A few days after being sworn in, Cooper co-sponsored his first piece of legislation, a bill to provide federal aid for education. The bill passed the Senate, but not the House. Cooper was made chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Roads, and helped draft a bill authorizing $900 million in federal funds to states for highway construction. In 1948, he sponsored a bill to provide price support for burley tobacco at 90 percent of parity. He insisted on an amendment to the War Claims Act of 1948 that benefits to veterans injured as prisoners of war of the Germans and Japanese during World War II be paid immediately using enemy assets. He also co-sponsored legislation allowing hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Nazis to enter the United States legally. He opposed bans on industrywide collective bargaining for organized labor and on the establishment of closed shops. He voted against putting union welfare funds under government control, but helped to pass an amendment forbidding compulsory union membership for workers.