U.S. GOVERNMENT INFORMATION:
LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION

• Overview of the Process
• Background Information
• Legislative History
• Introduction of Legislation
• Committee Hearings
• Committee Prints and CRS Reports
• Reported Bill
• Floor Debate (Congressional Record)
• Votes
• President
• Public Law

Overview of the Process
How Our Laws Are Made, issued by the House of Representatives, describes the steps in the consideration of a bill and the documents produced at each step of the legislative process.

The Senate provides a list of the Congressional Sessions with corresponding dates.

The Senate Manual and House Rules, published at the start of each Congress, set down the specific details of procedure, committee jurisdictions and the like.

Background Information
General and background information on legislative, presidential, and executive agency activities, as well as information on specific legislation, can be found in:

• CQ Researcher, Congress and the Nation, and CQ Weekly
  All three of these resources can be searched together through the same interface.
  • CQ Researcher provides analytical reports of high-profile public policy issues. The reports include references to legislative actions and materials, but are not comprehensive legislative histories. CQ Researcher reports include many citations to secondary sources, such as public opinion polls and think tank analyses. A CQ Researcher report on any given topic may not be updated recently enough to capture the latest legislative activity on the issue.Congress and the Nation chronicles and provides analysis of legislative activity for each Congress. It is a good source for finding a narrative of events on a particular issue in a specific Congress.
  • CQ Weekly is a newsmagazine covering Congressional activities, including status of bills, votes and amendments, floor and committee activity, and political context of legislation. It is especially useful for researching legislation that is either not described or not up-to-date in CQ Researcher and Congress and the Nation.
  National Journal - similar to CQ Weekly.
• "Political News/Hot Topics" section of LexisNexis Congressional.

For information on participants in the legislative process, see:

• Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774-present
• Politics in America and Washington Information Directory (CQ Library)
• Congress.org, a site maintained by a Washington, DC-based public affairs organization
• Project Vote Smart.

Researching legislation is considerably easier with an already-compiled and published legislative history. A legislative history traces the chronology of the legislation and provides citations to the various documents relevant to the bill. Try these sources for published legislative histories; note that not every enacted bill has a published legislative history.

Introduction of Legislation
When a bill or resolution is introduced in the House or Senate it is assigned a bill or resolution number, the text is printed, and it is assigned to a committee. Full text of bills and resolutions can be found online:

• Thomas (101st Congress [1989]-present)House and Senate (best for currently active legislation; may link to the bill text on Thomas)
• LexisNexis Congressional (101st Congress [1989]-present)
• GPO Access (103rd Congress [1993]-present)
• The American Memory Project at the Library of Congress, (House: 6th-42nd Congress [1799-1872], Senate: 16th-42nd Congress [1819-1872])

• 73rd Congress (1933)-present, on microfiche, in the Yale Law Library
• Pre-1933, on microfilm, may be borrowed from the Center for Research Libraries (search for Bills and Resolutions).

Committee Hearings
If there is sufficient interest and support in the legislation, congressional committee hearings may be conducted. Hearings contain the testimony of government officials and private individuals invited to appear before the committee to argue for or against passage of a bill. Hearings are used to find the range of views and interest groups associated with a bill. Most, but not all, hearings are printed. The full text of hearings may be available online from these sources:

• LexisNexis Congressional
  Look for "Hearings -- Digital Collection" in the search results list.
• GPO Access
  104th Congress (1995) to present

Hearings that are not available in full text online will be available in either print or microform at the Government Documents and Information Center.
To identify hearings, search LexisNexis Congressional. From the results list, note each hearing's Superintendent of Documents (SuDoc) call number (number beginning Y4) and its CIS number (needed in case the hearing is available on microform only).

Committee Prints and CRS Reports
To aid members of Congress in their consideration of a bill, committee staff may compile relevant background information called committee prints. Use LexisNexis Congressional to search for prints. The full text of committee prints are available in LexisNexis Congressional for 1977-2003. If the print you want is not available in full text, note its Superintendent of Documents (SuDoc) call number (number beginning Y4). The Government Documents and Information Center has a nearly complete collection of committee prints. A comprehensive listing of Senate hearings, prints, and publications, 1983 to the present, entitled U.S. Senate Bibliographies, is maintained by the North Carolina State University Libraries. Some of the committee prints are studies conducted by the Congressional Research Service. Selected Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, which offer in-depth analysis of public policy issues, are available from several sources.

Reported Bill
Reports from committees to the full House or Senate explain the purpose of the bill, review past Congressional actions on the subject, and set forth the reasons the bill should be enacted. They also specify how the bill changes existing law and the bill's expected effects on the federal budget and the national economy. Sometimes there are minority or supplemental reports presenting the views of committee members who differ with the majority. Reports are identified by Congress and report number. Reports, along with Congressional documents, eventually get compiled into the Serial Set. Reports are available online or in print.

Floor Debate (Congressional Record)
Speeches on the floor of the House and Senate are published in the Congressional Record, issued daily during sessions of Congress. Congressional Record is available online from HeinOnline, GPO Access, and LexisNexis Congressional (dates vary among these resources). Volumes not online are available in print at the Social Science Library. Note that there are two editions of Congressional Record: the daily edition and the bound (permanent) edition.

Votes
Not every vote in Congress is a "roll call" vote (in a roll call vote, each member's vote is recorded). Those that are can be found from a variety of sources.

President
Once a bill has been approved by both the House and the Senate, it is sent to the president for signature. If the president makes a statement when he signs or vetoes a bill, the text appears in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (online 1993-present; 1965-2000 [vols. 1-36] available in paper at the Government Documents and Information Center). Presidential signing statements from 1929-present are available online from the American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara). The message the president sends to Congress when he vetoes a bill is printed in Congressional Record, available online from GPO Access, 103rd Congress, 2nd session (1994)-present, and LexisNexis Congressional, 99th Congress (1985)-present. Earlier years are available in print at the Government Documents and Information Center.

Public Law
An Act signed by the president becomes a law. Laws are published initially as separate pamphlets called slip laws (available online 104th Congress [1995]-present) and at the end of each session are codified into the U.S. Code. LexisNexis Congressional is a good source for searching:

• current edition of the U.S. CodeStatutes at Large, 1789-present
• Public laws, 1988-present

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