Ensuring Accountability for Equity at USDA Act

3.0.0 2595 2025-12-05T09:20:26Z 2025-12-05T09:20:26Z Senate S S 2023-07-27 118 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2595 ssaf00 Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Senate Standing Referred To 2023-07-27T17:21:44Z Ensuring Accountability for Equity at USDA Act 118 5033 HR 2023-07-27 Referred to the House Committee on Agriculture. Identical bill CRS 2023-07-27 ssaf00 Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Senate Read twice and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. IntroReferral 2023-07-27 Introduced in Senate IntroReferral 10000 9 Library of Congress S001203 Sen. Smith, Tina [D-MN] Tina Smith D MN N L000570 Sen. Lujan, Ben Ray [D-NM] Ben Luján D NM R. 2023-07-27 True D000622 Sen. Duckworth, Tammy [D-IL] Tammy Duckworth D IL 2023-07-27 True Agriculture and Food Agriculture and Food 2023-08-24T18:15:25Z

00 2023-07-27 Introduced in Senate 2024-11-06T14:48:29Z Ensuring Accountability for Equity at USDA ActThis bill directs the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to improve the equitable availability and distribution of USDA services and program benefits through specific actions. Under the bill, USDA must   <ul><li>include within the performance evaluations for USDA senior leadership a review of an individual's direct efforts to improve equity in USDA programs and services;</li><li>issue uniform, department-wide guidance on collecting and responding to feedback and using that feedback to improve efforts to provide more equitable and consistent services; and</li><li>build frontline USDA customer service staff capacity to make eligible services or benefits available to customers.</li></ul>USDA must also notify Congress when it has identified an opportunity to improve equity in a particular program or service, but lacks the authority to make the necessary changes.Further, the bill requires additional information to be included in USDA's annual data report (which is meant to assess and hold USDA accountable for the nondiscriminatory participation of socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers in USDA programs). The report must also describe trends in the data and include a discussion of efforts to implement necessary improvements to equity.In addition, USDA must use collected data to examine and assess USDA programs and policies to identify and understand communities, organizations, groups, and individuals in need of USDA services or benefits.

Ensuring Accountability for Equity at USDA Act Display Title 45 Ensuring Accountability for Equity at USDA Act 2024-07-24T15:20:44Z Short Title(s) as Introduced 101 Ensuring Accountability for Equity at USDA Act 2024-05-24T13:37:15Z Introduced in Senate IS Official Title as Introduced 6 A bill to provide standing authority and accountability for the Secretary of Agriculture and senior leadership of the Department of Agriculture to improve the equitable availability and distribution of services and program benefits to the people of the United States, and for other purposes. 2023-08-19T02:14:04Z Introduced in Senate IS Introduced in Senate 2023-07-27T04:00:00Z https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-118s2595is/xml/BILLS-118s2595is.xml 2023-07-27 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress This file contains bill summaries and statuses for federal legislation. A bill summary describes the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation and details the effects the legislative text may have on current law and federal programs. Bill summaries are authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. As stated in Public Law 91-510 (2 USC 166 (d)(6)), one of the duties of CRS is "to prepare summaries and digests of bills and resolutions of a public general nature introduced in the Senate or House of Representatives". For more information, refer to the User Guide that accompanies this file.