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History of Bills: About
The History of Bills lists legislative actions on bills
that are reported in the Congressional Record, which has been published
since 1874. In print, it is part of the Congressional Record Index, the
biweekly publication from the Joint Committee on Printing, but on GPO
Access it is a separate application.
GPO Access contains the History of Bills from 1983
to the present. Databases are cumulative from the beginning of each congressional
session. The current year’s database is updated daily, usually the
day after publication of the Congressional Record. Documents are available
as ASCII text files only.
A typical entry includes a bill number, title, summary, names of sponsors
and cosponsors, and a chronological list of actions on the bill. Each
action references a Congressional Record page number and the date when
the action was reported in the format "S5798 [9JN]" (page 5798
in the Senate section from the June 9 issue for that year).
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