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Legislative analysts from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) closely examine the content of each bill and resolution and assign Subject terms to describe the measure's substance and effects. Beginning with the 111th Congress, all legislative measures are assigned at least one Subject term drawn from a new list of terms presented at CRS Legislative Subject Terms. The new Subject terms were designed to better group legislation, to improve consistency, and to shorten the time it takes to add Subject terms to bills. Subject terms can also be assigned from a large list of terms corresponding to geographic areas (foreign and domestic), U.S. government entities, and congressional committees. See the CRS Named-Entity Subject Terms for a complete list of those terms.
When looking at the subject terms assigned to a bill or resolution, you will notice that the first term on the list appears out of alphabetical order. This is the Top Term for the measure, and it corresponds to the broad category that best describes the concerns of the measure's text. Top Terms are represented by the bold "umbrella" terms on the list of CRS Legislative Subject Terms.
Subject term assignment is cumulative; that is, it is added to in order to reflect revisions (if any) made to the measure as it moves through the legislative process.
Terms assigned to legislation from the 110th and earlier Congresses came from a list that was based upon a thesaurus known as the Legislative Indexing Vocabulary (LIV). CRS plans to convert the LIV terms assigned to bills from the 93rd through the 110th Congresses to the new Subject terms as time and resources permit. The conversion will be gradual and will be completed over the coming months.