# 119-hr-1951: Strengthening Rural Cooperatives and Communities Act

119-hr-1951, Strengthening Rural Cooperatives and Communities Act, is a 119th Congress bill sponsored by Rep. Riley, Josh [D-NY-19] (D-NY); status in_committee; PRIA reads it as touching household money (as of 2026-07-01).

- Canonical: https://policyrisk.com/legislation/119-hr-1951
- As of: 2026-07-01
- Plain-text twin of the page above; the HTML and this file carry the same facts.

## Facts
- Bill: 119-hr-1951
- Congress: 119
- Title: Strengthening Rural Cooperatives and Communities Act
- Status: in_committee
- Introduced: 2025-03-06
- Sponsor: Rep. Riley, Josh [D-NY-19] (D-NY)
- Cosponsors: 2
- Policy area: Agriculture and Food
- Touches household money: yes
- Last recorded action: 2026-07-01

## Summary

**Strengthens and expands Rural Cooperative Development Grants.** The bill clarifies what 'cooperative development' covers, ties grant scoring to equity and service commitments, requires recipients to serve socially vulnerable communities, and creates mandatory data analysis and annual interagency reporting. - Cooperative developers and new co-ops gain a clearer, broader definition that explicitly includes outreach, education, training, and technical assistance for startup, expansion, and ongoing sustainability. - Socially vulnerable, underserved, and distressed communities are explicitly prioritized because grant recipients must commit to providing technical assistance and other services to those communities. - Grant scoring and selection shift to favor applicants who meet the specified equity and service criteria, replace a prior subparagraph with the new service requirement, and remove a previous discretionary qualifier in one funding provision. - Transparency increases. The USDA must analyze program research and include those results in the interagency working group's annual report. The working group must report to Congress within 180 days of enactment and annually after that. The program tracking period is updated to 2025–2029.

## Cosponsors (2)

- Rep. Valadao, David G. [R-CA-22] (R-CA), 2025-03-06T00:00:00.000Z
- Rep. Goodlander, Maggie [D-NH-2] (D-NH), 2026-06-29T00:00:00.000Z

## Provisions PRIA read

- More help for rural co-ops: benefit, low. This bill would update Rural Cooperative Development Grants. It would define cooperative development to include outreach, education, training, and technical help for starting or growing co-ops. Applicants who meet priority service requirements would get the most scoring points. Grant recipients wou…

## Related bills

- 119-hr-3151: SHIPS for America Act of 2025
- 119-hr-6900: American Affordability Act of 2025
- 119-hr-4669: FEMA Act of 2025
- 119-hr-2725: Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act of 2025
- 119-hr-1229: United States-Israel Defense Partnership Act of 2025
- 119-hr-7973: Momnibus Act

## Sources
- [119-hr-1951 on Congress.gov](https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1951)

## Related
- [119-hr-3151: SHIPS for America Act of 2025](https://policyrisk.com/legislation/119-hr-3151)
- [119-hr-6900: American Affordability Act of 2025](https://policyrisk.com/legislation/119-hr-6900)
- [119-hr-4669: FEMA Act of 2025](https://policyrisk.com/legislation/119-hr-4669)
- [119-hr-2725: Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act of 2025](https://policyrisk.com/legislation/119-hr-2725)
- [119-hr-1229: United States-Israel Defense Partnership Act of 2025](https://policyrisk.com/legislation/119-hr-1229)
- [119-hr-7973: Momnibus Act](https://policyrisk.com/legislation/119-hr-7973)
- [All bills in Congress](https://policyrisk.com/legislation)

Source: PRIA, https://policyrisk.com/legislation/119-hr-1951 (as of 2026-07-01).