Improving Drought Monitoring Act
Latest action. Referred to the House Committee on Agriculture.
Improving Drought Monitoring Act
This bill requires increased interagency cooperation in drought monitoring and response activities and reauthorizes the Improvements to the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) program through FY2030.
Specifically, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) must establish an interagency working group to improve the availability of consistent, accurate, and reliable data for use in producing the USDM. (The USDM uses multiple indicators and indexes together with expert opinions and stakeholder information to estimate the intensity and effects of ongoing drought conditions across the United States. Using this data, the USDM map shows the location and intensity of drought across the United States.)
The interagency working group must submit a report to Congress and the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, and the Interior that contains recommendations for changes in policies, regulations, guidance documents, or existing law related to USDM data. USDA, in coordination with the Departments of Commerce and the Interior, must incorporate, to the extent practicable, the recommendations of the working group to improve USDM data.
The bill also reauthorizes through FY2030 the Improvements to the USDM program, which requires USDA to coordinate with the National Drought Mitigation Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to enhance the collection of data to improve the accuracy of the USDM.
Further, the Farm Service Agency and the Forest Service must enter into a memorandum of understanding to better align their drought response activities.
Written by analysts at the Congressional Research Service and published on Congress.gov, not by Civibrief. Summarized at the "Introduced in House" stage on September 26, 2025. It describes the bill, it is not the legal text.
Where is it in the process, and what happens next?
4 steps remain before this bill could become law.
The record's latest action, on September 26, 2025: Referred to the House Committee on Agriculture.
- Clearing the committees it was referred to, and being scheduled for a floor vote
- Passage by the House
- Passage by the Senate
- The President's signature. If the President vetoes it, two-thirds of both chambers must vote to override.
How likely is it to become law?
Civibrief does not forecast outcomes and this page has no opinion about this one. What the record supports is a base rate, which is a fact about the whole pile, not a prediction about this measure.
In the 118th Congress (2023-24), 274 of the 16,565 bills and joint resolutions introduced became law, about 1.7 percent. That count covers every measure at every stage, including the many that never left committee.
This one is not there yet: 4 steps are still outstanding, listed above.
Has anyone actually voted on it?
No. No roll call in this Congress cites this measure. That is the ordinary outcome: most measures never reach a recorded floor vote, and a committee ends most of them simply by not acting.
A vote is not the only thing that happens to a measure. Hearings, markups, and referrals are all recorded actions, and none of them is a vote of the full chamber.
Who is behind it?
David Taylor (R-OH) introduced it on September 26, 2025. No cosponsors are recorded.
Cosponsoring is a formal signature on the text. It is not a commitment to vote for the measure, it does not bind anyone's party, and a long list of cosponsors is a measure of attention rather than of prospects.
How long has it been in play?
It was introduced on September 26, 2025, 349 days ago. The most recent recorded action was 349 days ago, on September 26, 2025.
Measures do not carry over. Anything the 119th Congress has not finished by January 3, 2027 dies when the term ends, and has to be introduced again from the start in the next Congress.
Every answer above is assembled from this measure's own record on Congress.gov and from published counts of what Congress has passed before. Civibrief does not predict outcomes and takes no position on any measure.
Vote history
- HouseIn committee, no floor vote yet
- SenateAwaits House passage
- PresidentAwaits both chambers