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About the Congressional Record | Congressional Record Search Help | Navigating the Search Results for the Congressional Record | Find Relevant Sections of a Congressional Record Document
The Congressional Record search feature contains many search options.
Search by Word/Phrase
To submit an unrestricted search by word/phrase, type the word(s) or phrase into the search box (e.g. hazardous materials transportation).
Search Term Evaluation
Four sets of Congressional Record article results are given:
- Articles containing your exact phrase
- Articles containing all your search terms near each other in any order
- Articles containing all your search terms but not near each other
- Articles containing one or more of your search terms
Results do not overlap. Articles that contain the exact phrase are not included in the grouping of articles that contain all search terms. Higher recall precision comes from including additional search terms or a longer phrase. For example, the search balanced budget amendment will return a more focused set of results than balanced budget.
Search Limits
Limit by Member of Congress
Select a member of Congress to limit your search to Congressional Record documents containing that member's name, along with your search word/phrase. This is the search strategy you would use to find a debate or speech in which that member spoke certain words on the floor (or to find remarks she inserted into the record). Be aware, however, we cannot currently guarantee that the words or phrase found by such a search are attributable to that member -- only that those words appeared in the same article in the record in which that member's name also appeared.
Selecting a Member of Congress without entering words in the Word/Phrase search box will return Congressional Record documents, in that Congress, in which that Member's name appears -- either as a speaker or within another speaker’s words.
Limit By Date
Congressional Record searches can be narrowed by date. The date options include: all, first session, second session and a start and end date to specify a range.
This limit works in conjunction with the other search specification criteria. For example, you can leave the word/phrase search box empty, and search for all documents that appeared in the Congressional Record issues during a certain date range by selecting the start and end dates.
Limit By Section
By default, searches are run against all sections of the Congressional Record (House, Senate, Extensions of Remarks and the Daily Digest) for the selected Congress. However, searches can be limited to a certain section of the record.
This limit works in conjunction with the other search specification criteria. For instance, you can search on child health care for Congressman Smith in the Extensions of Remarks during January 1997.
Browse
Issues of the Congressional Record can be browsed by date. For each date, available sections (House, Senate, Extensions of Remarks or Daily Digest) are linked from the browse page.
In the Daily Digest, abstracted descriptions of legislative actions or
documents are followed by page citations, which are linked to the full
text for that Congressional Record page or full text bill.