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Congress.gov Tip, Top, and New for September 2017

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Last month kicked off the first Congress.gov Tip, Top, and New post. Today, we’re bringing you the new Congress.gov enhancements for September, as well as a search tip and the latest most-viewed bills.

Search Tip

Adrienne Keys continues to share helpful search tips on Congress.gov.  A recent tip was to remind users that the default search operator is now AND:

In February, Congress.gov’s Quick Search tools were enhanced to default to the AND search operator, rather than OR. Homepage Main search and the Legislation Advanced Search Form now default to the AND operator as well. This change standardizes the search results returned by the three search tools.

For example, a Quick Search for 115th Congress legislation containing elect member committee in any field including bill text yields 413 results (as of 8/11/17). Before the latest enhancement, when the default was OR, doing the same search using the Homepage Main search or Advanced Search Form yielded more than 6,000 results. As of now, all three Congress.gov search tools return the same, concise group of results for that search.

Note, it is still possible to use OR as a search operator using each search tool. Please reference the Search Tools page for additional help with using search operators on Congress.gov.

Top 10

Each week we update the Most-Viewed Bills (which you can subscribe to by RSS or email).  It is a quick way to see what legislation people are coming to Congress.gov to view each week.  Here are the top 10 Most-Viewed Bills for the week of September 3, 2017:

1. H.J.Res.76  [115th] Granting the consent and approval of Congress for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Maryland, and the District of Columbia to enter into a compact relating to the establishment of the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission.
2. H.J.Res.69 [115th] Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule of the Department of the Interior relating to “Non-Subsistence Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska”.
3. H.R.367 [115th] Hearing Protection Act of 2017
4. H.R.392  [115th] Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2017
5. H.R.38 [115th] Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017
6. S.1615 [115th] Dream Act of 2017
7. H.R.152 [113th] Making supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, to improve and streamline disaster assistance for Hurricane Sandy, and for other purposes.
8. H.R.3364 [115th] Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act
9. S.354 [115th] RAISE Act
10. H.R.41 [113th] To temporarily increase the borrowing authority of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for carrying out the National Flood Insurance Program.

New Enhancements for September 2017

Here is what is new on Congress.gov for September:

In the latest release, you may have noticed that the display of nominees has changed. When a single nominee is attached to a record, a new default tab displays beneath the overview box that provides a consistent place where the codified appointment language can display. To view the actions taken on the nomination, just click on the “actions” tab. Much of the work in this release was focused on building infrastructure behind the scenes that will support the forthcoming release of a new, exciting data collection for Congress.gov.

Enhancements have been made to nomination pages in Congress.gov with the September 2017 release.
Enhancements have been made to nomination pages in Congress.gov with the September 2017 release.

Let us know what you would like to see on Congress.gov below in the comments or complete our feedback form.

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