The Legislation collection includes bills and resolutions introduced in the U.S. Congress. 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 for all bills and resolutions introduced since 1973 (93rd Congress) are available on Congress.gov, as well as every bill and joint resolution that became law from 1951 (82nd Congress) to 1972 (92nd Congress). See Legislation from the 82nd to 92nd Congresses (1951-1972) below for more details. Congress.gov also includes some bills and joint resolutions from 1799 (6th Congress) to 1873 (42nd Congress). See Legislation from the 6th to 42nd Congresses (1799-1873) below for more details.
Full texts of bills are available from 1993 (103rd Congress), and are partially available for 1989-1992. Full text of laws are available 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.
Bills and resolutions in this time period display law text, some major actions, the tracker, an official title and some related bill information. Sponsors, cosponsors, summaries, amendments and committees are unavailable on Congress.gov.
Legislation from the 6th to 42nd Congresses (1799-1873)
Congress.gov includes 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). Legislation from the 12th Congress is unavailable on Congress.gov. The texts and some related metadata were migrated from A Century of Lawmaking.
Bills and resolutions in this time period display text, titles and select actions. Sponsors, cosponsors, summaries, amendments, committees and related bill information are not available. You can search for these bills and joint resolutions using keywords in the title or by searching using the bill number citation. Texts are not searchable.
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 Legislation
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.
The bill detail page displays a collapsible overview and eight tabs of information, including:
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 Legislation
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.
Note: Congress.gov is updated early each morning with bills introduced on the previous day. So if a bill is considered on the floor on the same day it is introduced, it will be listed in your On the Floor email that day but will not be available on Congress.gov until the next day. You can find the bill when it is available by searching on the bill number.
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.
