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About Bill Summary & Status (BSS) | Browse
Options for BSS | BSS Search Help
Navigating
the BSS Search Results
About the Bill Summary & Status Feature
The Bill Summary & Status (BSS) feature allows you to find information
about specific legislation – including bill summary – latest major actions,
all actions, titles, sponsor, cosponsors, committees, related bill details
and amendments.
Legislation includes bills (public and private), amendments, simple resolutions,
concurrent resolutions and joint resolutions. BSS data begins with the
93rd Congress (1973-74), except for amendment data, which begins with
the 95th Congress (1977).
Browse Options for Bill Summary & Status Information
BSS information can be browsed by the following:
- Popular and Short Titles
- Public Laws
- Private Laws
- Vetoed Bills
- Sponsor Summaries
View the browse options on the BSS Simple Search page.
Browse Public and Private Laws by Bill Number
Public and private laws lists are displayed in bill number ranges and are listed in sequential law-number order. Select the bill number link in the resulting brief display to get the details for each bill enacted into law.
All legislation introduced in a Congress can be browsed by type of legislation (e.g., House Concurrent Resolutions, House Resolutions, House Joint Resolution, House Bills, etc.).
Browse Vetoed Bills
Bills that the president vetoed in any Congress can be viewed by choosing " Vetoed Bills" from the browse options. If the House and Senate have overridden the presidential veto, the bill will have been enacted into law over the president's veto, and the brief Bill Summary & Status record will reflect the Public Law number. Otherwise, any other actions on the bill after the veto will be noted. From the brief display of the vetoed bill, click on the bill number to see the full display for that bill. From the full display, you may select “Status: Floor Actions Only” to see the date the bill was vetoed and any subsequent actions in the House and Senate, including (for bills enacted over the presidential veto) the tallies for the votes in the House and the Senate that overrode the veto.
For information on the veto process, read "Veto Message" in How Our Laws Are Made, a detailed explanation of the legislative process from the office of the Parliamentarian of the House of Representatives.
Browse Sponsor Summaries
Extensive sponsor and cosponsor summaries are compiled from the 93rd Congress (1973) to the current Congress on the Sponsor Summaries page.
Bill Summary & Status Search Help
BSS information can be searched by one or more of the following:
SEARCH BY: |
WHAT IT FINDS: |
---|---|
Bill, Amendment or Public Law Number |
One specific piece of legislation |
Word/Phrase |
Legislation whose Summary & Status information contains the word(s) you provided; the actual text of the legislation is not searched |
Sponsor/Cosponsor |
Legislation sponsored or cosponsored by specific members of Congress |
Committee |
Legislation considered by specific committees |
Stage in Legislative Process |
Legislation that has reached a selected stage in the legislative process |
Date of Introduction |
Legislation introduced on a given date or within a given time period |
Standard Subject Term |
Legislation associated with a standard subject term; similar to the Word/Phrase search but based on a controlled vocabulary provided in the Legislative Indexing Vocabulary |
Note that the BSS feature does not search the actual text of the legislation.
Search By Bill, Amendment or Public Law Number
If you know the bill, amendment or public law number you are looking for, type it into the “Bill, Amendment or Public Law Number” input box. Each number begins with an alphabetic designation of the type of legislation and its chamber of origin and is completed by a sequence number. (Public law numbers also include the number of the Congress in which it became law). Examples are listed below:
Prefix: |
Definition: |
Examples: |
---|---|---|
HR |
Bill originating in the House of Representatives |
H.R. 120 |
S |
Bill originating in the Senate |
S 5 |
HRES |
Simple House Resolution |
H.Res. 221 |
SRES |
Simple Senate resolution |
S.Res. 12 |
HJRES |
Joint resolution originating in the House |
H.J.Res. 150 |
SJRES |
Joint resolution originating in the Senate |
S.J.Res. 212 |
HCONRES |
Concurrent resolution originating in the House |
H.Con.Res. 5 |
SCONRES |
Concurrent resolution originating in the Senate |
S.Con.Res. 45 |
PL |
Bill or joint resolution that has become public law |
pl 107-25 |
Further explanations of bill types may be found on the Senate Web site.
Search by Word/Phrase
It is not necessary to use quotation marks to indicate a phrase. For example, a user can enter national parks, not "national parks," to retrieve information about national parks.
A search on some words may not give you the results you expect. For instance, a search for death penalty would miss legislation that uses the term capital punishment instead. In forming your search, think of synonyms and other variations.
Additional Search Options in the BSS Advanced Search
If you are interested in finding a range of legislation based on certain criteria, look below the Bill Number input box for other ways to search. These searches can combine to narrow the results. For example, if you were interested in legislation sponsored by your representative that has become public law, you can select the representative's name in the Sponsor selection box and "public law" in the Stage in Legislative Process selection box. If you are interested in legislation sponsored by both senators from your state, you can select both names in the Sponsor selection box. Notes on each type of search are provided below:
Sponsor/Cosponsor
All members of the selected Congress are listed in the selection boxes. Multiple members may be selected by holding the CTRL key and clicking on names. If you choose multiple names, you will usually want to use the default Boolean operator OR, which means to search for legislation sponsored by any of the members selected. If you choose AND, you will get only legislation sponsored by all the members selected. You can also search for sponsors, cosponsors, or both. Every bill has only one sponsor, though other members may choose to sign on as cosponsors.
Committee
Search for legislation that has been referred to one or more committees
by using the committee select box. Committee names may change from one
Congress to another, though this is rare. The selection box is populated
with committees and sub-committees only when activity on a bill has occurred
in them.
Stage in Legislative Process
Search for legislation based on the stage in the legislative process it has reached. If you want a list of bills that have passed the Senate, simply select “Passed/Agreed to in Senate.” This selection box is populated with stages only as bills actually reach a given stage. For example, if no bills have been vetoed by the president, you will not find a selection for vetoed bills. In the early days of a new Congress, there will be relatively few stages listed as new legislation has only begun to work its way through the legislative process. To become law, a bill may pass through a number of stages in the legislative process (e.g., Introduction in the House or Senate, Reporting of the bill from committee, etc.).
Bills and resolutions in the (BSS) feature can be searched by the stage they have reached in the legislative process. For example, you may want to know all bills that have passed the House or the Senate all bills that have failed to pass the House or Senate, or all bills sent to conference. You can do this by selecting a stage in the legislative process from the designated scrolling box on the BSS search page.
Except for the presidential (executive) actions, the legislative actions in the "Stage in the Legislative Process" list are floor actions only -- that is, they describe legislative actions that occur from the time a bill is reported from committee or reaches the floor by other means. On average, only about 20 percent of bills introduced ever receive floor action, and only about 5 percent of bills introduced are ever enacted into law.
Multiple actions (stages in the legislative process) can be searched by selecting "AND" or "OR" from the search form. The default is "AND." Experienced searchers will recognize the "AND" and "OR" as Boolean operators.
For example, if you wish to find all bills that have passed BOTH the House AND the Senate, make sure the "AND" radio button is selected. Then, highlight the “Measure passed House” action and the “Measure passed Senate” action. If you want only bills that have passed EITHER the House OR the Senate, make sure the "OR" radio button is selected.
Date of Introduction
The date of introduction of a bill or resolution can be searched along with additional criteria (e.g., word/phrase, subject term, sponsor/cosponsor, committee).
Any date that is specified must be within the range of the two-year Congress that is selected. The Congress in which you are searching is indicated at the top of each BSS search page. The date must be entered in one of the following formats: mm/dd/yyyy or mm-dd-yyyy.
Examples of date searches:
1. Search for legislation introduced on a specific date, e.g.
January 6, 1999:
Select the "From" radio button and then enter 01/06/99 in the
first date box. You may enter 01/06/99 in the second date box also, but
it isn't necessary.
2. Search for bills introduced in a specific month, e.g., February
1999:
Select the "From" Radio button and then enter 02/01/99 in the
first date box and 02/28/99 in the second date box.
3. Search for bills introduced during a range of dates, e.g.
between March and April 1999:
Select the "From" Radio button and then enter 03/01/99 in the
first date box and 04/30/99 in the second date box.
Type of Legislation
Searches can include all types of legislation or be limited to public bills, amendments or private bills.
Standard Subject Term
Standard subject term searching is a good option for advanced researchers. A standard subject term (also known as an "index term") search looks for subject headings assigned by the Congressional Research Service. The collection of these terms is called the Legislative Indexing Vocabulary Thesaurus or LIV. All bills and amendments are classified into one or more than 5,500 subject categories. Index terms can be broad (agriculture, women), medium (agricultural pests, women's employment) or narrow in scope (spraying and dusting in agriculture, women in labor unions).
Note that the LIV reflects the current list of subjects and so may not be useful for earlier Congresses.
A subject term search is usually the most complete and accurate subject search because it finds all bills about the topic you choose if there is a relevant subject (index) term. Indexers use official terms from a vocabulary developed especially for public policy databases. A subject term search using capital punishment (the official term) will most likely retrieve more bills than a word/phrase search using death penalty (an unofficial term), because all bills are indexed to the term capital punishment no matter how the concept is expressed in the language of the bill itself (e.g., death by lethal injection, hanging, death penalty).
When to use word/phrase searches instead of subject term searches:
- When you are looking for a very recent bill.
If a bill has been introduced very recently, it may not have index terms assigned yet. You may need to do a word/phrase search instead. For a comprehensive search, including very recent bills, also do a full text search in the current THOMAS Bill Text feature, using as many synonymous terms as possible.
- When searching in an earlier Congress, unless you can positively
identify subject (index) terms for that Congress.
A searchable online LIV thesaurus reflects current LIV terms only. In past Congresses, these terms may or may not have been part of the LIV, so a search in an older Congress (e.g., 93rd or 95th or 97th) using a newer term may yield no results. For older Congresses, unless you can definitively identify a correct index term for that Congress, by seeing it listed under the Subject(s) option in a bill record, you should also run a word/phrase search.
- When searching for personal or family names.
In these cases, or if you are interested in a very narrow topic for which there is no matching index term, you must do a word/phrase search. For example, if you are interested in Harry Wu, not human rights in general, you should use a word/phrase search. The following are categories of terms that are not index terms:
- Names of individuals
- Names of families
- Names of individual government agencies and bodies, with a few exceptions
- Names of individual corporations and institutions such as colleges, libraries, hospitals, etc.
- Natural or geographic features: mountains, islands, rivers, oceans, lakes, etc.
- Names of structures such as bridges, canals, dams, reservoirs, buildings, etc.
- Parkways, roads, streets, etc.
- Parks, wildlife refuges, etc.
- Names of ships
- Names of Indian tribes
- When searching for government agencies or bodies.
Most individual government agencies or bodies must be searched as phrases rather than subject terms. Names of executive government departments, such as Department of Justice, and a few other bodies can be used as index terms, but for the most comprehensive information on legislation pertaining to that body, word/phrase searches are recommended.
How to Search by Subject Term
To search by subject term you first need to find an official index term in the LIV. You can do this by searching or browsing a list of subject terms. If you search LIV terms, many common words will lead directly to official index terms. If you look for death penalty, for example, you will be told that the official term is capital punishment. Once you have found the right term, type or cut and paste it into the Bill Summary & Status subject term search box.
TIP: Any term that appears in the Bill Summary & Status full display under the Subject option is an official subject term. If you find one bill in which you are particularly interested, and want to find more bills on the same topic, select the Subject option from the full display for that bill and examine the subject terms. Selecting a subject term from the list will result in the display of all other bills in that Congress on that topic.