Bills and Amendments

The legislative process begins with the introduction of a bill in the House and/or the Senate. Each bill is numbered, printed, referred to a committee, and often amended many times before it is finally passed. There are many versions of a bill (an introduced version, a reported version, an engrossed version, an act version, and an enrolled version) and comparing the various versions of a bill may provide insight into the intended meaning of the law.

The bill number is an important piece of information in tracing a legislative history. Bills are numbered consecutively by the house in which they are introduced. Each bill has its own legislative history. Therefore, if a United States Code section has been amended, the legislative history of that section includes legislative histories of the original bill and all the bills that amended the section.

Bill texts are available from the following sources:

  • Congressional Bills & Resolutions (1979 to date)
    Microfiche: Law Micro
  • Thomas (101st Congress to date)
  • GPO Access (103d Congress to date)
    PDF available
  • Westlaw (104th Congress to date)
    Current Congress (CONG-BILLTXT database)
    Search database "CONG-BILLTXTxxx", where xxx is the Congress number to see bills from older Congresses.
  • A Century of Lawmaking (historical bills and resolutions)
    This Library of Congress site has House bills and resolutions (1799 to 1873) and Senate bills and resolutions (1819 to 1873) in image format

You can also use the Congressional Record to locate floor amendments.

Use the following sources to find votes on Congressional bills:

  • Thomas (101st Congress to date)

Page maintained by Steve Donweber
Last updated: August 2006