History of Bills

The History of Bills is part of the print Congressional Record Index, a biweekly publication from the Joint Committee on Printing, and is available as a separate application on GPO Access. The History of Bills lists legislative actions on bills that are reported in the Congressional Record. Entries include the bill number, title, summary, names of sponsors/cosponsors and a chronological list of actions on the bill, along with 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). Documents are available as ASCII text files.

The History of Bills application on GPO Access covers 1983 (Volume 129) to present, and provides cumulative coverage from the beginning of each congressional session. The current year is updated daily (usually the day after the Congressional Record is updated in print).

The Wirtz Labor Law Library has in its collection most of the Congressional Record Indexes beginning with Volume 1 (1873) in either print or microfilm. For additional information, see the previous tips Congressional Record and Congressional Record Index.