What's New for the 111th Congress

Several changes have been made to THOMAS for the 111th Congress. These changes are described below.

Homepage Search

The quick search feature on the homepage of THOMAS now searches the Bill Summary & Status (BSS) database. BSS contains information about bills and amendments. Whereas the Bill Text database searches the full text of legislation, the BSS feature searches everything but the actual text of the legislation.  The BSS information includes: sponsor(s); cosponsor(s); official, short and popular titles; floor/executive actions; detailed legislative history; Congressional Record page references; bill summary; committee information; amendment information; subjects (indexing terms assigned to each bill); a link to the full text versions of the bill; and if the bill has been enacted into law, a link to the full text of the law on the Government Printing Office Web site.

Just below the quick search box on the homepage, users will now find a link to the BSS Advanced Search page. On the BSS Advanced Search page, BSS information is searchable by word/phrase, subject (index) term, bill/amendment number, stage in the legislative process, dates of introduction, sponsor/cosponsor, and committee.

The full bill text database can be accessed via the Bills, Resolutions link on the left side of most THOMAS pages.

Subject Terms

Legislative analysts from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) closely examine the content of each bill and resolution and assign (index) as many Subject terms as are required 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 the terms presented at CRS Legislative Subject Terms. Terms assigned to legislation from the 110th and earlier Congresses came from a list that was based upon an earlier thesaurus. The new Subject terms were designed to better group legislation and improve consistency. All terms assigned in the Bill Summary and Status files may be located by clicking on the Subject Terms browse page to see an alphabetical list of terms used to date and their frequency of assignment. As with the earlier vocabulary, searchable Subjects also include a large number of terms corresponding to geographic areas (foreign and domestic), U.S. government entities, and congressional committees. See also the CRS Named-Entity Subject Terms. To search by a particular subject term, type or cut and paste it into the Standard Subject Term search box at the bottom of the Bill Summary & Status Advanced Search Page.