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:
Legislative History
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:
For bills and resolutions not available online:
- 98th-109th Congresses (1983-2006): The Government
Documents and Information Center, on microfiche.
- 73rd Congress (1933)-present: Yale Law Library,
on microfiche
- 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.
Some hearings from the 104th Congress (1995) to present
are available in full text online from GPO Access. See also the list of
Congressional
Hearings on the Web (created by the University of
Michigan Documents Center).
Often, only selected testimony is available online,
not the entire transcript of the hearing. To identify
the hearings on a particular bill, use LexisNexis
Congressional. If testimony is available, it will
be linked from the record in LexisNexis Congressional.
Full text of the hearings is available in either hard
copy or microform at the Government Documents and Information
Center. When you find the hearing you want, note its
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 are online from LexisNexis
Congressional (101st Congress, 2nd session [1990]-present;
limited coverage for 1990) and GPO Access (104th
Congress [1995]-present).
Reports from earlier years are available at the Government
Documents and Information Center. To find a report number
use any of the following sources:
- LexisNexis
Congressional (1st Congress [1789]-present)
- Congressional
Record Index (98th Congress [1983]-present) online.
For earlier years, use Index to the Congressional
Record: History of Bills and Resolutions in print
at the Government Documents and Information Center,
43rd Congress [1873]-present.
- Calendars
of the House of Representatives and History of Legislation.
Available online for 104th Congress (1995)-present;
in print and microfiche at the Government Documents
and Information Center, 88th Congress (1963)-present.
See the "History of Bills and Resolutions"
section, which covers both House and Senate bills.
- House Journal (History of Bills):
- GPO
Access: 102nd Congress (1991)-present
- Library
of Congress: A Century of Lawmaking 1st Congress-44th
Congress, 1st session (1789-1875)
- 44th Congress, 2nd session (1876)-101st Congress
(1990), in print and microform at the Government
Documents and Information Center (call number:
XJH).
- Senate Journal:
- Library
of Congress: A Century of Lawmaking 1st Congress-44th
Congress, 1st session (1789-1875)
- 44th Congress, 2nd session (1876)-recent [there
is a time lag in receiving it], in print and microform
at the Government Documents and Information Center
(call number: XJS).
Floor Debates
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 Government Documents and Information
Center. 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 statments 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. Code
- Statutes at Large, 1789-present
- Public laws, 1988-present
(What are these? See this
handy chart explaining the differences among these
three versions of "the law.")
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