Assessment Working Group, supported with five FTEs funded by the OSDBU, “as part of the President’s Executive Order 13985, Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” See U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2023 Congressional Justifications, p. 35-15, https://www.hud.gov/sites/ dfiles/CFO/documents/2023HUDCongressionalJustificationsFINALelectronicversion.pdf (accessed March 4, 2023), and President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Executive Order 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” January 20, 2021, in Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 14 (January 25, 2021), pp. 7009–7013, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-01-25/pdf/2021- 01753.pdf (accessed March 4, 2023). 9. Interestingly, “[t]he 2023 President’s Budget requests $748 thousand for CFBNP, which is $436 thousand less than the 2022 Annualized CR level. The Budget reflects total funding (carryover and new authority) of $1.2 million, $448 thousand less than 2022 total funding.” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2023 Congressional Justifications, p. 35-16. 10. See H.R. 558, Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, Public Law No. 100-77, 100th Congress, July 22, 1987, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-101/pdf/STATUTE-101-Pg482.pdf (accessed March 5, 2023). Later renamed the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act. 11. Established under the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5301 et seq., https:// www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42 (accessed March 4, 2023). 12. S. 566, Cranston–Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act, Public Law No. 101-625, 101st Congress, November 28, 1990, Title II, https://www.congress.gov/101/statute/STATUTE-104/STATUTE-104-Pg4079.pdf (accessed March 5, 2023). 13. S. 1, Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970, Public Law No. 91-646, 91st Congress, January 2, 1971, https://www.congress.gov/91/statute/STATUTE-84/STATUTE-84-Pg1894.pdf (accessed March 4, 2023). “The URA establishes the minimum Federal requirements for the acquisition of real property for Federally-funded programs and projects, and for the relocation of persons who must move from
AI Analysis:
"Both texts emphasize local leadership and community empowerment, but HR 6196 focuses on international development and humanitarian assistance while the Project 2025 HUD section addresses domestic homelessness policy and opposes Housing First. The thematic overlap is limited to general principles of local control rather than substantive policy alignment."
— 516 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 37. HUD should implement administrative changes in regulation and guidance and seek statutory authority to end all Housing First directives of Continuum of Care (CoC) grantees and contract homelessness providers in addition to establishing restrictions on local Housing First policies where HUD grant funds are used. 38. The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) was established in the 1990s, and numerous Administrations have devoted enormous resources to the Housing First model, experimenting with various ways to provide federally financed rapid rehousing and permanent housing opportunities. Housing First is a far-left idea premised on the belief that homelessness is primarily circumstantial rather than behavioral. The Housing First answer to homelessness is to give someone a house instead of attempting to understand the underlying causes of homelessness. Federal intervention centered on Housing First has failed to acknowledge that resolving the issue of homelessness is often a matter of resolving mental health and substance abuse challenges. Instead of the permanent supportive housing proffered by Housing First, a conservative Administration should shift to transitional housing with a focus on addressing the underlying issues that cause homelessness in the first place. 39. The Senate Low-Income First-Time Homebuyers (LIFT) Act would address this policy goal. See S. 2797, Low-Income First-Time Homebuyers Act of 2021 (LIFT Homebuyers Act of 2021), 117th Congress, introduced September 22, 2021, https://www.congress.gov/117/bills/s2797/BILLS-117s2797is.pdf (accessed March 5, 2023). 40. FHA did not facilitate the widespread use of 30-year mortgages until the 1950s when, interacting with Federal Reserve policies, federal agencies began broader adoption of the mortgages, which, despite lowering the monthly repayment terms, result in slow equity accumulation and wealth-building opportunities. 41. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 fundamentally revised the scope of federal regulation in the nation’s housing finance system, placing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the purview of a newly established Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and establishing a Housing Trust Fund (HTF) that is administered in the HUD Office of Community Planning and Development. See H.R. 3221, Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Public Law No. 110-289, 110th Congress, July 30, 2008, https://www.congress. gov/110/plaws/publ289/PLAW-110publ289.pdf (accessed March 5, 2023). 42. Guiding questions: What reforms should be proposed that could be accomplished within five years? What reforms can be done administratively, and what reforms would need legislative authorization? Are there functions that HUD administers that could be achieved more effectively at another department or agency? What big-picture reforms should be proposed that might take more than five years that would reorganize HUD and its programs to meet the objectives in the vision or mission? What would occur in the absence of these public finance subsidies? How much crowd-out do these subsidies create in the market? Would America be a seriously underhoused nation without these subsidies? Who are the policies intended to benefit? What organizational changes must be made? 43. The Faircloth Amendment (Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998) amended the Housing Act of 1937 to maintain public housing units at 1999 levels, preventing housing authorities from maintaining more public housing than they did then. H.R. 4194, Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 1999, Public Law No. 105-276, 105th Congress, October 21, 1998, Title V, https://www.congress.gov/105/plaws/publ276/PLAW-105publ276.pdf (accessed March 5, 2023). In recent years, the statutory restriction on new construction of public housing units has been circumvented through some narrow uses of preservation programs such as the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, initially authorized in 2012 and reauthorized several times since under higher program unit conversion caps. Congress also provided paths for renewal and continuation of a portion of existing public housing; project/site-based housing stock (refinancing with long-term HAP contract commitments); and Section 8 units through the Multifamily Assisted Housing Reform and Affordability Act of 1997 (MAHRA). H.R. 2158, Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 1998, Public Law No. 105-65, 105th Congress, October 27, 1997, Title V, https://www.congress.gov/105/plaws/publ65/PLAW-105publ65.pdf (accessed March 5, 2023). 44. As the evolution of HUD rental assistance transitions away from the public housing model toward housing choice vouchers, there should be adequate landlord participation to ensure that the supply of housing units for rent in these programs meets the demand for rent among eligible tenants. This issue has been addressed in various ways, including by a task force instituted at the department during the Trump Administration, but could likely remain a challenge in the administration of the program. — 517 — 16 DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR William Perry Pendley The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) oversees, manages, and protects the nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage; provides scientific and other information about those resources; and honors the nation’s trust responsibilities or special commitments to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and affiliated island communities. AGENCY OVERVIEW DOI’s purview encompasses more than 500 million acres of federal lands, including national parks and national wildlife refuges; 700 million acres of sub- surface minerals; 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS); 23 percent of the nation’s energy; water in 17 western states; and trust responsibilities for 566 Indian tribes and Alaska Natives. DOI’s 2024 budget request totals $18.9 billion, an increase of $2 billion, or 12 percent, more than the 2023 enacted level. The budget also provides an estimated $12.6 billion in permanent funding in 2024. In 2024, DOI will generate receipts of $19.6 billion. A “Home Department” had been considered in 1789 and urged by Presidents over the decades until DOI’s creation in 1849. The variety of its early responsibil- ities—the Indian Bureau, the General Land Office, the Bureau of Pensions, and the Patent Office, among others—earned it various nicknames, including “Great Miscellany,” “hydra-headed monster,” and “Mother of Departments.”1 Its mission became more focused on natural resources with the rise of the conservation move- ment in the early 20th century; however, it kept its historic (since the days of the Founding Fathers) role as overseer of vast working landscapes involving grazing,
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.