Ever hear a news story on the radio about a new bill introduced in Congress and wonder what the bill actually proposes? Well, I do. Let me show you a quick way to find out just what that bill says.
The easiest way is to use Thomas (thomas.loc.gov), the legislative information gateway of the Library of Congress.
You can search for legislation from the current Congress (there’s a new one every two years) right from the middle of the home page.
Right below the search box are drop-down menus that you could use to see what legislation a particular Senator or Representative has been involved with. You can also search for terms across multiple Congresses.
OK, let’s track down the bill I heard about on the radio, it was about college textbooks. I didn’t catch the sponsor’s name so let’s just search for the keyword “textbooks”.
This search brings us results from two bills. One is H.R.1464 and the other is S.1714. Now I heard them say this was a Senate bill, so we’ll click on the link for S.1714.
From this link we see that this bill was introduced by Sen. Richard Durban (IL) on 9/24/2009 and is titled, “A bill to authorize grants for the creation, update, or adaption of open textbooks, and for other purposes. “ Hmm, sounds interesting, huh? We can also see what Senate committee the bill is before and there is a link to the full text of the bill.
You can also follow links to see what action has been taken on the bill, including Sen. Durban’s introductory remarks for the bill, from the Congressional Record. When available, there will also be links to the Congressional Budget Offices’ (CBO) cost estimates for the bill.
Pretty cool stuff. And that House bill looks interesting too. We could go back and look at that too.
Looking for something older than this Congress? No problem. Thomas searches back to the 101st Congress (January 3, 1989 to January 3, 1991). And Drexel has a subscription to Lexis Nexis Congressional (including Congressional publications called the Serial Set) that searches content all the way back to the first Congress in 1789.
Oh, and if the title of this post didn’t start you humming, maybe this will help:
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