[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 6196 Introduced in House (IH)]
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119th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 6196
To authorize and encourage the United States to pursue a model of
locally led development and humanitarian response and expand engagement
with local actors and increase its local partner base.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
November 20, 2025
Ms. Jacobs (for herself and Mrs. Kim) introduced the following bill;
which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To authorize and encourage the United States to pursue a model of
locally led development and humanitarian response and expand engagement
with local actors and increase its local partner base.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Locally Led Development and
Humanitarian Response Act''.
SEC. 2. PURPOSE.
The purpose of this Act is to encourage the United States to pursue
a model of locally led development and humanitarian response and expand
engagement and partnership with local actors.
SEC. 3. SENSE OF CONGRESS.
It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) locally led development and humanitarian response is
linked to more efficient and sustainable development and
humanitarian outcomes, and is vital to building long-term self-
reliance;
(2) over multiple Administrations, the United States
Government has sought to achieve greater development outcomes
through stronger local partnerships, including through
``Country Ownership'', ``The Journey to Self-Reliance'', and
``Locally Led Development'';
(3) the relevant foreign assistance agency should increase
the proportion of direct funding to local entities, including
by increasing the amount of development and humanitarian
assistance to such entities;
(4) the relevant foreign assistance agency should ensure
its programming enables local communities to exercise
leadership over priorities, project design, implementation, and
measuring and evaluating results of such programs;
(5) the relevant foreign assistance agency should ensure
most awards, requests for proposals, and requests for
applications outline expectations for implementers to elevate
local leadership and hold implementers to account for elevating
local leadership;
(6) working with local partners requires more time,
staffing, and flexibility of resources than traditional
partners, including extended availability of funds and
additional staff resources; and
(7) increased flexibility is critical to respond to local
priorities and leverage local capacities, including with
respect to staffing, availability of funds, program design, and
acquisition and assistance processes, among other areas.
SEC. 4. WORKING WITH LOCAL PARTNERS.
(a) In General.--To the extent feasible and appropriate, the head
of the relevant foreign assistance agency should localize the
development and humanitarian assistance partner base by considering--
(1) supporting and funding existing effective local
projects and initiatives;
(2) simplifying and increasing access to United States
foreign assistance resources for local partners in humanitarian
and development sectors, including local partners who have
relations, agency, or power structures in place that have
produced, or can produce, strong trust, accountability, and
legitimacy in the communities or networks such partners work
in;
(3) setting realistic goals and timelines for sunsetting
assistance and adhering to existing agreement totals and
timelines to incentivize self-reliance and encourage exit plans
with appropriate notice;
(4) exploring offering matching grants and in-kind
contributions to ensure that United States Government
investments in local partners are helping generate new
resources of their own from other donors;
(5) exploring government-to-government partnerships with
adequate guardrails and oversight, in consultation with local
civil society, with select countries where feasible and
practical to enhance foreign governments' ability to deliver
good governance, service delivery, and public goods that
benefit local communities;
(6) exploring other types of funding modalities and types
of partnerships with local and national actors, including
support for pooled funding mechanisms and unsolicited projects;
(7) diversifying award types to streamline performance
requirements and working with the Office of Management and
Budget to address threshold constraints that pose a barrier to
effectively supporting local partners;
(8) ensuring staff of the relevant foreign assistance
agency is able and encouraged to conduct regular consultation
with local partners in local languages of the host countries
relating to policies and programs, including making available
solicitations for acquisitions and assistance and accepting
submissions in local languages, video format, or verbal
presentations, including by--
(A) investing in translation services;
(B) hosting workshop-based engagements; and
(C) advertising solicitations in local trade
publications, local media including newspapers and
radio, local community centers, and local online
forums;
(9) allowing and promoting multi-year, flexible, tiered and
milestone-based funding for new programs and to bring
successful programs to scale;
(10) utilizing ``other transaction authority'' through
innovation incentive awards for local and national actors;
(11) supporting consistent and unimpeded access to full
cost recovery for local partners implementing United States
foreign assistance activities;
(12) undertaking outreach campaigns and engaging with local
actors, formally and informally, to raise awareness about
opportunities, as well as how to apply for and manage awards in
compliance with applicable Federal regulations and the relevant
foreign assistance agency policies, and ensuring such
engagement is accessible to all entities, including
unregistered and informal organizations;
(13) strengthening oversight of capacity strengthening
components of awards to ensure United States and international
awardees are making good-faith efforts to strengthen local
organizations' capacities, including independent and external
evaluations to evaluate the mentorship process and regular
feedback loops;
(14) ensuring there are sufficient acquisition and
assistance personnel;
(15) soliciting feedback on and updating, as necessary,
performance evaluation criteria to create greater workforce
incentives for the relevant foreign assistance agency personnel
to champion locally led development;
(16) addressing internal delays and recipient organization
issues that result in the required extension of provisional
Negotiated Indirect Cost Rates (NICRAs);
(17) conducting seminars and providing documentation in
local languages on NICRA, the de minimis indirect cost rate,
and other options for indirect cost recovery relevant to the
award type; and
(18) ensuring that acquisition and assistance personnel
communicate to awardees who do not submit for a NICRA that they
are eligible for the de minimis indirect cost rate.
SEC. 5. INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF ACTIONS DESCRIBED IN SECTION 4.
Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this
Act, the head of the relevant foreign assistance agency shall initiate
policy actions, including rulemaking if necessary, to institutionalize
the actions described in section 4 to the extent appropriate and
feasible within all relevant foreign assistance agency internal rules
and regulations, including the Foreign Affairs Manual, the Foreign
Affairs Handbook, and the Department of State Acquisition Regulation,
as well as other relevant strategies and policies.
SEC. 6. AUTHORITY TO ACCEPT APPLICATIONS, PROPOSALS, AND CONTRACTING
AGREEMENTS IN LOCAL LANGUAGES AND LOCAL LANGUAGE SUPPORT.
(a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the
relevant foreign assistance agency is authorized to accept applications
or proposals in languages other than English if such acceptance eases
the burden of a local actor working with such agency and such agency is
able to effectively evaluate such applications or proposals.
(b) Local Language Support.--
(1) In general.--The head of the relevant foreign
assistance agency shall conduct an assessment of options to
enable such agency to utilize local languages to support local
partners with award solicitations, proposals and applications,
evaluations, management, close out, and other types of
partnerships, including advising local partners on applicable
United States regulations and the relevant foreign assistance
agency policies and local country rules and regulations common
in such activities.
(2) Report.--Not later than 1 year after the date of the
enactment of this Act, the head of the relevant foreign
assistance agency shall submit to Congress a report on the
assessment described in this subsection.
SEC. 7. MODIFICATIONS RELATING TO THE CODE OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS AND
OTHER REQUIREMENTS.
(a) Increase in the De Minimis Indirect Cost.--The head of the
relevant foreign assistance agency is authorized to--
(1) increase the de minimis indirect cost rate provided for
in section 200.414 of title 2, Code of Federal Regulations, or
any successor regulations, by 5 percentage points for local
partners receiving assistance awards from the agency; and
(2) establish a de minimis indirect cost rate at the same
rate provided for in paragraph (1) for acquisitions awarded
under title 48 of the Code of Federal Regulations to local
partners, and to increase this threshold further should
subsequent Office of Management and Budget regulations
recommend doing so.
(b) Exemption for Local Entities.--The head of the relevant foreign
assistance agency is authorized to exempt local partners, as needed,
from the reporting requirements of the Federal Funding Accountability
and Transparency Act of 2006 (31 U.S.C. 6106 note; Public Law 109-282)
to allow for a 180-day delay in obtaining a unique entity identifier
and registration in the System for Award Management. This delay shall
be no later than 30 days prior to the end of the award's period of
performance.
(c) Local Competition Authority.--Notwithstanding any other
provision of law, the head of the relevant foreign assistance agency
(or their designees) may award contracts and other acquisition
instruments in which competition is limited to local entities if doing
so would result in cost savings, strengthen local capacity, or enable
the agency to deliver programs or activities more sustainably or
quickly than if competition were not so limited. Such authority may not
be used to make acquisition awards in excess of $25,000,000 and shall
not exceed more than 10 percent of the amounts appropriated to the
relevant foreign assistance agency each fiscal year.
(d) Use of National or International Generally Accepted Accounting
Principles.--The head of the relevant foreign assistance agency, in
consultation with the Administrator of the General Services
Administration, the Secretary of Defense, and the Administrator of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is authorized to allow
foreign entities to use national or international generally accepted
accounting principles instead of United States Generally Accepted
Accounting Principles (GAAP) for contracts or grants awarded under the
chapter 7 of title 48, Code of Federal Regulations or chapter 7 of
title 2, Code of Federal Regulations.
SEC. 8. REVIEW OF LOCALLY-LED DEVELOPMENT IN PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS.
Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act,
the head of the relevant foreign assistance agency shall submit to the
appropriate congressional committees a review of public international
organizations' support for locally-led development, to include the
following elements:
(1) An assessment of how such organizations' approaches and
financing structures support locally-led development and
humanitarian response.
(2) An action plan for how the United States will use its
position in such organizations to encourage greater focus on
locally-led approaches.
SEC. 9. ANNUAL REPORT.
Not later than 1 year after the end of the first fiscal year
following the date of the enactment of this Act, and annually
thereafter, the head of the relevant foreign assistance agency shall
submit to the appropriate congressional committees and publish on the
agency's website a report on the agency's progress to advance locally
led development and humanitarian response, to include the following
elements:
(1) The amount of funding implemented directly and
indirectly by local partners, including to local and national
nonprofit organizations, local and national governments, and
local and national private sector entities, in the previous
fiscal year, including all development and humanitarian
assistance programs.
(2) An assessment of how the agency is enabling more local
leadership of foreign assistance programs, including recipients
of direct funding, subrecipients and subcontractors to an
international implementing partner, participants in an agency
program, or members of a community affected by such
programming.
(3) An assessment of how the relevant foreign assistance
agency is using new authorities granted in sections 6 and 7 and
an assessment of the impact of these authorities on such
agency's ability to work with local partners and communities.
(4) An assessment of how many organizations with a
Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate (NICRA) cognizant to the relevant
foreign assistance agency are utilizing provisional NICRAs for
over 48 months without a final NICRA and steps that such agency
can take to reduce the extension of provisional NICRAs beyond
12 months.
SEC. 10. REPORT ON CONTRACTING OFFICERS.
Not later than 180 days after the enactment of this Act, the head
of the relevant foreign assistance agency shall provide a report to the
appropriate congressional committees on the recruitment and retention
of contracting officers and grant officers at such agency and
recommendations to improve contracting/agreement officer recruitment
and retention.
SEC. 11. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) Appropriate congressional committees.--The term
``appropriate congressional committees'' means--
(A) the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the
Committee on Appropriations of the House of
Representatives; and
(B) the Committee on Foreign Relations and the
Committee on Appropriations of the Senate.
(2) Local partner.--The term ``local partner'' means--
(A) an individual who is a citizen or lawfully
admitted permanent resident of and have his or her
principal place of business in the country or region
receiving United States foreign assistance with which
the individual is or may become involved;
(B) a sole proprietorship that is owned by such an
individual that meets the requirements of subparagraph
(A); or
(C) an entity that--
(i) is incorporated or legally organized
under the laws of, and have its principal place
of business in, the country served by the
program with which the entity is involved or in
a country within the same region as the program
with which the entity is involved;
(ii) determines its own autonomous
leadership and governance structures, sets its
own strategic direction, priorities, and
programmatic focus, and makes independent
financial decisions separately from an
international organization;
(iii) if it has a Board of Directors, has
51 percent or more board directors who are
citizens or lawfully permanent residents of
such country or a country within the same
region; and
(iv) if it is a corporation, is 75 percent
beneficially owned at the time of application
by individuals who are citizens or lawfully
admitted permanent residents of that same
country.
(3) Relevant foreign assistance agency.--The term
``relevant foreign assistance agency'' means the department or
agency designated as primarily responsible for implementing the
United States foreign assistance under part I of the Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961.
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