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Related Resources at the Library
Finding Bills and Related Legislative Information
- How do I find bills in Thomas?
- What information do Bill Text and Bill Summary & Status provide me?
- For what time periods does THOMAS have legislative information?
- How are bills identified? Are there different versions of bills?
- I'm interested in finding voting records for members of Congress.
Can THOMAS help? - Where can I learn more about legislative research?
Information about Congress
- What is meant by the numeric designations for Congress; for example, the "107th Congress?" What is a "session" of Congress?
- How can I communicate with a Member of Congress (e.g., email addresses)?
- Can you give me some information about the current Congress?
- Which years are associated with a particular Congress?
- How much are Members of Congress paid and what are their retirement benefits?
- Where can I find descriptions of Congress and of the legislative process? Is there anything appropriate for kids?
- Where can I learn more about the "Electoral College?"
Technical Matters
- How do I link a particular part of THOMAS to my own Web site?
- How does THOMAS search data? What sort of results can I expect to see from a search?
- How often is THOMAS updated?
- How do I form citations for THOMAS documents?
How do I find bills in THOMAS?
The THOMAS home page contains a search box that searches bill text (the full text of legislation) for the current Congress. Users can search by keywords or a bill number (e.g., HR 212).
If you know the bill number of the bill you are searching for, type it in the box, select "bill number" and click on the search button. You will be linked directly to the text of the bill, or if there is more than one version of the bill, to a list of those versions.
If you want a list of bills related to a particular word or phrase, type that word or phrase in the input box, select "word/phrase" and click on the search button. A search engine searches the full text of all the bills in the given Congress for the given word/phrase.
Additional options for searching bill text and bill summary & status information is available from the "Bills and Resolutions" section. These options include searching previous Congresses, multiple Congresses and advanced searching.
What information do Bill Text and Bill Summary & Status provide?
The "Bill Text" feature retrieves the full text of the bill.
The "Bill Summary & Status" feature retrieves the following:
- Titles
- Bill Status (links to Congressional Record pages, votes)
- Committees
- Related House Committee Documents
- Amendments
- Related Bill Details
- Subjects (Congressional Research Service Index Terms)
- Cosponsors
- CRS Summary
- Link to Full Text of Bill
For what time periods does THOMAS have legislative information?
THOMAS has the Congressional Record and full text of legislation available from 1989 (101st Congress) to the present. In addition, THOMAS has summaries (not full text) of legislation from 1973 (93rd Congress).
The Library of Congress also has historical legislative information available in its American Memory collections. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1875 provides a century's worth of congressional proceedings, statutes, and other information.
Legislative texts and documents prior to 1989 may be found in print form at Federal Depository Libraries.
Legislation is eventually codified in the U.S. Code.
How are bills identified? Are there different versions of bills?
There are four types of legislation: bills, joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions and simple resolutions. Any of these may be introduced in either chamber. They are identified as follows:
- S. 123 - Bill originating in the Senate
- S.R. 123 - Simple Resolution of the Senate
- S.J.Res. 123 - Joint Resolution originating in the Senate
- S. Con. Res. 123 - Concurrent Resolution originating in the Senate
- H.R. 123 - Bill originating in the House
- H.Res. 123 - Simple Resolution of the House
- H.J.Res. 123 - Joint Resolution originating in the House
- H.Con.Res. 123 - Concurrent Resolution originating in the House
View definitions for the types of legislation from GPO Access.
Legislation may be changed or amended as it makes its way through the legislative process. You will sometimes see different versions of legislation in THOMAS, and these versions are identified by extensions to the bill number. For instance, H.R. 2301.ih indicates the version of H.R. 2301 as it was introduced in the House. A list and definition of common extensions may be found at GPO Access.
I'm interested in finding voting records for members of Congress. Can THOMAS help?
There are several different ways of voting in the House and the Senate, one of which is the roll call vote, where the vote of each member is recorded. Not all bills, in fact, the minority of bills, receive a roll call vote.
The THOMAS home page has a link to roll call votes from 1990 in the House and 1989 in the Senate. Each link lists the roll call votes by sequential roll call number. This number is unrelated to the bill number. You can browse the list of roll call numbers, or you can go to Bill Status in Bill Summary & Status for the given bill and find the vote number (and often a direct link to the roll call vote).
THOMAS does not compile votes by members of Congress. However, the Government Resources page contains resources related to congressional votes.
Additional information can be found in Compiling A Member Voting Record.
Where can I learn more about legislative research?
THOMAS maintains a list of resources for legislative researchers.
What is meant by the numeric designations for Congress; for example, the "109th Congress?" What is a "session" of Congress?
A "new" Congress convenes every two years, in the January following a November congressional election. It is new in the sense that the entire House of Representatives is elected every two years, even though only about one-third of the Senate is elected biennially. Congresses have been numbered consecutively since the first Congress, which began in 1789.
Typically, each Congress meets in two annual "sessions," one in its first calendar year and another in the second calendar year. Thus, the first session of the 107th Congress occurred in 2001 and the second in 2002.
A bill is technically available for consideration throughout an entire Congress, unless it is defeated somewhere along the way. However, if a bill has not been acted on before the end of a Congress, it would have to be reintroduced in a succeeding Congress and begin the legislative process all over again.
How can I communicate with a member of Congress (e.g., e-mail addresses)?
- Members' individual Web sites provide comprehensive contact information:
Senate Member Sites
House of Representatives Member Sites - House "Write Your Representative" service
- THOMAS Legislative Resources
- The telephone number for the U. S. Capitol Switchboard is 202-224-3121
- Communication tips, including forms of address and telephone inquiries from Congress.org
Where can I find information about the current Congress?
Which years are associated with a particular Congress?
1973-1974 93rd
1975-1976 94th
1977-1978 95th
1979-1980 96th
1981-1982 97th
1983-1984 98th
1985-1986 99th
1987-1988 100th
1989-1990 101st
1991-1992 102nd
1993-1994 103rd
1995-1996 104th
1997-1998 105th
1999-2000 106th
2001-2002 107th
2003-2004 108th
2005-2006 109th
2007-2008 110th
2009-2010 111th
How much are members of Congress paid and what are their retirement benefits?
The current salary for all senators and members is $169,300. The salary for the speaker is $217,400 and the salary for the majority and minority leaders is $188,100.
Members of Congress are covered by the same retirement plans as other federal employees, the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) for those hired, or elected, before 1984, and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) for those whose service began in 1984 or later. There are some differences in retirement age eligibility, years of service required, and contributions. Members elected after 1984 also participate in Social Security.
As of October 1, 1999, the average annual pension for former members under the CSRS plan was $51,660; for those under the FERS plan, $46,572.
Further information about congressional salaries, pensions, and benefits may be found at TheCapitol.Net and C-Span's Capitol Questions.
Where can I find descriptions of Congress and of the legislative process? Is there anything appropriate for kids?
There is a glossary of Congressional terms on THOMAS. A brief discussion of the legislative process is provided by Indiana University's Center on Congress. Two more detailed articles are available from THOMAS, courtesy of the House and the Senate. A simpler version of the legislative process in the House is also available.
Kids in the House, sponsored by the House of Representatives Office of the Clerk, is an interactive center to help kids learn about the House and its role in lawmaking. Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government provides information for children of all ages, as well as information for educators. THOMAS provides legislative resources specifically for educators.
Where can I learn more about the Electoral College?
National Archives' Electoral College Web site
You might also want to read Article II of the US Constitution.
How do I link a particular part of THOMAS to my own Web site?
You can add permanent links to bills, lists of bills, committee reports or most other search results. Details about how to do this are found in Direct Links to THOMAS Documents. It is necessary to use these protocols because the URL addresses you see when you execute a search are temporary and will expire in about 30 minutes.
Alternately, you can use Legislative Handles, a new persistent URL service. With a simple syntax, Legislative Handles make it easy to type in legislative links to bibliographies, reference guides, emails, blogs, or web pages.
All of the material on THOMAS is in the public domain and no special permission is required for use.
How does THOMAS search data? What sort of results can I expect to see from a search?
Searching for items in THOMAS, whether legislation or the Congressional Record, is accomplished by a "relevancy-ranking" retrieval system called InQuery. In general, this type of system allows you to cast a wide net for items. When you perform a word/phrase search, InQuery assigns a "weight" to each document that contains one or more of the words given to establish its relevancy to your search. It then presents the results of the search in a relevancy-ranked order; the first document being the most "relevant." You may find it necessary to vary the word/phrase of your search to change or improve the set of results. InQuery matches the actual words in your search with the actual words in the text. Thus, if you execute a search on "death penalty," you will not get documents that use the alternate term "capital punishment." View more information about the InQuery search system.
How often is THOMAS updated?
Most of the documents in THOMAS originate in the House and Senate, which in turn transmit them to the Government Printing Office (GPO) for printing and further electronic processing. GPO then transmits them to the Library of Congress, which performs some further processing before making them available on THOMAS.
The Congressional Record is processed most rapidly. GPO processes a day's proceedings from the Senate and House overnight and usually transmits them to THOMAS by 9 a.m. (or earlier) the next day. The text is normally available on THOMAS about one hour later.
GPO usually needs at least one day to process bill text and digitize it for transmission. When the number of bills introduced is very large, typically, for instance, at the beginning of a session, or when the bill is very large, the processing may take longer. Once a bill is received by the Library of Congress, it takes only a few hours for it to become available online.
The time it takes for committee reports to become available varies. Much depends on when a given committee releases the text of a report, and GPO may require several days to format the text properly. Once the Library receives the text, it becomes available within a few hours, though delays are possible if manual adjustments to the text are required.
Technical problems do occasionally occur, which delay delivery to the Library. If a particular item is missing, it has not yet been processed by GPO and transmitted to THOMAS.
The currency of Bill Summary & Status information depends on its source. Official bill titles, sponsor and cosponsors, committee and status information, which is prepared by the House and Senate, is normally available the next day. Bill summaries, subject terms, short titles, Congressional Record page citations, additional status information and other data provided by the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress may take a few days to several weeks to prepare depending on the volume of bills introduced.
How do I form citations for THOMAS documents?
"Uncle Sam: Brief Guide to Citing Government Publications," from the University of Memphis Government Publications Department, includes information about citing online government publications.