Finding Bills and Related Legislative Information
1. How do I find bills
in THOMAS?
2. What
information do Bill Text and Bill Summary & Status provide me?
3. For what time periods does
THOMAS have legislative information?
4. How are bills identified?
Are there different versions of bills?
5. I'm interested in finding
voting records for members of Congress. Can THOMAS help?
Information about Congress
6. What is meant by the
numeric designations for Congress; for example, the "107th Congress?" What is a
"session" of Congress?
7. How can I communicate with
a Member of Congress (e.g., email addresses)?
8. Can you give me some
information about the current Congress?
9. Where can I find
descriptions of Congress and of the legislative process? Is there anything
appropriate for kids?
Technical Matters
10. How do I link a
particular part of THOMAS to my own web site?
11. How does THOMAS search
data? What sort of results can I expect to see from a search?
12. How often is THOMAS
updated?
13. How do I form citations
for THOMAS documents?
Topical Matters
14. I've heard there is a
bill that would impose a tax or long distance telephone charge on internet
access. Is it true?
15. What can you tell me
about the "Electoral College?"
16. How much are Members of
Congress paid and what are their retirement benefits?
1. How do I find bills in THOMAS?
The two links to look for on the THOMAS homepage are Bill Text and Bill Summary & Status. In both links, you need first to select which Congress to search. By default, you are linked to the current Congress; other Congresses are listed in a line near the top of the screen.
In Bill Text, you will find input boxes for:
Word/Phrase
Bill Number
If you know the bill number of the bill you are searching for, simply type it in the box and click on the search button. You will be linked directly to the text of the bill or if there is more than one version of the bill to a list of those versions, from which you can select the one you want.
If you want a list of bills related to a particular word or phrase, simply type that word or phrase in the Word/Phrase input box and click on the search button. Examples are given near the input box. A search engine searches the full text of all the bills in the given Congress for the given word/phrase. Since searching for related bills can be complex, click on the help link near the input box for a fuller treatment of word/phrase searching.
Note that you can limit your Word/Phrase search by one or more parameters, such as date received in THOMAS.
In Bill Summary & Status, you have several ways to search and to limit the search: Word/Phrase, Subject Term, Bill/Amendment Number, Stage in Legislative Process, Date of Introduction, Sponsor/Cosponsor, and Committee. We suggest that you go to the Help link for any of the choices you select to get a fuller understanding of how they work. It is important to remember that whereas in Bill Text the full text of legislation is searched, in Bill Summary only the summaries, prepared by the Congressional Research Service, are searched. You might want to go to the help link for Bill Summary & Status if you plan to use this page extensively.
2. What information do Bill Text and Bill Summary & Status provide me?
The search result in Bill Text gives you the full text of the bill.
In Bill Summary & Status, the result provides the following, in addition to full text:
Titles
Bill Status (links to Cong. Record pages, votes)
Committees
Related House Committee Documents
Amendments
Related Bill Details
Subjects (CRS Index Terms)
Cosponsors
CRS Summary
3. For what time periods does THOMAS have legislative information?
THOMAS has the Congressional Record and full text of legislation available from 1989 (101st Congress) to the present. In addition, THOMAS has summaries (not full text) of legislation are available back to 1973 (93rd Congress).
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875 provides a century's worth of congressional proceedings, statutes, and other information.
Legislative texts and documents prior to 1989 may be found in print form at Federal Depository Libraries. You can locate a library at this site by either state or area code.
Legislation is eventually codified in the U.S. Code, which may be found in several locations other than the one given here.
4. How are bills identified? Are there different versions of bills?
There are four types of legislation: bills, joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions, and simple resolutions. Any of these may be introduced in either chamber. They are identified as follows:
S123 Bill originating in the Senate SR123 Simple Resolution of the Senate SJRes123 Joint Resolution originating in the Senate SConRes123 Concurrent Resolution originating in the Senate HR123 Bill originating in the House HRes123 Simple Resolution of the House HJRes123 Joint Resolution originating in the House HConRes123 Concurrent Resolution originating in the House
A convenient definition of of these types may be found here.
Legislation may be changed or amended as it makes it way through the legislative process. You will sometimes see different versions of legislation in THOMAS, and these versions are identified by extensions to the bill number. For instance, HR2301.ih indicates the version of HR2301 as it was Introduced in the House. A list and definition of common extensions may be found at GPO Access .
5. I'm interested in finding voting records for members of Congress. Can THOMAS help?
There are several different ways of voting in the House and the Senate, one of which is the roll call vote, where the vote of each member is recorded. Not all bills, in fact, the minority of bills, receive a roll call vote.
The THOMAS homepage has a link to roll call votes back to 1990 in the House and 1989 in the Senate. Each link lists the roll call votes by sequential roll call number. This number is unrelated to the bill number. You can browse the list of roll call numbers to see if you see the bill you are interested in or you can go to Bill Status in Bill Summary & Status for the given bill and find the number (and often a direct link to the roll call vote).
THOMAS does not compile votes by Member of Congress. However, the Information Sources for Legislative Research page, found via the Congress & Legislative Agencies link on the lefthand side of the THOMAS homepage, has a useful link.
Additional information can be found in Compiling A Member Voting Record.
6. What is meant by the numeric designations for Congress; for example, the "107th Congress?" What is a "session" of Congress?
A "new" Congress convenes every two years, in the January following a November congressional election. It is new in the sense that the entire House of Representatives is elected every two years, even though only about one-third of the Senate is elected biennially. Congresses have been numbered consecutively since the first Congress, which began in 1789. The Congress that convened in January 2001, following the November 2000 election, is the 107th Congress.
Typically, each Congress meets in two annual "sessions," one in its first calendar year and another in the second calendar year. Thus, the first session of the 107th Congress occurs in 2001 and the second in 2002.
A bill is, technically, available for consideration throughout an entire Congress, unless it is defeated somewhere along the way. However, if a bill has not been acted on before the end of a Congress, it would have to be reintroduced in a succeeding Congress and begin the legislative process all over again.
7. How can I communicate with a Member of Congress (e.g., email addresses)?
8. Can you give me some information about the current Congress?
|
Senate
|
House of Representatives
|
Biographical Information About Members of Congress
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present
9. Where can I find descriptions of Congress and of the legislative process? Is there anything appropriate for kids?
You might want to start with a brief discussion of the legislative process from Indiana University's Center on Congress. Two lengthy discussions can be accessed from the THOMAS homepage under the heading Legislative Process (on the lefthand side of the page), one for the House and one for the Senate. (A somewhat simpler version of the legislative process in the House is also available.)
Kids in the House, sponsored by the House of Representative's Office of the Clerk, is an interactive center to help kids learn about the House and its role in lawmaking. Ben's Guide to the US Government provides information for children of all ages, as well as information for educators.
The Library of Congress' American Memory page, while not focused on the legislative process, also provides useful tools for educators.
10. How do I link a particular part of THOMAS to my own
web site?
You can create a permanent link to a bill, a list of bills, a committee report, or any other search result by using UNIX GET or POST protocols. Details about how to do this are found in the Direct Links to THOMAS Documents document. It is necessary to use these protocols because the URL addresses you see when you execute a search, are temporary addresses and will expire in about 30 minutes. Thus, there is no point in bookmarking a search result.
All the material on THOMAS is in the public domain, and no special permission is required to use it in any way.
11. How does THOMAS search data? What sort of results can I expect to see from a search?
Searching for items in THOMAS, whether legislation or the Congressional Record, is accomplished by a "relevancy-ranking" retrieval system called InQuery. In general, this type of system allows you to cast a wide net for items that may be of interest to you. When you do a word/phrase search, InQuery assigns a "weight" to each document that contains one or more of the words given to establish its relevancy to your search. It then presents the results of the search in a relevancy-ranked order, the first document being the most "relevant." You may find it necessary to vary the word/phrase of your search to change or improve the set of results you get. InQuery matches the actual words in your search with the actual words in the text. Thus, if you execute a search on "death penalty," you will not get documents that use the alternate term "capital punishment."
A complete explanation of how InQuery and relevancy-ranking work can be found in the About InQuery link, found in the About THOMAS link at the bottom of the THOMAS homepage.
12. How often is THOMAS updated?
Most of the documents in THOMAS originate in the House and Senate, which in turn transmit them to the Government Printing Office (GPO) for printing and further electronic processing. GPO then transmits them to the Library of Congress, which performs some further processing before making them available on THOMAS.
The Congressional Record is processed most rapidly. GPO processes a day's proceedings from the Senate and House overnight and usually transmits them to THOMAS by 9 a.m. (or earlier) the next day. The text is normally available on THOMAS about one hour later.
GPO usually needs at least one day to process bill text and digitize it for transmission. When the number of bills introduced is very large, typically, for instance, at the beginning of a session, or when the bill is very large, the processing may take longer. Once a bill is received by the Library of Congress, it takes only a few hours for it to become available online.
The time it takes for committee reports to become available is more various. A lot depends on just when a given committee releases the text of a report, and GPO make require several days to format the text properly. Once the Library receives the text, it becomes available within a few hours, though delays are possible if manual adjustments to the text are required.
Technical problems do occasionally occur which delay delivery to the Library. If a particular item is missing, it has not yet been processed by GPO and transmitted to THOMAS.
The currency of Bill Summary & Status information depends on its source. Official bill titles, sponsor and cosponsors, committee and status information, which is prepared by the House and Senate, is normally available the next day. Bill summaries, subject terms, short titles, Congressional Record page citations, additional status information, and other data provided by the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress may take a few days to several weeks to prepare depending on the volume of bills introduced.
The notation "Last Updated" followed by a particular date that appears near the bottom of some THOMAS web pages, does not reflect the currency of the data displayed. Rather, it indicates the last time that the particular web page itself was changed.
13. How do I form citations for THOMAS documents?
"Uncle Sam: Brief Guide to Citing Government Publications," from the University of Memphis Government Publications Department includes a section on citing online government publications. This document has links to several additional online electronic style guides.
Online style guides are also available in print, e.g., Li, X., & Crane, N. B. (1996). Electronic styles: A handbook for citing electronic information (Revised edition). Medford, NJ: Information Today. [ISBN: 1-57387-027-7]
14. I've heard there is a bill that would impose a tax or long distance telephone charge on Internet access. Is it true?
Recent reports of pending or actual Federal Legislation imposing a tax or long distance telephone charge on Internet access are "urban legends." No such legislation exists or has been introduced. Often these reports mention a bill "602P" or "602p". The numbering scheme for identifying a particular Federal bill, resolution or law never includes an ending "P" or "p".
The US Postal Service in a recent press release officially disclaims any validity to the rumor of legislation imposing an Internet e-mail fee. You can also read more about this legend at the Netlore Archive.
Regarding erroneous reports that the FCC is planning to impose per minute usage charges on customer access to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), see:
15. What can you tell me about the "Electoral College?"
Here is a convenient source of information about the Electoral College.
National Archives' Electoral College Website
You might also want to read Article II of the US Constitution and Amendment XII.
16. How much are Members of Congress paid and what are their retirement benefits?
The current salary for Members of Congress is $158,100. A small number of leadership positions, like Speaker of the House, receive a somewhat higher salary.
Members of Congress are covered by the same retirement plans as other federal employees, the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) for those hired, or elected, before 1984, and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) for those whose service began in 1984 or later. There are some differences in retirement age eligibility, years of service required, and contributions. Members elected after 1984 also participate in Social Security.
As of October 1, 1999 the average annual pension for former Members under the CSRS plan was $51,660; for those under the FERS plan, $46,572.
Further information about congressional salaries, pensions, and benefits may be found at TheCapitol.Net, C-Span's Capitol Questions, the Internet Public Library, and US Gov Info/Resources.