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Home > Help > About Legislation of the U.S. Congress

About Legislation of the U.S. Congress

The legislation collection includes records for every bill and resolution introduced in the U.S. Congress since 1973 (93rd Congress), every amendment introduced or submitted since 1981 (97th Congress), every bill and joint resolution that became public or private law from 1951 (82nd Congress) to 1972 (92nd Congress), and some bills and joint resolutions from 1799 (6th Congress) to 1873 (42nd Congress)1. Congress.gov provides various methods for accessing bill records and their associated documents, and for tracking a bill’s progress through the legislative process.

Scope of Coverage

Records are available on Congress.gov for all bills and resolutions introduced since 1973 (93rd Congress). Congress.gov also provides records for every bill and joint resolution that became public or private law from 1951 (82nd Congress) to 1972 (92nd Congress); please reference Legislation from the 82nd to 92nd Congresses (1951-1972) for more information about this collection. Records are also available for some bills and joint resolutions from 1799 (6th Congress) to 1873 (42nd Congress); please reference Legislation from the 6th to 42nd Congresses (1799-1873) for more information about this collection.

The full texts of bills are available from 1989 (101st Congress), and the full text of laws from 1951 (82nd Congress). Amendment records are available from 1981 (97th Congress), and full text of amendments is available from 1995 (104th Congress) to the present. The legislation collection is updated the morning after a session adjourns. See Coverage Dates for Congress.gov Collections for more information.

Legislation from the 82nd to 92nd Congresses (1951-1972)

Congress.gov provides records for bills and joint resolutions from 1951 (82nd Congress) to 1972 (92nd Congress) that became public or private law. The texts and related metadata are from the Statutes At Large collection on GPO’s govinfo.

While these records do have public or private law text, some major actions, the tracker, an official title, and some related bill information, they do not have sponsors, cosponsors, summaries, amendments, and committees. Projects are underway to add more metadata to these records.

Legislation from the 6th to 42nd Congresses (1799-1873)

Congress.gov provides records for select bills and joint resolutions from 1799 (6th Congress) to 1873 (42nd Congress). Specifically, House-originated bills are available from 1799 (6th Congress), Senate-originated bills are available from 1819 (16th Congress), and Senate-originated joint resolutions are available from 1823 (18th Congress). Congress.gov does not have records for legislation in the 12th Congress. The texts and some related metadata were migrated from A Century of Lawmaking.

While these records do have text, titles, and some actions, they do not have sponsors, cosponsors, summaries, amendments, committees, and related bill information. Texts for these records are not searchable, however, you may search for these bills and joint resolutions using keywords in the title or by searching using the bill number citation. Projects are underway to add more metadata to these records.

Legislation Numbering

A proposed piece of legislation takes one of four forms: bill, joint resolution, concurrent resolution, or simple resolution. Each newly submitted measure is given a prefix that indicates its form and chamber of origin, and a sequential number. Note that the House of Representatives did not begin to number bills sequentially until 1818 (15th Congress) and the Senate did not sequentially number bills until 1847 (30th Congress). To view all prefixes and see examples of acceptable citation formats, see Search by Number (Citation). To learn more about the forms of congressional action, see How Our Laws Are Made.

Searching Bill Records

You can search current Congress collection items, metadata and full-text documents from the search bar by entering your search terms in the search entry box and pressing Enter on your keyboard or clicking the magnifying glass icon. By typing into the search bar, you are given the option to search only in the legislation collection. Change your source selection to all Congresses to search for collection items, metadata and full-text documents. You can also search by a specific source, such as Legislation, Committee Materials, Congressional Record, Members, and Nominations.

Bills may be searched by number or keyword from the search bar, search form or Advanced search, which includes an advanced form optimized for legislation, a query builder for customized searches and a command line search for using SOLR query syntax. See Search Tools for details on using operators and fields in your search query. Legislation fields can be used in the search bar and the advanced search command line.

After your search results are returned, you can narrow the set by selecting additional criteria from the filters, also known as facets, on the left side of the results page. Filters available for legislation include Congress, Bill Type, Status of Legislation, Status of Amendment, Subject – Policy Area, Chamber of Origin, Committee, Sponsor, Cosponsor, Party (of Sponsor), and Legislation Date Range. See Refining Search Results with Filters for more information.

Viewing Bill Records

Watch a video on exploring a bill record.

The bill record detail page displays a collapsible overview and eight tabs of information.
The bill record page includes:

  • Legislation number and most recent title
  • Bill Overview
    • Visual Indicator – Bill, Resolution, or Law
    • Sponsor and introduction date
    • Committees
    • Committee Reports (if available)
    • Latest action with date
    • Link to All Actions tab view
    • Tracker showing legislative process status
  • Overview Sidebar
    • More on This Bill
      • Constitutional Authority Statements – House bills, 2012 – present
      • CBO Cost Estimates
    • Subjects
      • Policy Area term
      • Link to bill Legislative Subject terms
  • Tabs
    • All Bill Information – single-page presentation of all bill information except text
    • Summary – bill summaries authored by Legislative Analysts in the Congressional Research Service
    • Text – full text of all bill versions in TXT, PDF, and XML format (since 2007)
    • Actions – three options to view bill’s legislative history. Includes Congressional Record page references, links to votes and committee reports.
    • Titles – official title and other titles assigned to bill as it moves through the legislative process
    • Amendments – list of amendments submitted (Senate) or offered (House)
    • Cosponsors – list of bill’s cosponsors with links to member landing pages
    • Committees – history of committee-related activity with links to reports
    • Related bills – list of bills identified as related by the House, the Senate, or the Congressional Research Service

Browsing Bills and Resolutions

Browse lists provide another way to quickly access legislation filtered by specific criteria, including date of action, type of action, sponsor/cosponsor, committee, policy area, and bill type. Lists by Congress of public laws, private laws, vetoed bills, and newly added bill texts are also found in Browse.

Example URLs

Bill and Resolution Record

Related Resources

Learn about the Legislative Process

Footnotes

1 Bills and joint resolutions from 1799 (6th Congress) to 1873 (42nd Congress) were migrated from A Century of Lawmaking. The collection is not a full catalogue of all measures introduced and considered during those Congresses.