skip navigational links United States Department of Labor
May 9, 2009   
DOL Home > OASAM > Wirtz Labor Library > Labor Law Library > Law Tips Archive > GovTrack.us: Tracking the U.S. Congress
DOL Home

GovTrack.us: Tracking the U.S. Congress

GovTrack.us provides information about the United States Congress by reporting on current issues and following the status of federal legislation and the activities of senators and representatives. Highlights of the features available on this site include:

  • Legislation: Use this page to link to various options for tracking the status of Federal Legislation. Click on Find Legislation, for example, to search for a bill in the U.S. Congress by entering either a bill number such as H.R. 1828, keywords (to search the bill's full text), or a public law number such as P.L. 108-447 (as far back as the 108th Congress -- 2003). You can also browse bills by subject area or by committee assignment. The Active Legislation page provides a list of Bill Actions and dates (most to least recent).

  • Representatives: You can view recent Congressional Votes by date. Senate votes and their titles are listed first, and below them are the House votes. Also of note is the Law Making Statistics page, which provides statistics about missed votes, bill sponsorship, campaign contributions, and speeches.

  • Track Congress: Monitor voting records for the representatives and subjects of interest to you by registering with GovTrack free of charge. Monitor subject areas and track bills in Congress related to those topics, or track individual bills and members of Congress.

GovTrack also provides further information about current legislation under the “In the Blogosphere” heading on its homepage (lower left side). A current example is H.R. 25: Fair Tax Act of 2005. Clicking on this entry directs you to a page that provides the official title, status, date introduced, date of last action, the sponsor(s), and a link to the full text. See the top of the page for links to the Summary, Floor Speeches, and Other Info.

 

Phone Numbers