The Congressional Record the official record of the proceedings, debates, and activities of Congress and provides a substantially verbatim, written account of all discussion occurring on the floor of Congress. The Record also contains inserted materials, communications from the president and the executive branch agencies, memorials, petitions, and information and materials on legislation being introduced or passed. This is the microfiche version.
Daily Edition of the Congressional Record
The daily edition of the Record reports each day’s proceedings in Congress, is transmitted to the Government Printing Office (GPO) whose employees work through the night to transcribe, proof, format and print it by the following morning, thus providing what could be viewed as Congress' daily newspaper of its own activities the previous day. Currently, each daily edition is divided into four distinct and separately paginated parts: 1) one covering House of Representatives proceedings; 2) another covering Senate proceedings; 3) a third one entitled “Extension of Remarks,” and 4) the final one called the “Daily Digest” (not the same as the daily edition).
The “Extension of Remarks” section includes additional materials inserted into the public record by legislators after the fact. The “Daily Digest” is a brief overview of the key activities in both the House and Senate to serve as a quick reference summary. Every other week GPO produces a printed index to the content of the last two weeks’ daily editions.
Bound Annual Edition of the Congressional Record
After the end of each annual session of Congress, all of the daily editions of the Congressional Record for that Congress are compiled, re-paginated, and printed as a permanent, bound hardcover edition on high-quality paper stock. In addition to the clothbound cover and paper, the bound edition differs from the daily versions in that pagination is continuous and the text may be edited, revised, and rearranged, since Members of Congress have the authority to edit material after the text was originally published in the daily edition of the Congressional Record. Furthermore, the bound edition is made up of one volume per session of Congress and each volume is published in multiple parts. Because of the extensive re-formatting and editing involved, these editions typically take several years to reach publication.
