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Archive for the Congress Category (288 posts)

Congress.gov January 2023 New, Tip, and Top

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Earlier this month, Andrew took a look back at all of the great new features that were added to Congress.gov in 2022. In this release, we have added member remarks in the Congressional Record as a filter on member profile pages. If you access a member’s profile page, you can perform a search and then use the filter to view results for your search that contain the member’s remarks that were published in the Congressional Record.

In addition, we have enhanced the share/save tool that is located at the top of the screen to support shorter URLs for your search results so that the URL is easier to share. Previously, this feature was only available on the Advanced Legislation Search Form.

You can now use a fielded search to search for bills that have Congressional Budget Office cost estimates. The field is as follows: hasCBOCostEstimate:”Y”

For example, the following search will return all bills in the 105th Congress that have a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate: (congressId:105) AND hasCBOCostEstimate:”Y”

Finally, the text to speech accessibility tool that Congress.gov uses to read bills, bill summaries, and the Congressional Record Daily Digest aloud has been upgraded so that it now features full compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards, integrated help content, and an updated user interface.

The member remarks filter is available on member profile pages on Congress.gov.

The Remarks in the Congressional Record filter is available on member profile pages on Congress.gov.

Enhancements

Enhancement – Search

Enhancement – Member Profiles – Member Remarks

  • Find Congressional Record items where a Member is speaking by using the Member Activity filter from a Member’s profile page.

Enhancement – Legislation – Search

Enhancement – ReadSpeaker – New Version

  • Use the updated ReadSpeaker audio player to listen to Congress.gov content such as summaries, bill text, and the Congressional Record Daily Digest.
  • Open the ReadSpeaker menu to adjust settings, enlarge text, explore help and more.

Search Tip

Learn more about fielded searches that are available on Congress.gov. Visit the Search Tools Page and click on “fields across search collections.”

Most-Viewed Bills

Here are the most-viewed bills for the week of January 22, 2023.

1. H.R.61 [118th] Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023
2. H.R.25 [118th] FairTax Act of 2023
3. H.Res.57 [117th] Impeaching Joseph R. Biden, President of the United States, for abuse of power by enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.
4. H.R.2617 [117th] Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023
5. H.R.26 [118th] Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act
6. H.R.5376 [117th] Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
7. S.596 [117th] Treat and Reduce Obesity Act of 2021
8. H.R.7900 [117th] National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023
9. H.R.3617 [117th] Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act
10. H.R.1636 [117th] Postal Vehicle Modernization Act

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The 2022 Congress.gov Top 22 and Year in Review

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We are always working to incorporate your feedback into making Congress.gov an even better experience. One major request was one of the biggest items that the Congress.gov team worked on last year: the new Congress.gov API (application programming interface). The API is great if you want to pull a lot of the content of Congress.gov. […]

Congress.gov December 2022 New, Tip, and Top

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In the last release, Andrew highlighted the addition of historical data to Congress.gov in the form of updates to the Dates of Past Sessions page that provides coverage back to March 4, 1789, as well as the addition of Congressional Record – Bound Edition coverage for the 53rd – 55th Congresses (1893-1899). In the latest […]

Congressional Reactions to the Assassination of President Kennedy in the Bound Congressional Record

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On November 22, 1963, President John Kennedy was felled by Lee Harvey Oswald as his motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. Most Americans who were alive during that time still remember exactly where they were when they learned of this tragic event. Since the 59th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death just occurred, […]

Congress.gov November 2022 New, Tip, and Top

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As we continue to add historical data to Congress.gov, we updated the Dates of Past Sessions page back to the first session of the first Congress for both the House and Senate on March 4, 1789. There are links from the Congresses for which we have Browse pages. We also added three new Congresses to […]

Celebrating 10 Years of Congress.gov

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On September 19, 2012, 10 years ago today, Congress.gov was launched, providing enhanced access to federal legislative information. Congress.gov was created to replace our old THOMAS site that dated back to the 1990s. Congress.gov improved upon Thomas by adding a powerful, modern search engine for legislative information. It also took advantage of the advent of responsive web design, so it will scale to whatever device you are using, whether that is a tablet, phone, or desktop.