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Archive for the Congress Category (249 posts)

Congress.gov New, Tip and Top for March 2021, Part 1

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Last month, Robert provided news of two enhancements to Congress.gov. The first involved new email alerts for committee profile pages. The second was the addition of 21 years of U.S. Statutes at Large to Congress.gov, which can be accessed through the text tab for bills that became public laws in this time period.

As part of our first release this month, we are providing a mechanism for users to provide feedback to their members for bills in the current Congress. This has been one of the most requested features for Congress.gov, and we are pleased to be able to debut it with this release.

This feature appears on the right hand side of the bill overview section, “Give Feedback on This Bill.”

Once you click “Contact Your Member,” another window will open allowing you to find your representatives and senators by entering your address:

Enhancements

Enhancement – Legislation – Give Feedback

  • Use the link from any current Congress measure to find your representative and senators to give them your feedback on the bill or resolution. This will help to redirect such feedback that is now often being sent to the Congress.gov technical team and fulfill frequent public requests for such a feature.

Enhancement – Committee Meetings – Improved Access

Enhancement – Committee Materials – Search

Search Tip

The Bill Searches and Lists section on the Congress.gov homepage includes several helpful lists for researchers. These lists appear below the Search box and include bills organized by Sponsor, broken down by chamber, House and Senate. Once you click on House or Senate options, an alphabetical list of members appears with the number of bills they have sponsored or cosponsored as well as any amendments. You can also link to the member and the bills themselves.

Most-Viewed Bills

These are the most-viewed bills for the week of February 21, 2021.

1. H.R.127 [117th] Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act
2. H.R.5717 [116th] Gun Violence Prevention and Community Safety Act of 2020
3. H.R.484 [117th] No Glory for Hate Act
4. H.Res.57 [116th] Electing Members to certain standing committees of the House of Representatives.
5. S.394 [116th] Presidential Transition Enhancement Act of 2019
6. H.R.1 [117th] For the People Act of 2021
7. H.R.748 [116th] CARES Act
8. H.R.40 [116th] Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act
9. H.R.133 [116th] Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021
10. H.R.40 [117th] Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top for January 2021

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Last month, Andrew mentioned that the Congress.gov team had added the ability to bundle your various saved search alerts into one consolidated email. This month we are bringing you new search fields to find all amendments for a bill, resolution or amendment, and the ability to display large bill texts in plain text format to […]

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top 20 in 2020

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Earlier this month, Margaret shared the enhancements to the Congress.gov Help Center and additional Congresses added to our Bound Congressional Record collection. One of the behind-the-scenes items that we worked on for the latest release was to prepare Congress.gov for the new 117th Congress. We also have been working to make our saved search alerts […]

How to Add Congress.gov to your Website

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Recently, changes made to Congress.gov have made searching for specific topics much easier. In our most recent “Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top” blog post, Robert Brammer unveiled the Congress.gov Help Center, a feature that makes the Help pages on Congress.gov searchable. To further facilitate the navigation of our resources, you can embed a Congress.gov search […]

December 2020 Congress.gov New, Tip and Top

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Last month, Robert introduced us to the new Congress.gov Help Center. As part of this month’s release, we have made additional improvements to Help Center search results navigation. Now users can navigate through their search results or return to the results page. The other enhancement to the Help Center is the improved Error Message page […]

Congress.gov: New, Tip, and Top for October 2020

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Last month, Robert and Margaret each shared information about the committee transcripts added to Congress.gov in the first and second set of enhancements respectively. Since Margaret’s post, we have added transcripts for the 107th, 108th, and 109th Congresses bringing the total up to ten Congresses for this new collection. With this month’s release, we have added […]