What’s Coming Up, Weekly Recaps, Analysis, and Tips for Using GovTrack

Last Hurrah

Jul 29, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Good morning, GovTrackers! You may have seen Elon Musk, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and others talking about our legislator ideology rankings over the last week. For more about that, see our post about it on our website. But enough about us. Here's what Congress is up to this week. After it ...

We retracted our single-year legislator report cards after warning about their unreliability

Jul 26, 2024 · News About GovTrack

Here's the short version: We retracted the legislator rankings that we published for 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019 including a ranking of then-Senator Kamala Harris as the most liberal senator in 2019. A newer ranking that we published in 2021 says she was the leftmost Democratic senator. Catch the difference? ...

Breaks in the Pattern

Jul 26, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Over the course of this Congress, several patterns have emerged: - extremely small numbers of Republicans will object to legislation the rest of the Republicans want and thus kill the legislation - for those bills that the majority of the House - Republican and Democrat - want, leadership will bring ...

Back in Session

Jul 22, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Good morning, GovTrackers! Much of today’s news is focused on the decision of Joe Biden not to seek re-election to the office of the president and his endorsement of Vice President Harris for the job, but there’s also a lot happening in Congress. The House of Representatives and Senate are ...

Trump's VP pick Sen. J.D. Vance: His most interesting bills in Congress

Jul 17, 2024 · Analysis and Commentary

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has served as lead sponsor for 36 bills during the year and a half of his freshman session of Congress so far. GovTrack looked through all his bills and found 8 of the most interesting. He's joined Democrats in cosponsoring bills to

Yes, Congress did do some legislatin' this week

Jul 12, 2024 · Legislative Recap

_Update/Correction 7/13/2024: we mis-stated slightly the situation in North Dakota. We've revised that paragraph to indicate that the REAL ID process confirms citizenship for those who have it at the point of getting a state ID, but does not preclude a non-citizen from attempting to vote anyway. Despite this, there ...

Setting the Stage

Jul 9, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Good morning, GovTrackers! The House of Representatives and the Senate are in session this week, off next week for the Republican convention, and then back for two final weeks. After that, it’s August recess and Congress won’t return until September 9th. Joe Biden’s future is the major focus in both ...

All about Congressional Committees

Jul 3, 2024 · Analysis and Commentary

When we surveyed y'all recently, we got a lot of questions about Congressional committees and how are they formed and what do they actually do . So today, we're talking committees! ## Kinds of committees First, it's important to know what kind of committee we're talking about. Standing committees are ...

Checks and Balances

Jun 28, 2024 · Legislative Recap

This week the House passed four bills and the Supreme Court established a new standard for how bills should be written if the topic covers something that might lead to regulation. ## Checks (Mostly) H.R. 7152: Divided Families National Registry Act which would create a registry of U.S. families with ...

More Appropriations

Jun 24, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Hello Trackers! We’re getting close to August recess, which is an extended period of time when neither the House nor the Senate are in session. That doesn’t mean nobody’s working, but it does mean no legislation will move on the floor and committees largely won’t be meeting. Also, election season ...

Inaugural Mailbag

Jun 21, 2024 · Analysis and Commentary

Mailbag! And one new law! We plan to start using recess weeks to do posts addressing comments and questions we get by email and from a survey we sent out recently. In the future, these will be joint posts from me & Daniel, but for today I'm going to ...

Hot in Herre

Jun 17, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Hello Trackers! The House of Representatives is in recess this week and the Senate reconvenes on Monday to consider judicial nominations over the course of the week. The Senate has 11 committee proceedings scheduled for this week, including two before the Appropriations Committee and two before the Homeland Security and ...

Grab Bag Week

Jun 14, 2024 · Legislative Recap

A bit of a busy week in Congress, mostly in the House. There was some partisan action, some very traditional legislating on foreign policy and three bills that will directly affect Americans in different ways. ## Garland Contempt Vote

Authorizations, Contempt & Hearings

Jun 11, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Hello Trackers! The House of Representatives has a busy week this week. There are two substantive bills set for consideration on the House floor under regular order, which requires a majority vote of the members on the floor for passage. The first is the National Defense Authorization Act and it ...

Agree to Disagree

Jun 7, 2024 · Legislative Recap

There were three legislative areas of focus this week: military construction & VA funding, punishing the International Criminal Court, and whether there should be a statutory right to contraception. The White House also announced executive action purporting to "close the border". These are all areas where there is significant intra- ...

Congress works on funding the government this week

Jun 4, 2024 · Legislative Preview

We can expect the pace of matters in Congress to accelerate as we get closer to its summer recess at the end of July, although much of the time for serious legislation --- except appropriations and national defense --- has ended until after the election. The House of Representatives has ...

What is accountability in Congress?

May 31, 2024 · Analysis and Commentary

_Corrections, 6/4/24: we changed our wording on Trump's violations to "state law" because he appears to have violated multiple provisions in NY state laws and we wrongly said Sen. Menendez was in the same courthouse when in fact he is appearing in a federal courthouse a few hundred feet away ...

Ask Us Anything, and a GovTrack Survey

May 25, 2024 · News About GovTrack

Have you noticed that we use a lot of jargon? Sometimes we get caught up in what we're reporting on and forget to explain what we're talking about. Here's a chance to tell us if we dropped the ball in explaining something about Congress, or what else you want to ...

Memorial Day Break Ahoy

May 24, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Old Business The Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) bribery trial ran for only a few days this week before breaking for Memorial Day. It will return next week. CNN covered this week's activity. Rep. Steube's (R-FL17) discharge petition was never formally acted on for his

Vacation, all I ever wanted

May 21, 2024 · Legislative Preview

This week is the last week the House and Senate are in session before the week-long Memorial Day recess. There are only two major work periods left before summer recess, and the clock is ticking. Members in both chambers are getting increasingly testy with one another and many are chomping ...

Police Week?

May 17, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Law The bribery trial of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) began this week. He is blaming his wife for the presence of the cash and gold bars in their home as well as various gifts they received. Menendez also announced that his wife has cancer. Originally, both spouses were to ...

FAA and NDAA authorizations, appropriations, and more this week in Congress

May 13, 2024 · Legislative Preview

In the political system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. Members of the House of Representatives who serve two year terms and the Senators who serve six year terms. These are their stories... for the third of a four week stretch ending with Memorial Day. ...

It's a Coalition!

May 10, 2024 · Legislative Recap

This week went pretty much as we predicted it would in our preview, albeit the squeaker was for FAA reauthorization and not Speaker Johnson keeping his job. ## Last Week's Rarity Returns to Normal We noted last week that six Republicans had voted with all Democrats on a "motion to ...

A Squeaker for the Speaker?

May 6, 2024 · Legislative Preview

This is the second of a four week stretch of Congress being in town that will end with Memorial Day weekend. Looking at the House’s floor schedule, four measures are set for consideration pursuant to a rule (passes with a simple majority) and thirteen are on suspension (needs a 2/3rds ...

Some Governing Going On In Here

May 2, 2024 · Legislative Recap

The House was pretty busy this week considering that they recessed early to allow members to attend the funeral of former Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-NJ10). There were votes on a number of substantive bills, many of which passed by large margins. -

House Rules, Markups, and Reauthorization, learn what it all means this week in Congress

Apr 29, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Although Congress had planned to be on recess last week, the Senate used the start of its recess to pass legislation to provide aid to Ukraine + Israel, ban TikTok, and to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Many Congress watchers think last week was the end of serious efforts ...

Under the Radar Productivity

Apr 26, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Recently we wrote a little something for The Fulcrum about whether Congress - and the House especially - is as unproductive as it seems. What we found was that no, actually, apart from a small number of hot button issues, many bills were passing by significant margins, often by 400 ...

Boss battles

Apr 19, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Been a week in Congress and it's not done yet. In order from easiest to hardest boss battles, we present the week that was. We've also got a preview of next week. ## Iran Bills There were votes on 16 bills on Iran, punishing the state and some specific individuals, ...

Iran, government surveillance, and more this week in Congress

Apr 15, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Good morning and welcome to a new addition to GovTrack's updates on what's happening in Congress this week. I'm your host, Daniel Schuman, and I spent waaay too much time thinking about the First Branch of Government. Join me as we start on our gov trek. (Sorry) ## In the ...

Grinding

Apr 12, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Mayorkas Impeachment Trial This week the House was going to send the impeachment articles to the Senate on Wednesday evening, but mid-day Wednesday, Speaker Johnson announced he was postponing until this coming Monday, 4/15, at the request of Senate Republicans who wanted more time to impede a swift end ...

Impeachment Trial of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas

Apr 5, 2024 · Analysis and Commentary

Background On 2/13, on its second try, the House Republicans impeached Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas 214-213 for what they describe as high crimes and misdemeanors, but which look like policy differences with the Biden Administration. In fact, the 3 Republicans who voted no in the House did so explicitly ...

Zeroing In on Bill Sections

Apr 1, 2024 · Using GovTrack Tips

With all these very long bills being passed, you might wonder whether there's a way to link to just one specific part of the bill. For example, in the Consolidated Appropriations enacted on 3/23, there's appropriations for the departments of Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security, the Legislative Branch and more. But ...

The Government is Funded Again

Mar 25, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Final Passage At 2:03 am on 3/23, the Senate passed by 74-24 the last - for the current fiscal year 2024 - piece of legislation to fund the government until 9/30/24 at 11:59pm. The House passed it earlier on 3/22 by 286-134. The President signed it later on 3/23. ...

What's in that Bill?

Mar 15, 2024 · Using GovTrack Tips

What's in that Bill? You may have noticed some of our automated posts recently going something like this: > "Provisions of S. 2131 by Sen. Martin Heinrich [D-NM] were enacted on 03/09/24 (via H.R. 4366). Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024." ## ...

At Laaaaaaaaast

Mar 11, 2024 · Legislative Recap

We have (some) Appropriations Appropriations legislation covering a bit less than half of the overall funding needs of the federal government was passed by the Senate 75-22 around dinner time on Friday 3/8. The bill was signed the next morning by the President. Even though technically Biden did so ...

All About Votes

Mar 8, 2024 · Using GovTrack Tips

Since the Senate is off to a late start this morning, we'll post about some actual appropriations passing on Monday. Well, assuming they do pass the Senate. Today, we'll talk about kinds of votes and how to know which kind a bill got in a given chamber. We'll also list ...

Another Brief Reprieve

Mar 1, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Keeping the Government Open On Thursday, 2/29, both the House and Senate passed another continuing resolution that will keep the government running until 3/8 and 3/22. Even though they have parts of the government funding split by date, everyone has treated the first date as the one that matters. ...

What's Next for Congress?

Feb 23, 2024 · Legislative Preview

Continuing Resolutions Both chambers of Congress used this last week to do official travel or attend party events or do committee work since there were no votes scheduled or taken. However, everyone will be back in Washington D.C. early next week just a few days before the first of ...

Once More With Feeling

Feb 16, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Old Business Last week, we discussed the failures of the impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas and the Senate's Ukraine / Border Enforcement bill. This week, both chambers tried again. The impeachment passed by 214-213 on 2/12. Once the Senate's bill was amended to include only foreign aid, ...

Congress Would Prefer Not To

Feb 9, 2024 · Legislative Recap

The spirit of Bartleby the Scrivener seems to have taken hold of Congressional Republicans, at least as concerns border enforcement. There were two significant instances in which they defeated their own legislation. Yet, the House at least, is passing legislation, often with large bipartisan majorities on less controversial topics. ## ...

January 29 - February 2

Feb 2, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Tax Bill On 1/31, the House passed H.R. 7024: Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 by 357-70. This bill contains an expansion of the pre-pandemic Child Tax Credit (but remains less generous than the temporary pandemic version) and reinstates some tax credits for businesses. as ...

What's Congress been up to in January 2024?

Jan 26, 2024 · Legislative Recap

Keeping the Government Open There have been a few votes in Congress since the start of the year. The one consequential vote was on 1/18 to pass another short-term continuing resolution to keep the government running. The Senate voted 77-18 and the House 314-108. The resolution included deadlines of ...

Which tied Senate votes did Vice President Kamala Harris break in 2023?

Dec 30, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin Vice President Kamala Harris Since Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) with his famously informal wardrobe was sworn into Congress this year, the Senate certainly has fewer neckties — but still plenty of _voting _ties. In December, Vice President Kamala Harris set a new record for ...

Who was nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal in 2023?

Dec 29, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin Could this be the first year in 18 years that Congress doesn’t vote to bestow anyone the Congressional Gold Medal? The last year when Congress awarded no new Congressional Gold Medal recipient was 2005. Yet as of this writing in mid-December, Congress has not ...

Almost Unanimous, 2023 edition: Why these lone dissenters withheld their votes on congressional bills

Dec 28, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin Sometimes, when everybody else zigs, one person will zag. So too in Congress, where roll calls occasionally pit a single solitary member voting the opposite way against literally all their colleagues. As we do annually, GovTrack Insider looked into these “almost unanimous” votes to ...

4 notable bills Speaker of the House Mike Johnson introduced in Congress

Nov 3, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA4) “Who?” When Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA4) was elected Speaker of the House on October 25, even many top politicians were unfamiliar with him, let alone the American public’s unfamiliarity. The top Senate Republican, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), told _The Hill_ that

5 notable bills interim Speaker of the House Patrick McHenry introduced in Congress

Oct 25, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC10) At the beginning of October, he was a relatively anonymous House member, little known outside of his North Carolina district. Then, literally overnight, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC10) unexpectedly became the chamber’s single highest-ranking member. (At least on paper.) What legislation has he introduced during his time ...

5 notable bills Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott introduced in Congress

Aug 18, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) His favorite movie is _Rocky III_, but can Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) mount a similar come-from-behind victory for the presidency as Rocky Balboa achieved in the boxing ring? In recent months, Scott has polled around fifth or sixth place for the 2024 Republican nomination. First elected ...

Which five bills in Congress have the most unlikely Democratic and Republican cosponsors?

Aug 14, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

“Trillium Poncho cat dog” by No machine-readable author provided. Ohnoitsjamie~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). is licensed under CC BY 2.5. As the expression goes, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” But how strange, exactly? To figure this out, GovTrack looked through all the bills introduced in the current ...

The most interesting bills Ron DeSantis introduced in Congress

Aug 10, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

Gov. Ron DeSantis (FL) Before becoming governor of Florida and the current second-place contender for 2024’s Republican presidential nomination, Ron DeSantis served for six years in the U.S. House. His congressional tenure was quiet compared to later years. In March, a _Politico_ article detailed just how few headlines DeSantis made ...

Almost Unanimous: 2022 Edition

Jan 13, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

GovTrack Insider analyzes House or Senate votes which passed with only one dissenter GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin “Whatever it is, I’m against it,” Groucho Marx sang in the movie Horse Feathers. “No matter who began or who commenced it.” Sometimes, there’s that one person who you just can’t ...

What were Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking Senate votes in 2022?

Jan 12, 2023 · Legislative Recap

GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin Vice President Kamala Harris Last year, Vice President Kamala Harris broke 15 tied Senate votes, the most in a single year in American history. This year, her 11 tie-breaking votes may seem like a comedown compared to that all-time record. But this year still ...

How has new top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi’s replacement, voted in Congress?

Jan 11, 2023 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA12) announced in November that she would be stepping down as the top House Democrat, marking the second-longest stretch someone has ever led a House party. She ranks only behind Samuel Rayburn, who led House Democrats for 12 terms starting in 1940. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY8) will ...

Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act aims to prevent interference with orderly transfer of power, like in 2020 election and January 6

Sep 16, 2022 · Bill Summary

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) This bill would mark the biggest correction to the process of counting since John-John corrected Herry Monster on _Sesame Street_. ### __Context: 2020–21__ Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. He won by both 306–232 in the Electoral College and by 51.3% to ...

Transparency in Congress Resolution would require House and Senate members post their official schedules publicly online

Mar 10, 2022 · Bill Summary

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) “Who ya gonna call?” No, seriously, are members of Congress actually going to disclose who they’re going to call? ### __Context__ Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Jon Tester (D-MT) both regularly post their official schedules online. That includes anything they do or ...

Almost Unanimous, 2021 edition: We asked why these lone dissenters withheld their votes on bills

Jan 7, 2022 · Analysis and Commentary

“Go Your Own Way” by Bill Gracey is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. As Frank Sinatra sang: “And more… much more than this… I did it my way.” Sometimes a Congress member will find themselves voting against something for which every single one of their House or Senate colleagues ...

Who was nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal in 2021?

Jan 6, 2022 · Analysis and Commentary

Top row: Prince, the Harlem Hellfighters, Bobby Bowden. Bottom row: Ben Ferencz, Willie O’Ree, flag-draped coffins of servicemembers killed in August 2021 Afghanistan attack. All images in the public domain. The Congressional Gold Medal is the

What were Vice President Kamala Harris’s 15 tie-breaking Senate votes in 2021, the record for most in a single year?

Jan 3, 2022 · Legislative Recap

Vice President Kamala Harris Kamala Harris just broke the record for the most Senate tied votes broken by a vice president in a single year. With 15, she has _already_ broken the most tied Senate votes of any vice president since Schulyer Colfax, the veep for President Ulysses S. Grant, ...

Almost Unanimous, 2020 edition: Why these lone dissenters opposed measures that literally every other Congress member supported

Dec 30, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies,” Albus Dumbledore said in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, “but just as much to stand up to our friends.” This article is about that second kind. Occasionally, a member of Congress will vote against a bill ...

Deb Haaland is Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior; how has she voted on Interior issues in Congress?

Dec 28, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM1) A member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM1) has been nominated as the first-ever Native American Cabinet secretary. The first-term congresswoman, previously chair of the New Mexico Democratic Party, currently serves as Vice Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, including as Chair ...

The ultimate procrastinators: Analyzing the final piece of legislation introduced in each Congress of the past decade

Dec 26, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

“Procrastinate now,” Ellen DeGeneres once quipped. “Don’t put it off.” Congress is approaching the final weeks of its 116th two-year session, which ends on January 2, 2021. Considering that even most of the legislation introduced at the very beginning of a two-year Congress doesn’t get enacted, what types of legislation ...

What was the final roll call vote in each of the last five Congresses?

Dec 21, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

The expression is “save the best for last,” but does Congress actually do that? Congress is approaching the final weeks of its 116th two-year session, which ends on January 2, 2021. It’s unclear what will be the final bill or resolution to receive a roll call vote of this term, ...

Xavier Becerra is Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services; how did he vote on health issues in Congress?

Dec 17, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Former Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA34) There has arguably never been a more important time for the Department of Health and Human Services, dating to its 1953 founding, than during a global pandemic. President-elect Joe Biden has nominated former Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA34) as the department’s head. Currently the Attorney General ...

John Kerry will be Joe Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate; how did he vote on climate issues in Congress?

Dec 11, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Former Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) President-elect Joe Biden believes the human-caused climate crisis is such an important issue that he’s creating a new Cabinet-level role specifically dealing with it. To fill the spot, he’s selected former Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who also served as Secretary of State under Barack Obama ...

Who was nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal in 2020

Dec 9, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Congressional Gold Medal Nominees, clockwise: Muhammad Ali, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Billie Jean King, Freedom Riders of 1961, Emmett Till, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. It’s the highest honor that Congress can bestow. Winners of the Congressional Gold Medal have included everyone from Neil Armstrong to Pope John Paul II, Jackie ...

How did the Senate vote on the current Supreme Court justices’ prior judicial nominations?

Nov 4, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin Amy Coney Barrett. Source: Wikimedia Amid Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s September death, much was made of one particular statistic: her 1993 Supreme Court confirmation vote in the Senate was 96–3. Even current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voted for her. The only ...

Five House Republicans voted against a resolution committing to a peaceful transfer of presidential power if Trump loses

Nov 2, 2020 · Bill Summary

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA15) Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) The overwhelming majority of Republicans supported the resolution, but not all of them. ### __Context__ President Donald Trump has claimed that he might refuse to leave office if he loses the 2020 presidential election. During a September 23 press conference, in response ...

What are the 13 tied Senate votes broken by Vice President Mike Pence, the most of any veep since 1873?

Oct 27, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin Vice President Mike Pence (R) Without even having completed one full term yet, Vice President Pence already ranks seventh all time among the 48 vice presidents in his number of tied Senate votes broken. At 13, Mike Pence has already broken the most ...

Paused for peace

Sep 28, 2020 · News About GovTrack

Following the death of Justice Gingburg and the rapid escalation that night of political rhetoric over the filling of her seat on the Supreme Court, we paused our regular postings to Twitter and Instagram on the basis that we didn’t have much to contribute to the already overwhelming echo chamber. ...

What bills has Democratic running mate Sen. Kamala Harris introduced?

Aug 14, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) Democratic running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is one of the busier senators when it comes to introducing congressional legislation. Her 54 bills introduced in 2019 tied for 19th-most among all 100 senators, while her 52 bills introduced in 2017–18 put her in the top third ...

How a bill actually becomes a law in 2020: The Emancipation National Historic Trail Study Act

Aug 13, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX18) Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) Middle school social studies textbooks and Schoolhouse Rock songs paint a stereotypical portrait of how congressional legislation gets passed. But in real life, the story of how federal laws actually get enacted usually proves ...

What was the first bill introduced by some of the most famous Congress members?

Jul 13, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Top row: Obama, Pence, Biden, Pelosi. Bottom row: Sanders, Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, McConnell. From immigration to education, environmental policy to defense, the first-ever legislation introduced by some of the 21st century’s most famous politicians spanned all sorts of subjects. ### Barack Obama IL Sen. & President Barak Obama As a Democratic ...

Which federal holidays has Congress proposed since MLK Day was passed in 1983?

Jul 3, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Martin Luther King, Jr. Public domain photo] With new proposals recently introduced [to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, what other federal holidays have been proposed in recent years and decades? Here are some of the most notable suggestions formally introduced in Congress. _Note: this article only includes actual legislative ...

What Congress can do to implement Black Lives Matter protesters’ demands

Jun 15, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Image by Benjamin Hammer, CC-BY. In this article we cover the federal legislative policies that have been proposed by some of the advocates, organizers, and everyday Americans participating in Black Lives Matter protests and this moment of the civil rights movement. We examine what Congress can do about these proposals, ...

After George Floyd’s death, here are three bills introduced in the week after nationwide police accountability protests began

Jun 10, 2020 · Bill Summary

Source: Katie Crampton, Wikimedia Commons. Licensed for reuse. Following the May 25 death of an African-American man George Floyd at the hands of a group of Minneapolis Police Department officers, protests against police brutality and racism have spread nationwide, particularly the following weekend. Mr. Floyd’s death was caught on ...

What were some of the 29 congressional bills incorporated into the $2 trillion CARES Act?

May 28, 2020 · Bill Summary

Many hands make light work. At 335 pages, March’s $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act only came together so quickly by incorporating provisions of 29 other bills pending before Congress. So what were some of these other bills? ### Rapid Coverage for Coronavirus Vaccines Act This ...

What do we know about the potential picks for the Democratic Vice President?

May 20, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

“Whatever Way You Want” by clappstar is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 At the beginning of the 2020 Democratic race we took a look at the candidates who had been in Congress. Now that Vice President Joe Biden has clinched the nomination, we’re taking another look at ...

The four major packages enacted in response to covid-19 so far

May 14, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

“Losing Hand” by Damian Gadal is licensed under CC BY 2.0 The federal government has enacted four main stimulus laws in response to the covid-19 pandemic. Here’s a brief rundown of what each of these legislative actions did. ### Phase 1: Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations ...

It’s not the sign of the devil: A case of political misinformation during the covid-19 pandemic

May 12, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Earlier this week we noticed something weird happening in one of our Tweetdeck columns: Accounts linking to pages on GovTrack.us were also talking about how the number “6666” —yes, four sixes — is “the number of the devil.” While we’re not experts in beast numerology, that wasn’t the only thing ...

What did Congress do during the 1918 flu pandemic?

Apr 2, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Image of the Capitol Building, from the Architect of the Capitol AOC.gov], public domain. Historian John Barry called 1918 the worst year in history. It “saw not only the butchery of World War I but a worldwide influenza pandemic,” he [wrote in _The Atlantic_. “Credible estimates of the death ...

Are these the deals Congress will make in 2020?

Mar 2, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

An analysis of bills and resolutions with more than half the House or Senate as cosponsors The more cosponsors a bill has, the slightly more likely it is to pass — so which pending bills have the most cosponsors? ### How cosponsors work Thousands of potential laws are introduced ...

What Can GovTrack data tell us about the remaining viable 2020 Democratic Candidates who are or were Senators?

Feb 10, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN Former Vice President and Sen. Joe Biden, D-DE Last May, we published an article highlighting differences between the 2020 democratic candidates based on their legislative records in 2017 and 2018. We also published several articles highlighting some of ...

Almost Unanimous, 2019 edition

Jan 29, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

We asked why these lone dissenters withheld their votes on congressional bills Graphic of a vote tally with one dissenter One is indeed the loneliest number. While some congressional votes divide the two parties in these polarized partisan times, and other votes on completely noncontroversial legislation (such as renaming ...

Who was nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019

Jan 17, 2020 · Analysis and Commentary

NASA’s “Hidden Figures,” U.S. women’s national soccer team, Aretha Franklin, Gandhi, among those put forward Congressional Gold Medal Nominees, clockwise: US Women’s Soccer Team, the real Hidden Figures, former Sec. of Defense James Mattis, Greg Lamond, Aretha Franklin and Mahatma Gandhi. There’s no higher honor bestowed by Congress than the ...

Open and Responsive Government Act would reverse a recent Supreme Court decision allowing more governmental secrets

Sep 2, 2019 · Bill Summary

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Should a June Supreme Court decision which permits less governmental transparency be overturned by Congress? ### __Context__ The South Dakota newspaper _The Argus Leader _was writing an investigative article about the federal food stamp program, so they filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. As ...

Which House Democrats changed their votes on impeachment from 2018 to 2019?

Jul 22, 2019 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Al Green (D-TX9) 58… 66… 95… Each time the House of Representatives votes on impeachment of President Trump, the number of representatives in favor of beginning impeachment proceedings goes up. The House voted overwhelmingly not to move forward with an impeachment vote of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, by ...

GovTrack’s recommendations to the House Ethics Committee regarding conflicts of interest and Members of the House holding outside positions

Jul 16, 2019 · News About GovTrack

“Ethics” by masondan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 _We submitted the following letter to the House Committee on Ethics last week in response to __their call for comments__ on upcoming revisions the Committee will be making to the House of Representative’s ethics rules._ H.Res. 6 created ...

House of Representatives Oversight Activities Update!

Jul 2, 2019 · Legislative Recap

We looked at House committee activity in the 116th Congress to see if they followed through on their post-midterm plans for an investigative blitz of the President. The focus on the President has not been as strong as one might have expected, while there’s been a good bit of “normal” ...

Gerrymandering is important, but dry — so three siblings created ‘Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Board Game.’

Jun 9, 2019 · Analysis and Commentary

by Jesse Rifkin GovTrack Insider staff writer > None <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> You could cut the tension with a knife. Republicans, Democrats, and even third parties all clustered around a single table, fighting desperately to shape the political districts of the state. The battle was cutthroat. Accusations of bias ...

Legislation introduced by the 2020 candidates this year: Finance and the Economy

May 31, 2019 · Legislative Recap

“Money” by free pictures of money is licensed under CC BY 2.0 For our third look at the recent legislative activity of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates currently serving in Congress, we’re focusing on their financial policies. In this article we’ll cover bills addressing a range ...

Legislation introduced by the 2020 candidates this year: Oversight and Immigration

May 20, 2019 · Analysis and Commentary

For our second look at the 116th Congress and the recent legislative activity of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates currently serving in Congress, we’ll outline bills introduced on the key legislative issues of oversight and immigration to get a better sense of their policies. (You can find

GovTrack testimony in House committee hearing on transparency and modernizing Congress

May 10, 2019 · News About GovTrack

GovTrack founder Joshua Tauberer (right) testifies before the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. Photo via Alex Howard. https://twitter.com/digiphile/status/1126856099133632513 This morning GovTrack.us founder Joshua Tauberer testified before the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress on the subject of transparency. This is a new committee which ...

Legislation introduced by the 2020 candidates this year: Health and Criminal Justice

May 1, 2019 · Legislative Recap

Now that the 116th Congress has been in session for almost five months, we’re taking another look at the recent legislative activity of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates currently serving in Congress. In this article we’ll outline some of the bills introduced by each candidate this year on the ...

What can GovTrack data tell us about the thirteen most recent and current Members of Congress running for President?

Mar 25, 2019 · Analysis and Commentary

“POTUS Seal” by Nathan Borror is licensed under CC BY 2.0. What can GovTrack data tell us about the most recent and current Members of Congress running for President? We look at bill sponsorship and key votes for a unique analysis of these Democratic presidential hopefuls. Democrats are preparing for ...

We analyzed all 100 Weekly Democratic Addresses during the Trump era so far.

Jan 2, 2019 · Analysis and Commentary

by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin “Studio Microphone” by curtis.kennington is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Every week, congressional Democrats deliver a weekly address. Who has spoken to present the party’s main official messages, what have they spoken about, and why? Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, GovTrack Insider

The Senate has never been as un-democratic as it was in 2017–2018, and minority rule could continue in 2019 for nominations

Dec 30, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

An analysis of Senate votes from 1789–2018 shows the slim margins in 2017 and 2018 were unprecedented. The U.S. Constitution created the United States Senate with equal representation — two senators — from each of the country’s states, despite the wide variation in population from state to state. Fair ...

The 115th Congress in Review

Dec 28, 2018 · Legislative Recap

“Sunsetting in Rearview Mirror, South Dakota” by Arthur Chapman is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Every Congress is subject to scrutiny on productivity, partisanship, and policy. But in the wake of the highly controversial Trump Administration and a growing sense of national partisanship, perhaps the 115th Congress (January 3, 2017-January ...

Almost Unanimous, 2018 edition: We asked why these lone dissenters withheld their votes on votes

Dec 28, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin No topic is free of dissension in modern politics, not even the most seemingly controversy-free votes. Sometimes only a single member opposes a vote in the Senate or House, even when hundreds of their colleagues vote yes. For the third installment in our ...

President Trump’s stack of bills was real

Dec 27, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

Though it was widely tweeted that President Trump was signing a blank sheet of paper a tweet last week, causing speculation that the whole photo was staged — it wasn’t. The paper may have been blank, but Trump did sign 49 bills into law on December 21. > None <script ...

Analysis: Why don’t more bills with broad popular support become laws?

Nov 30, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

GovTrack.us founder Joshua Tauberer takes a selfie at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate On the southern coast of Boston lies the easiest path to becoming a Senator: just walk in. The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate is home to the only ...

Should House members be allowed to serve on boards of publicly traded companies?

Oct 31, 2018 · Bill Summary

Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY4) After a member of Congress was arrested for insider trading for a company he served on the board for, should the practice of board memberships for House members be banned? ### __Context__ Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY27) was arrested and is currently under indictment for insider trading. ...

Trust in mass media is at an all time low not because reporting has gotten worse, but because data access has gotten better.

Oct 10, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

Illustration by GovTrack staffer Ben Hammer American trust in media reached an all time low in 2016. The national conversation on media focuses on accusations of poor fact-checking, propaganda, and lies. And although mistrust in mass media seems to be disproportionately a Republican issue,

With Kavanaugh vote, the Senate reaches a historic low in democratic metric

Oct 7, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

The disconnect between the United States Senate and the American people has never been greater. If you thought the Senate has gone off its rails, the numbers back you up. #### The Senate majority represents a historically low proportion of the country’s population. Based on a new analysis of Senate ...

President Trump’s First 17 Months

May 17, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

With President Trump’s latest claim of unparalleled success in office, we took a fresh look today at his record on legislative accomplishments. #### How many new laws As you might remember, President Trump claimed throughout 2017 that he had signed into law the most new statutes of any past president ...

Members literally don’t have enough time to read some bills before a vote is held. This change would require they do.

Mar 29, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA5) How fast can you read? Can you read 2,232 pages in only 18 hours? That would be 124 pages per hour for 18 hours without a break and with complete comprehension. If you can’t, then you’re like most members of Congress and nearly every other human ...

12 House members changed their votes on Trump impeachment. Why?

Feb 8, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

The House has twice voted on impeaching President Trump — or more precisely, on a motion to table impeachment — once on December 6, and again a month and a half later on January 19. Although every Republican voted against holding an impeachment vote both times, 12 House Democrats changed ...

Introducing GovTrack’s Congressional Misconduct Database

Feb 6, 2018 · News About GovTrack

We chronicled 372 allegations of misconduct from 1789 to today. Today we introduce our full Congressional Misconduct Database containing 372 instances of misconduct and alleged misconduct by Members of the United States Congress from 1789 to the present. https://www.govtrack.us/misconduct So what is in the database? Lots. It is ...

Almost Unanimous, 2017 edition: We asked why these lone dissenters withheld their votes on bills.

Jan 16, 2018 · Analysis and Commentary

by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin Sometimes everybody agrees on something… that is, everybody except one holdout. There were 24 congressional votes in 2017 for which all legislators in the House or Senate voted yes except for a single dissenter. This is notably more than in previous years: there ...

Falling From First to Last: President Trump has signed the fewest bills into law by this point in any recent president’s first year

Dec 21, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Do you like facts too? Support our work with your one-time or monthly support, and then head to www.GovTrack.us to track exactly what Congress is up to. --- As of today, President Trump has signed the fewest bills into law by this point in any president’s first year at least ...

Site Updates in 2017

Dec 12, 2017 · News About GovTrack

Hi everyone! Your GovTrackers Jesse, Amy, Ben, and Josh have been busy since our last update in 2016 adding new information and functionality to the site. Here’s what’s new in 2017. Check it out! ## New Legislative Information on GovTrack ### Misconduct Database Just last week we launched a new ...

Democrats and Republicans vote down impeachment of the President for lack of integrity and inciting hate

Dec 8, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

On December 6, 2017, Rep. Al Green introduced articles of impeachment against President Trump. Green introduced the resolution as a privileged motion and it was voted on the same day. As expected the resolution did not move forward, losing by 364–58 with all Republicans and most Democrats voting against it. ...

Should we have democracy? This political science professor argues no.

Nov 6, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

By Jesse Rifkin, Reporting from Washington, D.C. Photo credit: Jason Brennan “The problem with government of the people, by the people and for the people,” quipped comedian David Javerbaum, “is the people.” Jason Brennan would agree. The Georgetown University professor of ethics and public policy penned a provocative book in ...

Our first diversity report

Oct 19, 2017 · News About GovTrack

We’re calling on other civic technology organizations to join us. Over the last few years major technology companies including Facebook, Apple, and AT&T have begun publishing an annual “diversity report” that includes the proportion of their employees who are women and people of color. The reports have become an ...

Next week, Republicans might ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy

Sep 29, 2017 · Legislative Preview

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ8), lead House sponsor of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act Next week, the House will vote the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. It’s passed the House in both of the past two sessions of Congress, but now ...

Graham-Cassidy 🤕 Updater 8

Sep 27, 2017 · Legislative Recap

The reconciliation approach to repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act appears to be done for FY2017. Per Axios, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), sponsors of the last of reconciliation-based legislation, announced yesterday that they had asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) not to hold a ...

Graham-Cassidy 🤕 Updater 7

Sep 26, 2017 · Legislative Recap

The sole hearing on the Graham-Cassidy bill (available for viewing) was yesterday. About an hour before it ended, the preliminary CBO report was released and Susan Collins (R-ME) confirmed she was a No vote. The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has not indicated whether he will bring the bill ...

Graham-Cassidy 🤕 Updater 6

Sep 25, 2017 · Legislative Recap

The sole hearing on the Graham-Cassidy bill is today at 2 p.m. EDT. ### Major Revision Late Sunday night, sponsors released a substantially revised version of the legislation (as well as detailed analyses) to lobbyists who then shared it with journalists. NBC’s story linked to the detailed analyses shared last ...

Graham-Cassidy 🤕 Updater 5

Sep 24, 2017 · Legislative Recap

There are no changes to upcoming actions on the Graham-Cassidy bill. Monday’s hearing and CNN Town Hall remain on the schedule. A group of major health care industry organizations released a joint statement opposing the legislation. ### Next action? * Senate Finance Committee hearing Monday at 10:00 a.m. EDT. * ...

Graham-Cassidy 🤕 Updater 4

Sep 23, 2017 · Legislative Recap

There are no changes to upcoming actions on the Graham-Cassidy bill. Monday’s hearing and CNN Town Hall remain on the schedule. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Rand Paul (R-KY) announced yesterday they would not vote for the bill. ### Next action? * Senate Finance Committee hearing Monday at 10:00 a.m. ...

Graham-Cassidy 🤕 Updater 3

Sep 22, 2017 · Legislative Recap

There are no changes to official upcoming actions on the Graham-Cassidy bill, but there will be a town hall hosted by CNN on Monday featuring Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) for the Democrats and Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) for the Republicans. Sanders recently ...

Graham-Cassidy 🤕 Updater 2

Sep 21, 2017 · Legislative Recap

There are no changes to upcoming actions on the Graham-Cassidy bill. In the absence of analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, the effects of the bill are still under discussion. Many on social media may have seen variations on the theme of “this bill will make X procedure cost Y ...

Congress faces the debt ceiling on December 8. One lawmaker suggests: what if there was no debt ceiling?

Sep 20, 2017 · Bill Summary

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA13), lead sponsor of H.R. 3693 What happens if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling by December 8? Basic government expenditures like Social Security checks might not go out, the nation’s credit rating could get downgraded, and borrowing money could be subject to much higher interest rates. ...

Graham-Cassidy 🤕 Updater

Sep 20, 2017 · Legislative Recap

Health care is back on Congress’s agenda. The new “Graham-Cassidy” proposal would repeal large parts of the Affordable Care Act (aka ACA/Obamacare). Here’s what it would do: * Repeals the individual and employer mandates and cost requirements for coverage of preexisting conditions * Caps Medicaid spending * Pauses federal dollars ...

Trump’s nominee to run NASA is Oklahoma Rep. Jim Bridenstine. How has he voted in Congress?

Sep 18, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK1), nominee to become Administrator of NASA Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK1) was nominated last week by President Donald Trump to run NASA. The congressman is proving more controversial than other previous NASA administrator nominees, since some believe he’s a suboptimal choice because he has criticized NASA’s studying ...

So what did it take to get in trouble in the early years of Congress? Hint: not murder.

Sep 8, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

“Exit”. Chris Griffith. Accessed on Flickr 9/8/2017. CC-BY. https://flic.kr/p/6MJMYm In 1838, one member of Congress literally murdered another member but wasn’t expelled from Congress or even censured as a result. That led us to wonder just what would get a Congress member punished during the formative years of the ...

Trump’s pick to chair the Export-Import Bank voted to end the Export-Import Bank.

Sep 5, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Former Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ5), Trump’s nominee to run the Export-Import Bank After Trump selected an Energy Secretary who once vowed to abolish the Department of Energy, President Trump’s nominee to chair the Export-Import Bank voted against reauthorizing the very agency he’s now poised to lead. The Export-Import Bank is ...

2017 Backer Update

Jul 30, 2017 · News About GovTrack

Thank you to our users for the incredible support you have given us. For those that have supported us on Patreon or by hiding the advertisements, your support does not only benefit the GovTrack team, but also the millions of Americans who uses the site to stay informed. We ...

Interview: Rep. Mark Pocan on performing magic tricks, why Hillary Clinton lost Wisconsin, and why Mark Ruffalo should seek office

Jun 20, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI2) _By Jesse Rifkin. Photos by Joshua Tauberer. Reporting from Washington, D.C._ Decades before becoming a congressman, Mark Pocan won top junior magician in Wisconsin at age 14. Now he regularly offers up _Magic Mondays_ videos on his YouTube and Facebook pages, performing tricks while explaining topical ...

The COVFEFE Act would permanently archive all of President Trump’s social media posts

Jun 15, 2017 · Bill Summary

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL5), lead sponsor of the COVFEFE Act President Trump’s May 31st tweet “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” generated headlines as the nation speculated on what exactly the tweet meant. Now in June it’s prompted a congressional bill that could prevent Trump from deleting social media postings. ...

OPEN Government Data Act would establish “presumption of openness” for federal government information

Jun 13, 2017 · Bill Summary

Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA6), lead House sponsor of the OPEN Government Data Act Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), lead Senate sponsor of the OPEN Government Data Act ### __Context__ Data.gov was launched in 2009 as a public repository for data about the federal government, including budgets, revenues, and more. But the ...

What the first Congress of 1789 can teach the Congress of 2017

May 26, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Fergus Bordewich, author of “The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government.” [Image credit: FergusBordewich.com] If you think the current Congress has problems, look back 228 years to the very first Congress. Political factions were even more divided then — yet ...

13 laws passed this session have utilized this previously-obscure 1996 provision

May 18, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Former Rep. Bill Archer (R-TX7), lead sponsor of the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996, which contained a provision making easier congressional reversals of presidential regulations A law allowing telecom and Internet companies to sell your browsing data and history to third parties. A law allowing American oil and ...

Our testimony to the House of Representatives on public access to legislative information

Apr 30, 2017 · News About GovTrack

<iframe frameborder="0" height="393" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wNhbAuZzATo?start=828&feature=oembed&start=828" width="700"></iframe> Everything that our government does starts with an “appropriation” that sets a funding level for it. When Congress sets funding levels for the government as a whole, it also sets funding levels for itself to pay congressional staff, the Capitol police, to maintain the ...

Setting the record straight: President Trump’s first 100 days

Apr 29, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

For many years reporters have come to us to fact-check statistics on legislative activity. This year we were asked by several reporters to fact-check the President’s claim that his first 100 days in office were “historic.” The President’s numbers were wrong (more on that at the end), and they were ...

Pence broke a tied Senate vote allowing states to withhold Planned Parenthood funding

Apr 27, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Diane Black (R-TN6), lead House sponsor of the legislation Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), lead Senate sponsor of the legislation Joe Biden never got the opportunity to break a single 50–50 Senate tie in eight years as vice president. Mike Pence has already broken two. One from last month has ...

No TRUMP Act would prevent taxpayer money from being spent on president’s hotel businesses

Mar 21, 2017 · Bill Summary

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR3), lead sponsor of the No Taxpayer Revenue Used to Monetize the Presidency Act President Trump, as he likes to constantly remind everyone, is really rich. But amid concerns that he may be improperly using the presidency to further enrich himself and his businesses — including just ...

What’s Tim Kaine been up to?

Mar 14, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee “We know that the work remains,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said in his first-ever concession speech last November. “We know that the dreams of empowering families and children remain.” What has he done to further that work and those dreams ...

Tracking changes to the American Health Care Act (AHCA)

Mar 14, 2017 · News About GovTrack

Last week the House Republican leadership unveiled a draft proposal to, as they call it, “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). As with all legislation in Congress, drafts are often amended on their way to becoming law — the AHCA is no different. As the draft works ...

Key Facts on the “Repeal and Replace” Health Care Bill

Mar 9, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

The original Healthcare.gov and ReadTheBill.gop The American Health Care Act of 2017 (AHCA), H.R. 1628, is the House Republicans’ leading proposal to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare, but we’ll abbreviate it ACA) and “defund” Planned Parenthood. Revealed to the public on March 6 as a draft ...

Should “the second-most powerful man in Washington” be replaced with a five-person board?

Mar 3, 2017 · Bill Summary

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), lead sponsor of a bill to change the governing structure of the CFPB One of the most important governmental responses to the 2008 financial crash was a new agency tasked with protecting consumers. But Republicans believe that the head of the agency has gotten out of ...

The second bill President Trump signed strengthens the Government Accountability Office’s oversight powers

Mar 1, 2017 · Bill Summary

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), one of the law’s two lead sponsors Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA1), one of the law’s two lead sponsors The second bill President Trump ever signed into law is Public Law 115–3, the GAO Access and Oversight Act. (The first bill Trump signed — which GovTrack Insider ...

The last bill President Obama will ever sign codified the Presidential Innovation Fellows program.

Feb 2, 2017 · Bill Summary

The last bill President Obama signed was H.R. 39, the Tested Ability to Leverage Exceptional National Talent Act, or the TALENT Act. It is now Public Law 115–1. #### What the law does President Obama launched the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program in 2012, to recruit private sector software engineers, designers ...

The most controversial new rules governing the House this Congress

Jan 31, 2017 · Bill Summary

House Resolution 5 passed earlier this month, setting the rules for how the House of Representatives would operate in the 115th Congress (2017–2018). Here are several notable rules which took effect, including ones controversially changing the accounting tactics for a likely Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) repeal, potentially drastically cutting the ...

Recent military officials are prohibited from serving as Defense Secretary. Should Congress have passed a waiver for James Mattis?

Jan 26, 2017 · Bill Summary

The new Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, was a four-star Marine general. Mattis’s recent service upends the traditional separation where the Defense Secretary — the official in charge of the Pentagon and most of the American military — is a non-uniformed civilian, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of ...

The “budget reconciliation” process is the first step in the repeal of Obamacare

Jan 26, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

It’s no secret that the President and congressional Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Their main method of preparing to do so is Senate Concurrent Resolution 3 which passed the Senate and House in early January 2017. ### What the resolution does Introduced by ...

Former Indiana Senator Dan Coats is Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence. How did he vote in Congress?

Jan 23, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) was recently selected as President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as Director of National Intelligence. Coats served in the Senate from 2011 until just a few weeks ago, declining to run for reelection and retiring at the start of the new Congress on January 3, ...

A review of the 2015–2016 Congress, the last Congress of the Obama Administration

Jan 23, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

The 114th Congress The 114th Congress, the session that ran from January 3, 2015 through January 3, 2017, was historic. Republicans regained control of the Senate for the first time in eight years. After four years in which Republicans controlled the House, President Obama for the first time faced ...

After 2016’s Democratic protest on Periscope, new rules fine members for filming video on House floor

Jan 13, 2017 · Bill Summary

Last June, a week after Republicans obstructed gun control legislation shortly after the Orlando mass shooting, congressional Democrats organized a “sit-in” protest. More than 60 members sat or stood on the House floor and refused to yield, even through the nights, with their staffers bringing in sleeping bags and pillows. ...

With congressional ethics on the line, we looked at where the Ethics committees have found violations.

Jan 12, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

The Senate and House Ethics Committees are bipartisan committees that evaluate potential ethics violations by senators, representatives, and their staff. The committees can find fault, for which the committee can take action, or not find fault. As a new session of Congress begins, GovTrack Insider examined all Senate and House ...

How a complex network of bills becomes a law: Introducing a new data analysis of text incorporation!

Jan 7, 2017 · News About GovTrack

A new analysis we incorporated into GovTrack late last year reveals when provisions of bills are incorporated into other bills. Our new tool will reveal much more about what Congress is doing, and what laws are being made, than has ever been known to the general public. For the complete ...

How a complex network of bills becomes a law: Introducing a new data analysis of text incorporation!

Jan 7, 2017 · News About GovTrack

Provisions from 15 separate bills were merged into two bills that Congress ultimately enacted. A new analysis we incorporated into GovTrack late last year reveals when provisions of bills are incorporated into other bills. Our new tool will reveal much more about what Congress is doing, and what laws are ...

House Republicans tried to silence the Office of Congressional Ethics in a pre-session secret caucus vote

Jan 6, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

House Republicans came under fire this week for announcing that they would reduce the role of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). Republicans reneged within a day, due to public outcry led by advocates such as Daniel Schuman of Demand Progress. Still, the newfound attention on congressional ethics puts a ...

We looked at eight years of the Republican Weekly Address

Jan 4, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Donald Trump delivers the Republican Weekly Address shortly before the November 2016 election Every week since Ronald Reagan started the tradition in 1982, the president delivers a weekly address. And every week, the opposition party delivers an address as well. What can the Weekly Republican Addresses during the Obama ...

Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke is Trump’s pick for Secretary of the Interior. How has he voted in Congress?

Jan 1, 2017 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Ryan Zinke Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as Secretary of the Interior. Zinke, a first-term Congressman elected in 2014, serves on the House Natural Resources Committee, including the Subcommittees on Energy and Natural Resources and Federal Lands. What bills has Zinke introduced ...

South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney is Trump’s pick for Office of Management and Budget Director. How has he voted in Congress?

Dec 26, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC5), a three-term Congressman elected in 2010, is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, more commonly known as OMB. OMB assists the president in preparing the federal budget, which totaled $3.68 trillion this fiscal year, or 20.7 percent ...

Should the U.S. keep its Electoral College? This constitutional amendment would replace it with a national popular vote.

Dec 15, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Donald Trump won the presidency with a 306 to 232 Electoral College advantage, or 56.8% of the electoral votes. Yet Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin currently tallied at more than 2.3 million votes, or 50.9 percent of the two-party vote. This is the second time in ...

Ending GovTrack’s bulk data and API

Dec 10, 2016 · News About GovTrack

Open legislative data has been a core part of GovTrack’s mission since 2005, when there wasn’t very much of it. We were the first to provide comprehensive information about Congress’s legislative activities in an open, structured data format — a technical format that software developers (building websites and apps), journalists, ...

Georgia Rep. Tom Price is Trump’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services. How has he voted in Congress?

Dec 6, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA6), a six-term Congressman first elected in 2004, is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Trump in his first post-election television interview with “60 Minutes” pledged that health care would be one of his top three priorities in his first ...

Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo is Trump’s pick for CIA Director. How has he voted in Congress?

Dec 6, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS4), a three-term Congressman first elected in 2010, is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as CIA Director. What bills has Pompeo introduced and how has he voted in Congress on issues related to international affairs, law enforcement, national security, and other issues he’ll face as CIA ...

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is Trump’s pick for Attorney General. How has he voted in Congress?

Dec 4, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Sen. Jeff Sessions Jeff Sessions, a four-term senator first elected in 1996, was the first senator to endorse President-elect Trump for president in February 2016. He served as an advisor to his campaign from then through Election Day and was one of Trump’s final five contenders to be named vice ...

GovTrack Site Updates in 2016

Nov 26, 2016 · News About GovTrack

This past year was a busy year for us. We’ve made many improvements throughout the site and thanks to users like you we’ll be able to keep the site going into 2017. ## You helped us increase our budget Thanks to users like you who are supporting us

Fairness in Political Advertising Act would require television stations to provide equal air time for political candidates

Nov 7, 2016 · Bill Summary

A recent analysis of coverage in the media of the presidential candidates estimated how much it would have cost the campaigns to purchase the same amount of air time, given current market rates for advertisements. Republican candidate Donald Trump “earned” $1.89 billion worth of media coverage. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ...

State voter identification laws would be rolled back under this bill

Nov 5, 2016 · Bill Summary

Ever since the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down the most important provisions of the Voting Right Act as unconstitutional, a number of states instituted laws such as requiring voter identification or limiting early voting, laws that would have previously been prohibited or blocked. Opponents — mostly Democrats — call ...

Election Integrity Act would require paper ballots for elections

Nov 5, 2016 · Bill Summary

After Russian hackers hacked files and emails from the Democratic National Committee earlier this year, many remain worried that those hackers or others could tamper with Election Day in a few days — possibly even significantly affecting the results. This is especially a growing concern given the increasing use of ...

Election Infrastructure and Security Promotion Act would designate election systems as DHS “critical infrastructure”

Nov 4, 2016 · Bill Summary

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lists 16 sectors as “critical infrastructure” potentially affecting our national security, items considered “so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety.” The list includes nuclear reactors, ...

Vote By Mail Act would allow everyone to vote by mail in federal elections (and extend automatic registration at the DMV)

Nov 2, 2016 · Bill Summary

At least 22 states allow their citizens to vote by mail, and three of them even vote entirely by mail: Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. The Vote By Mail Act, H.R. 5819 and S. 3214, would allow all eligible voters in all 50 states to do so. The legislation was Introduced ...

Term limits for Congress proposed by Donald Trump — and some members of Congress too

Oct 23, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump last week called for term limits for members of Congress, alongside a five-point package of “ethics reforms” he proposed. Several resolutions introduced in this Congress would propose a constitutional amendment creating term limits for members of Congress. There are three different proposals across nine separate ...

Almost Unanimous: We asked why these lone dissenters withheld their votes on 10 bills.

Oct 9, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

When Congress votes to pass legislation, sometimes there is a mere single holdout. Sometimes that lonely voice in the darkness can grow into a chorus over time — for example, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA13) was

Last week Hillary Clinton announced a proposal to hike the estate tax. The Sensible Estate Tax Act could accomplish that.

Oct 3, 2016 · Bill Summary

Few issues highlight the economic differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump like the estate tax. An estate is everything a person owns at their time of death. Under current law,

Creating congressional district maps with Mapbox

Sep 20, 2016 · News About GovTrack

By Aaron Dennis and Joshua Tauberer. Originally published on Sunlight Foundation’s OpenGov Voices blog on July 6, 2016. Every 10 years — after the decennial census and as mandated by the U.S. Constitution — states are subdivided into sets of congressional districts for representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. ...

What if each bill Congress debated only dealt with one topic?

Aug 31, 2016 · Bill Summary

Often it’s the only way that legislation will get passed anymore — bits and pieces from various forms of legislation will be cobbled together into one package. Even if a representative or senator disagrees with some provision, they might still vote for the overall bill as a compromise. Rep. Mia ...

One of Trump’s most extreme proposals is ending birthright citizenship in America. This bill in Congress would enact it.

Aug 6, 2016 · Bill Summary

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. Currently the status quo policy in America, ever since the 14th Amendment was passed shortly after the Civil War, anybody born on U.S. soil is automatically made a citizen, even if neither of their parents are. About

After a 40-year ban, Clinton wants to allow federal taxpayer funds for abortion. Tim Kaine doesn’t.

Aug 2, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine votes mostly with the Democratic party line — about 96 percent of the time, as GovTrack Insider reported in an article last week. But the Virginia Senator is now causing worry among many of the party faithful with his stance on abortion funding. It all ...

What Sen. Tim Kaine’s record says about how he’d serve as Vice President

Jul 26, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Sen. Tim Kaine Tim Kaine, selected as Hillary Clinton’s running mate last week, was described as a “safe” pick, since Kaine hasn’t made tremendous waves or caused much controversy during his time as a U.S. senator from Virginia. But what could that time as a senator tell us about what ...

Before Mike Pence was Donald Trump’s running mate, he served in Congress for 12 years.

Jul 18, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, represented Indiana’s 2nd and 6th congressional districts in Congress from 2001 to 2012. Pence saw his main introduction to the national spotlight last year as he supported a state “religious freedom” bill — subsequently signed in a watered-down form — ...

Cruz, Sanders, and Paul are back at their Senate jobs — we looked at their latest bills

Jul 11, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Four current senators ran for president this past year, but none of them received their party’s nomination. Since leaving the hills of Iowa and the frigid temperatures of New Hampshire and returning to their day jobs in Washington, D.C., what bills have these senators introduced? #### Ted Cruz Sen. Ted ...

As Election Day nears, what bills have the most vulnerable Senate incumbents introduced?

Jul 7, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Six vulnerable senators are feeling the heat of Election Day fast approaching. The six most vulnerable senators in the upcoming election, according to the Cook Political Report, are all first-term Republicans in split states. How have the Senate bills sponsored by these endangered Republicans changed from the beginning of this ...

Choosing their running mate: Major bills introduced by Trump’s and Clinton’s likely VP picks in…

Jun 30, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will both announce their vice presidential running mates within the next few weeks, prior to their parties’ national conventions in late July. Several of the top contenders for the number-two slots are currently serving in Congress. Which bills have the vice presidential contenders introduced during ...

The country is just three Congress members’ lifetimes old

Jun 22, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

A viral Washington Post article from last year determined that the country is only four presidents’ lifetimes old. Starting from the current president, when Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, former President Herbert Hoover was still alive. When Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, former President Andrew ...

Five gun control and mental health bills that could pass post-Orlando

Jun 20, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Perhaps no mass shooting shook the nation quite like last week’s in Orlando, which at 50 deaths was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. In recent years as polarization has increased to unprecedented levels, Members of Congress from the two parties have been unable to find common ground for ...

National Defense Authorization Act would spent $602 billion on military, keep Guantanamo Bay open, but not include women in military draft

May 31, 2016 · Bill Summary

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is an annual federal spending bill that sets funding levels and outlines spending priorities for the military. Defense spending constituted $602 billion or 16 percent of the federal budget last year, and 54 percent of so-called “discretionary spending” over which Congress exercises yearly control. ...

Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders: Their Wall Street Votes and Proposals

Apr 26, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Image from Flickr user Sam Valadi Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton served in the Senate together during one of the biggest public policy events in recent history — the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the subsequent attempts to rescue the big banks. We looked at the ...

Election season hasn’t distracted Congress from enacting new laws

Apr 17, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Despite the looming presidential election in November, as well as both a House and Senate controlled by the president’s opposing party, Congress has enacted more new laws in the first 105 days of this year than in the same time period in any previous presidential election year since 1996. So ...

Tomorrow: House to Vote on Telecom-Backed Broadband Rate Deregulation Bill

Apr 14, 2016 · Bill Summary

Image via Stephen Melkisethian #### Net neutrality and consumer protections could be gutted, warns the FCC. The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote this week on a Republican bill that would block the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from regulating the rates that Internet Service Providers charge for broadband ...

Clinton’s and Sanders’ legislative records on fossil fuels

Apr 7, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the leading Democratic presidential candidates, both served in the Senate. So how do they compare on actions taken in the Senate — votes taken and bills introduced — that affect the fossil fuels industry? ### The Votes During the two years that Hillary Clinton and ...

You can watch almost anything online these days — except the Supreme Court. This bill would change that.

Mar 18, 2016 · Bill Summary

The Supreme Court is (in)famously hesitant to join the age of modern technology. They began recording audio of their oral arguments in 1955, two or three decades after the widespread use of radio. Some of their justices were still using typewriters in 2004. Now the big issue is their refusal ...

Senate unanimously passes transparency reform bill that the Obama Administration secretly lobbied to kill

Mar 17, 2016 · Bill Summary

Fifty years ago, the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, was enacted to give the public a right to access records held by the executive branch that, although not classified, were not otherwise available to them. However, in recent years, the government has increasingly used loopholes and other tactics to ...

What bills has Paul Ryan sponsored this Congress?

Mar 16, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Paul Ryan gavels-in the House of Representatives on Feb. 12, 2016 Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI1) sponsored nine bills from January through June of 2015, during his prior role as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee before being elected Speaker of the House. But in what could be ...

The big hurdle — “mens rea” — that could derail criminal justice reform

Mar 3, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

For the first time in decades, a bipartisan coalition in Congress has made strides towards reforming the criminal sentencing laws that have lead to skyrocketing incarceration rates, particularly among blacks and latinos. But a pet cause of some corporate interests and Republicans may prevent the bipartisan coalition from actually achieving ...

Presidential candidates have proposed changing the U.S. Constitution: What would it mean?

Mar 3, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

How might the country change under the next president — not just through laws or policies, but in the actual Constitution itself? The congressional record reveals possible answers to that question. Three current senators and one former senator remain in the presidential race: Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX),

House passes Flint water crisis bill to require notifications of high lead levels

Feb 29, 2016 · Bill Summary

Only six days after it was introduced, the Safe Drinking Water Act Improved Compliance Awareness Act, H.R. 4470, passed the House by an almost unanimous vote of 416–2. The two votes against were cast by Representatives Todd Rokita (IN-4) and Thomas Massie (KY-4). H.R. 4470 would require public water service ...

Five Finance Bills in One

Feb 29, 2016 · Bill Summary

The Capital Markets Improvement Act, H.R. 1675, includes text from five finance bills that would amend or repeal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations. H.R. 1675 passed the House in a partisan 265–159 vote, with most support coming from Republicans and most opposition from Democrats. The White House has

The “Flamethrowers? Really? Act” is “really” a bill to regulate the weapon

Feb 24, 2016 · Bill Summary

Most bills in Congress have long and technical names, ones that few people can memorize. The most famous bill of this decade, “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010,” became popularly known as simply “Obamacare.” That’s not a risk with H.R. 4009, the Flamethrowers? Really? Act. #### Flamethrowers ...

Paycheck Fairness Act

Feb 11, 2016 · Bill Summary

Much has been made in recent years of the gender-based wage gap, with the oft-cited number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that full-time female workers make 78 cents for every dollar a man makes. (Although some studies have indicated that the gap is negligible or virtually nonexistent after controlling ...

The Flint water crisis is about to hit the Senate floor

Feb 3, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

The Senate this week will likely vote on an amendment from Michigan’s senators, Gary Peters (D-MI) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), designed to help Flint, Michigan recover from an ongoing public health crisis caused by lead contamination in the municipal water supply. The amendment would provide up to $400 million in ...

Ted Cruz’s Expatriate Terrorist Act to be considered in committee on Thursday

Jan 26, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Ted Cruz asks the Senate to pass the bill on September 18, 2014. With voters now ranking terrorism as the top problem facing the U.S. for the first time in a decade, and Cruz is currently projected to win the Iowa caucus next week, the Expatriate Terrorist Act is one ...

Senate rejects refugee screening bill after Democrats link it to Trump’s anti-Muslim proposal

Jan 25, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

The Senate on Wednesday voted against a House-passed bill (H.R. 4038) that would have expanded the screening process for Syrian and Iraqi refugees looking to find sanctuary in the United States. #### About the bill The bill called for the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to create a new background ...

House to vote on undoing the Iran nuclear deal — after Iran dismantles its nuclear program

Jan 25, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

The House is scheduled to vote next week on a bill that could derail the Iranian nuclear deal. The House began a vote on H.R. 3662, the Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act, last week but in an unusual procedural move Republican leadership ended the vote early before 137 representatives had ...

American citizen nationals of Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria affected by changes to reciprocal Visa Waiver Program

Jan 25, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

A bill introduced last week aims to undo a potentially-harmful consequence of a December law, which some say could make it more difficult for some Americans to travel to certain foreign countries. #### The change to the law Under the decades-old Visa Waiver Program (VWP), citizens of 38 countries which ...

President Vetoes Attempt to Void the Clean Water Rule

Jan 22, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

The President vetoed S.J.Res. 22, a joint resolution that would have voided a rule extending EPA regulatory authority over certain bodies of water. The Senate voted to override the veto, but only managed 52 of the 60 necessary votes to avoid a filibuster. On June 29, 2015 the EPA and ...

Workplace Discrimination Protection and Limiting Mining Regulations :

Jan 14, 2016 · Analysis and Commentary

Two bills passed the House last week. One to protect unpaid interns from discrimination and another to limit regulation on surface mining near streams. #### Federal Intern Protection Act: Current law does not grant unpaid federal government interns certain protections that employees have. H.R. 3231 would expand employee protection against ...

Senate votes down bill to increase Federal Reserve transparency

Jan 13, 2016 · Bill Summary

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Building panorama by Michael Daddino (CC-BY) On Thursday, the Senate voted against Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2015, a bill that would have opened up the Federal Reserve System to a more complete audit. The bill, long advocated for ...

Week Ahead: Government transparency bills up for consideration in the House

Jan 11, 2016 · Legislative Preview

The House this week will consider legislation calling for the federal government to consolidate and increase the amount of information provided to the public related to its programs, and seeking to improve the process for making Freedom of Information Act requests, among a number of other bills. #### Taxpayers Right-To-Know ...

Congress sends the White House a bill to repeal key parts of Obamacare and pause federal funding of Planned Parenthood

Jan 6, 2016 · Bill Summary

www.healthcare.gov, the front page of the Affordable Care Act Today the House of Representatives passed a bill that Republicans are calling their “best shot” at repealing the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, and ending federal funding for Planned Parenthood. House Vote Although the bill has now passed the House ...

The Week Ahead in the House (Jan. 4 to Jan. 8)

Jan 4, 2016 · Legislative Preview

The House this week will kick off the second session of the 114th Congress by bringing up the Planned Parenthood-defunding/Obamacare-repeal bill and legislation to repeal regulations and to make class-action lawsuits harder to bring. #### Planned Parenthood and the ACA The House will be voting on the

Political parties may win unlimited election spending caps through a rider in the must-pass spending bill

Dec 7, 2015 · Bill Summary

UPDATE — December 17, 2015 — The New York Times is reporting that the unlimited spending caps provision was not added to the spending bill: > Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has failed in his high-profile push to include a change in congressional campaign spending rules in the new ...

Latest Obamacare repeal bill may get a vote in the Senate — and then would head to the President

Dec 2, 2015 · Bill Summary

That is, if presidential politics don’t get in the way. Senate Republicans this week will attempt to use one of their most powerful parliamentary tools to send President Obama a bill to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and prohibit Medicaid reimbursements for Planned Parenthood services for ...

Week Ahead for Nov. 30-Dec. 4

Nov 29, 2015 · Legislative Preview

Congress this week may vote on transportation and housing appropriations, breast cancer research, cybercrime, historic preservation, and energy efficiency and infrastructure security (see our separate article on the energy bill). #### Transportation-HUD Appropriations The Senate leadership had not released its legislative schedule at press time, but the chamber might continue ...

Energy efficiency and infrastructure security to come to the House floor

Nov 29, 2015 · Bill Summary

The House this week is scheduled to vote on the North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act (H.R. 8), legislation that seeks to promote energy efficiency inside the federal government and improve the security of energy-related infrastructure primarily by expanding the Department of Energy’s (DOE) authorities. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), ...

House Passes Bill to Expand Background Checks on Syrian and Iraqi Refugees

Nov 19, 2015 · Bill Summary

A bill that would expand background checks on Iraqi and Syrian refugees hoping to enter the United States has moved quickly through congressional procedures. H.R. 4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies SAFE Act, received a House vote on November 19, just two days after it was introduced. The vote ...

Big Banks Saved from Fed Dividend Reduction in Highway Bill

Nov 19, 2015 · Bill Summary

Photo by Nick Bastian (CC-BY) Lawmakers have been working on a major transportation infrastructure bill, H.R. 22, the DRIVE Act. When the Senate passed the bill in July, road and bridge infrastructure project would have been paid for, in part, by reducing a benefit that big banks receive from ...

Detecting and Preventing Insider Threats to the Department of Homeland Security

Nov 10, 2015 · Bill Summary

On Nov. 2 the House passed a bill to establish a program to detect “insider threats” within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). H.R. 3361: Insider Threat and Mitigation Act of 2015 is sponsored by the chair of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Rep. Peter King (R-NY2). King ...

The Ex-Im Bank is One Step Closer to Being Revived Thanks to a Rare Parliamentary Procedure in the House

Nov 3, 2015 · Bill Summary

House Democrats and a portion of the Republican House majority teamed up last week to win an important battle in the fight to bring back the Export-Import bank, a quasi-governmental agency that provides subsidies to foreign companies buying American goods. On Monday, October, 26, 2015, the bipartisan coalition successfully used ...

Week Ahead for Nov. 2–6: Water, Defense, and Highways

Nov 2, 2015 · Legislative Preview

This week Congress will consider excluding certain water from EPA authority, establishing a long term highway and infrastructure plan, and several bills on homeland security. Read on below the fold! U.S. EPA photo by Jeanethe Falvey The Senate this week will resume debate on the

Debt collectors will be able to robocall cell phones under a provision added to the budget in closed-door negotiations

Oct 30, 2015 · Bill Summary

Photo by alexkerhead. #### Offsetting spending by debt collection In an attempt to offset spending increases, the budget deal moving through Congress would allow debt collectors to make robocalls to people’s cell phones in order to collect student loan debt or other debt that is owed to, or guaranteed ...

Republicans prepare to bypass filibuster rules to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood

Oct 28, 2015 · Bill Summary

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) on the House floor on Oct. 23 (C-SPAN) House Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and end federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Budget reconciliation is the one chance each year that the majority party gets to ...

Presidential Candidates Miss Votes

Oct 27, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

Update: Check out our real-time presidential candidates missed votes tracker. ————— The 2016 presidential candidates are under a lot of scrutiny right now, and the five who are sitting senators even more so. Sen. Marco Rubio in particular has been the focus of criticisms that he hasn’t showed up to ...

Week Ahead for Oct. 26–30

Oct 25, 2015 · Legislative Preview

Highway funding, debt limit, “CISA” bills top Congress’s to-do list With federal funding authority for highway programs set to expire at midnight on Thursday, Congress likely will approve another short-term measure reauthorizing these programs. We expect the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2015 (H.R. 3819), which would run through November ...

Senate takes up “CISA” cybersecurity bill that asks companies to share information with the government

Oct 22, 2015 · Bill Summary

Tech companies say the bill could harm privacy and security. After years of delay and false starts, Congress may finally be on the verge of passing a bill to address Internet data breaches and cybersecurity. The Senate is once again debating the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S. 754), or CISA, ...

The Week Ahead

Oct 17, 2015 · Legislative Preview

U.S. Treasury building. Photo by Almonroth. House and Senate lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week following the Columbus Day recess and will face a pile of unfinished business over the coming weeks. Here we discuss legislation related to a looming __debt limit breach__, the unlawful __disclosure of the ...

Congress May Be About to Pass Criminal Sentencing Reform

Oct 14, 2015 · Bill Summary

Photo by miss_millions. Congress can’t agree on the budget, the debt ceiling, or who should be the next Speaker of the House, but suddenly there has been a bipartisan breakthrough on an issue that has been anathema to many in recent years — reform of the criminal sentencing laws ...

No Speaker since 1933 was elected with more than one vote from the minority party

Oct 9, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

With the Republican party now selecting their nominee for the next Speaker of the House, there’s been some discussion of whether a moderate Republican candidate could secure enough Democratic votes to secure a win without the support of the conservative wing of the party. The data says that’s unlikely. <span ...

Follow-up on funding for Planned Parenthood

Oct 7, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

In continuation of the controversy over federal funding to Planned Parenthood, Republicans have passed a bill in the House that would give states the ability to end their funding to the organization. H.R. 3495 would do this by allowing states to exclude health care providers that perform abortions from participating ...

What have the House Speaker candidates done in Congress?

Oct 7, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

What have the House Speaker candidates done in Congress? ### Our look at their laws, bills, votes, and more. With Speaker of the House John Boehner leaving Congress at the end of the month, the top job in the House of Representatives is up for grabs. Whoever wins the ...

Senate Denies Renewal of Perkins Loan for Higher Education

Oct 6, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Renewed almost without question since establishment in 1958, the Federal Perkins Loan Program — providing loans that aid payment in higher education — was unexpectedly allowed to lapse on September 30, 2015. Perkins is reported as the “government’s oldest student loan program.” H.R. 3594, which would have renewed the loans ...

The Week Ahead

Oct 5, 2015 · Legislative Preview

The Week Ahead With the threat of a government shutdown quelled for the time being, House and Senate lawmakers have turned their attention to other legislative matters, including defense policy, airport security, and the financial services industry. ### Military retirement plans and weapons acquisition Some notable provisions in the ...

GovTrack Updates for Spring/Summer 2015

Oct 4, 2015 · News About GovTrack

Here’s what’s new on GovTrack this Spring & Summer: ### GovTrack Insider After running a summer-long experiment with intern Ben, we successfully funded the launch of GovTrack Insider, where we’ll be posting in-depth articles on bills in Congress and major Congressional activity. GovTrack Insider is made possible by the generous ...

Republicans have a way to pass Planned Parenthood defunding without shutting down the government

Sep 29, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

Republicans have a way to pass Planned Parenthood defunding without shutting down the government Photo by Fibonacci Blue. --- Whichever party controls Congress has one big legislative tool each year for bypassing Senate filibusters and putting a bill on the President’s desk without needing ...

Congress, September 17 and 18: The Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act and the continuation of the Planned Parenthood controversy

Sep 18, 2015 · Legislative Recap

House bills to amend lawsuit abuse policy, establish abortion survival policy, and defund Planned Parenthood were passed with partisan Republican support. Photo by Mark Fischer Flickr --- ### Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act: H.R. 758 has been proposed with the intent to prevent wasteful lawsuits. It ...

The Iran Nuclear Deal

Sep 16, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

The Iran Nuclear Deal Congress began their fall session with five votes on proceedings for the Iran nuclear deal. Photo of negotiations of the Iran Nuclear Deal courtesy of US Department of State Flickr. --- ### How we got here On July 14 the ...

Users report GovTrack makes them more confident about approaching government

Aug 28, 2015 · News About GovTrack

This summer GovTrack ran a survey of its users to learn more about the site’s effectiveness. The survey, run in collaboration with mySociety, revealed something pretty interesting: As peope use GovTrack more, they report GovTrack giving them greater confidence when approaching government. Here are some of the details. ## Who ...

Congress’s Summer Session — A Recap

Aug 18, 2015 · Legislative Recap

--- Reminder: We need your support. If you benefit from reports like this, please support our work on our Kickstarter. If we don’t raise enough money by September 10, GovTrack Insider ends. Don’t let it end! This summer 77 bills were passed in the House and 36 were ...

Discontinuing state-level legislative tracking

Aug 11, 2015 · News About GovTrack

Today I’m turning the lights off on GovTrack’s state-level legislative tracking pages. I added state-level legislative tracking in 2012, through a partnership with LegiNation, Inc. and LegiScan, Inc., with some additional data from Open States. This meant you could get email updates on bills going through your state legislature, besides ...

Six Republican senators approved Planned Parenthood’s activity in a 1993 vote

Aug 4, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

Yesterday’s vote to end federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood nearly lost their federal funding yesterday after pro-life groups questioned whether Planned Parenthood’s exchange of human fetal tissue for money violated conscience or the law. But six senators who voted to end the organization’s federal funding yesterday had ...

Continuing GovTrack Insider

Aug 3, 2015 · News About GovTrack

Continuing GovTrack Insider Hello, Thank you for reading GovTrack Insider! As you know, for the past two months we’ve been writing reports on the activity of Congress as well as summaries of bills, all to make it as easy as possible for readers like you to stay informed about your ...

Congress, July 29 & 30: VA Accountability Act, Veto Threat

Jul 31, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Photo credit to the US DOD Flickr --- The VA Accountability Act (H.R. 1994), which would make it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to demote or fire employees based on poor performance and offer increased protection for whistleblowers, was passed in the House ...

Congress, July 28: Republicans Strike at the Executive Branch and the ACA

Jul 30, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Photo taken from White House Flickr --- The Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act (H.R. 427) would require any major rule given by the executive branch be approved by a joint resolution from Congress before it is enacted. The bill was passed ...

Funding GovTrack Insider

Jul 28, 2015 · News About GovTrack

Like these reports? Help us to keep writing them by backing our project. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1872382405/govtrack-insider If we can reach our goal of $35,000 we’ll be able to keep posting bill summaries and daily reports for the next 6 months, which we began doing earlier this summer. And at our stretch goal ...

Congress, July 27: Bipartisan Transportation Funding and Export-Import Bank Reauthorization

Jul 28, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Photo taken from the Virginia Department of Transportation Flickr --- _This is our report on the activity of Congress. To support the continuation of reports like this one, ____please _back our project here. #### Votes: H.R 22, formerly the Hire More Heroes Act, has become ...

Congress, July 23: Immigration Sanctuary Cities and GMO Labeling

Jul 24, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Photo of the Portland city skyline by Jami Dwyer --- #### Votes: The Enforce the Law for Sanctuary Cities Act (H.R. 3009) would __end funding from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program to state or local governments that inhibit the enforcement of federal immigration laws ...

Congress, July 21 & 22: Coal Ash Regulation and Veteran Employment

Jul 24, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Image by Arnold Paul cropped by Gralo --- #### Votes: The Improving Coal Combustion Residuals Regulation Act (H.R. 1734) would label coal-ash as non-hazardous and create minimum requirements for state-run permit programs on its management and disposal. The bill ...

Education standards and funding for low-income students at issue in future of No Child Left Behind

Jul 20, 2015 · Bill Summary

Education standards and funding for low-income students at issue in future of No Child Left Behind Photo by Bill McChesney (CC-BY) --- Public school funding for low-income students and the future of federal education standards are at issue in Congress’s struggle to update No ...

Congress, July 16: Education Policy Reform and Western Water Security

Jul 18, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Photo credit to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Two bills and their amendments had roll call votes yesterday. The Every Child Achieves Act (S. 1177), which would expand state control over school accountability, provide benefits to charter schools, and make other educational policy changes, was passed by ...

Congress, July 14 & 15: Homes for Heroes, Energy and Water Conservation

Jul 16, 2015 · Legislative Recap

--- #### Roll Call Votes: 16 bills were passed, ten by the House and three by the Senate. Five of the bills had roll call votes: the Homes for Heroes Act (H.R. 251), the Private Investment in Housing Act (H.R. 2997), the Small Company Simple Registration Act (H.R. 1723), part ...

Congress, July 10 & July 13: Biomedical Research and Veteran Entrepreneurship

Jul 14, 2015 · Legislative Recap

FDA photo by Michael J. Ermarth --- This is our daily report of activity in Congress. Today’s report includes summaries of the 21st Century Cures Act and the Veterans Entrepreneurship Act. For more bills please visit our main site, GovTrack. Seven bills were passed in ...

Congress, July 9: Forest Services

Jul 10, 2015 · Legislative Recap

USDA photo by Lance Cheung of Southern Plains and Comanche Type 2 Initial Attack Crews and an Engine Crew --- _This is our daily report on the activity of Congress. Today’s report includes a summary of the Resilient Federal Forests Act, which has been passed ...

Congress, July 8

Jul 9, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Education Reform --- This article has been updated to correct the summary of the Student Success Act, which previously read that the SSA would allow Title I funds to be given to charter schools. Charter schools already are able to receive Title I funds. The SSA would allow those ...

Congress, July 7

Jul 8, 2015 · Legislative Recap

The Every Child Achieves Act, which is a bipartisan bill that would increase the responsibility of the states over educational policy and provide support to charter schools (see summary below), was debated by the Senate with seven pending amendments. #### Passed: Four bills were passed in total: The

Cartoon Congress: SCOTUS Rules on Obamacare

Jun 26, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

Two cartoons about yesterday’s Supreme Court decision upholding the subsidies of the Affordable Care Act for those in states without a state-run health insurance marketplace. --- Image by Ben Hammer / GovTrack.us. Like this? Tweet us @GovTrack or write us at hello@govtrack.us.

Congress, June 23–24: Passage of TAA, strikes at EPA authority, and more.

Jun 25, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) was approved by the Senate with a vote of 60–38. The vote was on a House amendment to H.R. 2146, which turned a bill about public service retirement into the vehicle for passage of TPA. Although the House had passed TPA alone, after the Democrats’ failed ...

Launching GovTrack Insider

Jun 24, 2015 · News About GovTrack

Legislative data is only the beginning to understanding what Congress does and how it works. That’s why earlier this month GovTrack.us launched GovTrack Insider, a blog on Medium covering Congress’s daily activities. Each post on GovTrack Insider summarizes recent major legislative activity that would be hard ...

Cartoon Congress: How Democrats got nothing on TPA

Jun 24, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Democrats tried to tank the __Trade Promotion Authority by voting strategically against the part of the deal they wanted — benefits for workers and companies negatively affected by trade agreements. Republicans countered by passing Trade Promotion Authority __alone. Image by Ben Hammer / GovTrack.us. _— Like this? Tweet us @GovTrack ...

The Senate votes on TPA again, alone

Jun 23, 2015 · Bill Summary

This morning the Senate passed cloture on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), paving the way for enactment of the controversial fast-track procedure for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal currently being negotiated by the President. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), the part of the deal the Democrats wanted, has been left behind. ...

The Defense Budget, and Everything but the TPA

Jun 19, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Much of the action yesterday in Congress revolved around the passage of Trade Promotion Authority in the House. Yet TPA was not the only big legislation moving around this week. In this article we talk about the other stuff Congress did, and did not do, these past few days. <a ...

The House Passes the TPA, again

Jun 18, 2015 · Legislative Recap

This afternoon the House voted, and passed, Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in a stand-alone bill without Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), sending it back to the Senate for approval. (See our previous coverage and full explanation of TPA, TAA, and TPP.) #### One changed vote House Vote #374, June 18, ...

Congress, June 15–16

Jun 17, 2015 · Legislative Recap

The Intelligence Authorization Act passes the House, amendments are voted on for the National Defense Authorization Act, and more. This is our round-up of legislative activity in the Congress on June 15–16. Follow us here on Medium or use GovTrack.us to track the activities of the United States Congress. ### ...

How Congress Voted on Trade

Jun 14, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

On Friday the House passed the TPA and rejected the TAA — all because of the TPP. Negotiations continue. Lost? We’ve got your back. This article was updated on June 23, 2015. h/t C-SPAN ## Trade Promotion Authority (Fast-Track) The United States is currently negotiating two major trade deals. ...

Congress, June 11

Jun 12, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Summaries of some of the accepted and rejected amendments to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. This is our round-up of legislative activity in the Congress on Thursday, June 11. Follow us here on Medium or use GovTrack.us to track the activities of the United States Congress. The House passed ...

Congress, June 10

Jun 12, 2015 · Legislative Recap

Summaries in the this article of amendments accepted and rejected to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2016 and of the Country of Origin Labeling Amendments Act. _This is our round-up of legislative activity in the Congress on Wednesday, June 10. Follow us here on Medium or use GovTrack.us to ...

Congress, June 9

Jun 11, 2015 · Legislative Recap

This is our round-up of legislative activity in the Congress on Tuesday, June 9. Follow us here on Medium or use GovTrack.us to track the activities of the United States Congress. Photo Credit: C-SPAN http://www.c-span.org/video/?326399-5/representative-trent-kelly-swearingin #### In short The Senate considered amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). ...

2010 — Launching the first GovTrack Insider

May 7, 2015 · News About GovTrack

2010 — Launching the first GovTrack Insider — This post was originally published on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 with the launch of the first incarnation of GovTrack Insider, which published 30 articles over the course of a year. — Last week I launched GovTrack Insider, a spin-off of GovTrack.us ...

Reader Question: How many laws are there in the United States?

Apr 19, 2015 · Analysis and Commentary

Edward asks: > > Hello, trying to find out how many laws there are within our federal government. Nowhere can I find an answer citing back to 1982 when a government program was implemented to find the total and failed. > This is a fantastic question because it highlights how ...

GovTrack’s Summer/Fall Updates

Dec 18, 2014 · News About GovTrack

Here’s what’s been improved on GovTrack in the summer and fall of this year. * Permalinks to individual paragraphs in bill text is now provided (example). * We now ask for your congressional district so that we can customize vote and bill pages to show how your ...

It wasn’t the least productive Congress after all

Dec 17, 2014 · Analysis and Commentary

UPDATE: 12/25/2014: Because of a discrepancy in bill status as published by Congress, I over-counted by 1. There were 296 new laws in the 113th Congress, not 297. S. 2244 was published by Congress as having passed the House and Senate. Congress failed to indicate that the House passed S. ...

Did my representative enact enough bills?

Sep 5, 2014 · Analysis and Commentary

One common way legislator performance is measured is by how many laws a representative or senator got enacted. Like all quantitative measures, a count of bills enacted addresses only a small part of what makes an effective legislator. But here’s a starting point: > > A congressman/women on average enacts….__ ...

Who’s blocking the bills? The numbers don’t help much.

Aug 4, 2014 · Analysis and Commentary

M.M. asks: > > There is much discussion about which part of Congress does more (or less) than the other. Some people are fixated on the number of votes taken in each chamber. For example some people are slamming the Senate saying that there are 390 bills that were voted ...

An apology regarding our email updates

Aug 2, 2014 · News About GovTrack

Our email updates were incomplete over the last six weeks. We sent the following in an email to affected users today. You may have noticed that you were not getting all of the GovTrack email updates that you signed up for. Starting in mid-June and until earlier this week ...

Congressional Productivity, 3/4ths into the 113th Congress

Jul 8, 2014 · Analysis and Commentary

(This is an updated version of this post from May.) If you like the status quo in America you are in luck because Congress isn’t changing it. Now 3/4ths into the 113th Congress, the trend of gridlock continues — but not all of the numbers are gloomy. It takes a ...

Welcome user #300,000

Jun 12, 2014 · News About GovTrack

At 6:44 p.m. tonight our 300,000th registered user signed up! This post is just a quick victory lap. GovTrack launched in September 2004, almost ten years ago, and is now used by millions of people — 7,255,163 in the last year (most don’t register, of course) — to figure out ...

Are bills getting longer?

May 28, 2014 · Analysis and Commentary

In my last post on congressional productivity I wrote that so far in the 113th Congress (2013-2014) the fewest number of bills have been enacted than in any corresponding time period in recent history, but the number of pages in those bills isn’t the lowest. Tobi asked in the comments: ...

More on Congressional Productivity, 2/3rds into the 113th Congress

May 24, 2014 · Analysis and Commentary

If you like the status quo in America you are in luck because Congress isn’t changing it. We are now 506 days or 2/3rds into the 113th Congress and the trend of gridlock continues — but not all of the numbers are gloomy. It takes a law to repeal a ...

GovTrack’s Winter/Spring Updates

May 12, 2014 · News About GovTrack

Here’s what new on GovTrack since December… We’ve made the bill pages a little more friendly (example): * Bill status & progress is now explained through icons. * The sponsor of each bill now includes a big photo. * There’s also a preview thumbnail of the bill’s text. * And ...

The Congressional Data Coalition writes to House Appropriators

Mar 8, 2014 · News About GovTrack

Update 5/2/2014: We sent a similar letter to Senate appropriators today. See Daniel’s post about it. Update 4/9/2014: The House Appropriations committee accepted our request. In their report for the FY 2015 legislative branch appropriations bill: > > The Committee request that the Clerk of the House, the Librarian of ...

More on counting laws and discrepancies in the Resume of Congressional Activity

Feb 9, 2014 · Analysis and Commentary

After my last post yesterday about Congress incorrectly counting the new laws in 2013, Daniel Schuman (of CREW) suggested that I look at previous installments of the Resume of Congressional Activity to see if there were other long-standing discrepancies in these historical counts of the number of laws passed by ...

Congress can’t count its own laws

Feb 7, 2014 · Analysis and Commentary

Congress’s official count of new laws, in the Resume of Congressional Activity, got it wrong for the 2013 legislative session. If Congress can’t count its own laws, they have some nerve to withhold the data from the public, preventing us from counting them ourselves. The Resume for the 2013 session ...

2013 Report Cards for All Members of Congress

Jan 8, 2014 · News About GovTrack

We’ve calculated some new statistics! Sen. David Vitter wrote the most bills in 2013. Rep. Pete Sessions got the most bills out of committee in the House. Rep. Barbara Lee was the most liberal representative. And our transparency heroes for 2013 were Rep. Darrell Issa and Rep. Elijah Cummings. These ...

Closing Out 2013 With Policy Unfinished [Update #3]

Dec 18, 2013 · News About GovTrack

As the 2013 session of the 113th Congress comes to a close, everyone wants to know just how bad was it? Pretty bad indeed. With 72 new laws enacted in this session, it is the lowest in any first year of a Congress at least since 1973, which is the ...

Fall 2013 Updates to GovTrack

Dec 12, 2013 · News About GovTrack

This fall brings a number of updates to GovTrack including a new Call Congress advocacy tool and improved display of bill text. Read on for details! Call Congress Earlier in the fall we announced that you can now use GovTrack to call your representative about a bill. You’ll find a ...

Bringing bill text into the 21st Century

Dec 10, 2013 · News About GovTrack

Dealing with bill text has always been a complex and complicated task. It took upwards of 200 years for Congress to standardize to the language and terminology it uses in the text of bills and resolutions today, and it took until just the last few years for Congress to make ...

New: Use GovTrack to Call Congress

Oct 31, 2013 · News About GovTrack

Petitioning our government is not only a right but a responsibility. Now on GovTrack we’ll walk you through how to call Congress about bills you have an opinion on. Look for the new “Call Congress!” buttons on all bill pages on GovTrack. When you click Call Congress, we’ll ask if ...

Reading PPACA, aka ObamaCare

Oct 7, 2013 · Using GovTrack Tips

Over on our Facebook page a user named Worth Noting asks: > > Some friends and I are going to read the Health Care Law(s?) aka ObamaCare. We want to read the actual law – in it’s entirety. So ‘which’ one is the final real complete one? > Hi, Worth. ...

Legislative status during the shutdown

Oct 1, 2013 · News About GovTrack

Since we don’t know how long the federal government shutdown will last, here’s a brief run-down of how the shutdown will affect GovTrack: * We’re not a government website, as you hopefully know, so we’re still operating. * We get our bill status information from THOMAS.gov, which is run by ...

An update on getting legislative data from the House

Sep 25, 2013 · News About GovTrack

For more than a decade I’ve been prodding Congress to publish something as simple as a spreadsheet of bills in Congress. They have pretty websites listing bills like Congress.gov, yes, but if you want to do data analysis like we do, what you need is a spreadsheet. But we’re not ...

Understanding the SNAP cuts as a part of broader food and agriculture policy

Sep 19, 2013 · Analysis and Commentary

This evening’s House vote on the food assistance program SNAP is significant not only in the size of the cuts proposed but also by separating food assistance policy from agricultural subsidy policy. That pairing, which dates back to the Great Depression, has been key to the success of both policy ...

Where’s the data, Boehner?

Aug 16, 2013 · News About GovTrack

No legislative branch agency makes available a spreadsheet that lists every bill introduced in Congress. How can there be meaningful transparency if the public cannot get a simple list of bills? Yesterday I called on Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor to fix this problem (read the letter). They promised ...

Can committees amend bills on their own?

Aug 15, 2013 · Analysis and Commentary

GovTrack user Jonathan asks: > > At what point are amendments made in subcommittees considered to be adopted? Some of the language I’ve found implies that subcommittees have the authority to amend bills without needing the approval of the whole House or Senate. So, are amendments made in subcommittee considered ...

Summer 2013 Updates

Aug 12, 2013 · News About GovTrack

You asked for widgets, better accessibility, and improvements to email updates, and you got it. Here’s how we’ve improved GovTrack since the last update: Major Updates Our blog post and video Lawmakers Who Aren’t Making Law got national media coverage on The McLaughlin Group (at 22:20). Thanks to GovTrack’s director ...

Lawmakers Who Aren’t Making Law

Jul 23, 2013 · Analysis and Commentary

<iframe allowfullscreen="true" class="youtube-player" height="642" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wKGY-Z5_mHc?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" style="border:0;" width="1140"></iframe> The press’ quarterly report cards on Congress are out and the picture isn’t pretty. As _The Huffington Post_ and _The Atlantic Wire_ report, based on data from GovTrack, the current Congress has enacted ...

Civic data to inspire: the Girl emPower iPad app

Jul 1, 2013 · News About GovTrack

_We’re proud to see GovTrack’s database put to use to by others to empower individuals. In this guest post, Andrew Cavanagh describes the iPad app he created with Laura Phelps called Girl emPower, which you can find on the Apple app store here. Thanks to Andrew and Laura for letting ...

Recent Congressional Action on Student Loans

Jun 17, 2013 · Analysis and Commentary

In what could become an annual occurrence, Congress yet again faces a looming deadline to resolve the problem of student loan interest rates. Without Congressional action, the rate on federally backed Stafford loans is set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1. The Senate in early ...

Spring 2013 Updates

May 27, 2013 · News About GovTrack

Since the last update, here’s what we’ve been working on. We fixed some major features that hadn’t been working since the start of the 113th Congress in January: * Committee meetings are now being tracked again. You can add a committee meeting tracker to your feeds and get email updates ...

The U.S. House holds transparency conference, says access to law must be free

May 24, 2013 · News About GovTrack

This year the U.S. House has continued on its path toward greater transparency, and this week in particular two developments are worth noting: The House’s committee on House Administration held its second annual Legislative Data and Transparency Conference, and they rebuked a report that suggested it was OK for the ...

How Members of Congress Use GovTrack

May 2, 2013 · News About GovTrack

Members of Congress nowadays use numerous tools to inform the voting public about their opinions and activities. They tweet, post on Facebook, and send email updates. And they also use GovTrack, in a variety of ways. Some Members take advantage of the feeds our site offers, and embed them as ...

Winter 2013 Updates 2

Mar 31, 2013 · News About GovTrack

Here’s a list of some of the recent improvements to GovTrack. * We started writing original summaries of select bills. Read them all here. * __Vice presidents__ now have pages on GovTrack. Remember that they cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate, like in this one. Tie-breaking votes now indicate which ...

Update: Adding Bill Summaries

Mar 5, 2013 · News About GovTrack

Last month we began adding original summaries of select legislation introduced in this Congress. Civic engagement in the legislative process requires not only that the public have access to legislation proposed in Congress, but also that they be able to understand it. However, bills can be extremely long and often ...

Winter 2013 Updates 1

Feb 9, 2013 · News About GovTrack

We’ve added historical information on bills from 1951-1978 and made some other improvements to the site recently. Here are the details: * Using the Statutes at Large, the compilation of laws enacted by Congress, we’ve added enacted bills from 1951-1972 into GovTrack. For example, here’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 ...

Our Analysis Methodology: Technical Details

Jan 13, 2013 · News About GovTrack

We’ve added a new Analysis Methodology page. This page provides details on our ideology, leadership, and prognosis analyses so that they can be understood better by our users and so they can be replicated by researchers in other domains. GovTrack pioneered three large-scale (i.e. BigData) statistical analyses of ...

Welcome to the 113th Congress

Jan 4, 2013 · News About GovTrack

Yesterday the 113th Congress was sworn in and began filing bills. Here’s how that affects GovTrack and other updates to the site this week. For the 113th Congress: * We updated our roster of Members of Congress and maps. * New bills and votes began showing up on ...

Bill prognosis gets a few improvements

Dec 7, 2012 · News About GovTrack

Back in April we introduced “bill prognosis” (original post), a statistical analysis of how likely bills are to be enacted. Today we’re making a few improvements. Read on for more about it. For each bill (example: S. 3637), we compute a probability that the bill will be enacted ...

Site Updates – Fall 2012

Nov 25, 2012 · News About GovTrack

From a new start page to improved maps, here’s what we’ve been working on this fall: There is a new Start page to find something to track and get email updates for, and you can now get email updates on full text keyword searches. So if you want to track ...

The math behind some of our stats

Oct 16, 2012 · News About GovTrack

If you’re interested in the math behind some of our statistics — the ideology/leadership charts and the bill prognosis scores — you might find interesting a talk I gave last week. I had the opportunity to kick off the application development track at the Law Via the Internet (LVI) 2012 ...

Summer 2012 Updates #2: August Edition

Aug 28, 2012 · News About GovTrack

We’ve added a few great new search features to GovTrack, as well as other improvements. Check them out: * __Find Similar Bills__: There are often multiple bills introduced on a topic and major changes to bills are sometimes introduced as entirely new bills. These related bills can be hard to ...

The VP candidates agreed on 52 substantive bills

Aug 15, 2012 · Analysis and Commentary

Partisan politics drives us to look at differences. But during the time Rep. Paul Ryan served along side then-Sen. Joe Biden from 1999 to 2008, our VP candidates voted the same way on 52 substantive bills. Here are the 52 bills which the two candidates both supported: Major new laws: ...

Ryan’s Record: By the Numbers

Aug 14, 2012 · Analysis and Commentary

Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican party’s presumptive Vice Presidential nominee, took office 13 years ago. We can learn a lot from his legislative record as the congressman from Wisconsin’s 1st district. ### Budget, taxes, and Medicare During his tenure in Congress Ryan sponsored 75 bills, mostly related to the budget, ...

Site Updates – Summer 2012 #1

Jul 29, 2012 · News About GovTrack

Busy as always, we’ve got some more new things on GovTrack this month: * Congressional District Maps now include redistricting maps for the upcoming elections. Except for Rhode Island — we’re still working on locating the new districts there. You can switch back and forth between your current district and ...

Data license changes, take two

Jul 19, 2012 · News About GovTrack

Last post I wrote that I’d be changing the data licensing terms on GovTrack. I sincerely asked for feedback, and I got it. Gunnar, for instance, rightly pointed out that this isn’t everyone’s fight. He also noted that my dry sense of humor wasn’t really working. The change I planned ...

Data license terms to change in response to Netroots conference boycott of nonpartisan tool NationBuilder

Jul 12, 2012 · News About GovTrack

I sent the following message out to the GovTrack data developers mail list. It affects anyone who uses GovTrack’s bulk raw data downloads and API. Dear data re-users, This is advanced notice that on July 20 I’ll be revising the terms of GovTrack’s generic license agreement by adding the following ...

Site Updates: Spring 2012

Jun 24, 2012 · News About GovTrack

A lot’s been happening here at GovTrack over the last few months. Here’s a quick run-down of the most recent changes: * If you use GovTrack to build lists of items to track, the Your Lists page has gotten a much needed visual refresh. It also now provides __RSS feed ...

Welcoming the 50 States to GovTrack

Jun 19, 2012 · News About GovTrack

If tracking one Congress was great, then tracking 51 of them must be even better! This week GovTrack added legislative tracking for the 50 states. You can now find: * 50-State Bill Search (searching titles and summaries) * State bill status, such as for Indiana SCR0005: Health Insurance Exchanges – ...

Rep. Crenshaw backs down, loses control over bulk data issue

Jun 7, 2012 · News About GovTrack

UPDATE: The Washington Post covered this story online on June 8, and on the front page in print on June 9. The government data that makes GovTrack go has been the center of what looks like a failed political power play over the last week. Rep. Crenshaw, whose appropriations subcommittee ...

Rep. Crenshaw thinks American public can’t be trusted with overseeing Congress

Jun 4, 2012 · News About GovTrack

UPDATE: See how this issue resolved. Rep. Ander Crenshaw (FL4) and the House subcommittee he chairs decided this week that the American public can’t be trusted with more thorough records about what Congress is doing. __/// Take Action: Write your rep to oppose Crenshaw’s report. /// Start ...

Public comments versus writing your representative

May 14, 2012 · Analysis and Commentary

Patricia from Minnesota wrote in with a question about public comments: > > Something else I would absolutely LOVE to see, is a compilation of all legislation that is open for public comments. Almost invariably, I find out about legislation that I have an interest in just as the comment ...

New: Legislation Coming Up

May 12, 2012 · News About GovTrack

It used to be that us outsiders never exactly knew when a bill was going to come up for a vote. But thanks to recent developments in the House we can be more involved in the legislative process in the crucial days before a bill comes to a vote. GovTrack’s ...

New: Faceted Bill Search

May 6, 2012 · News About GovTrack

One of my own favorite new parts of GovTrack 2.0 is the advanced bill search, which you can find in Browse => Bills => Search & Track => Advanced Search. The advanced search — or in technical jargon the “faceted” search — can be used to drill-down into all of ...

Even Better Bill Prognosis: Now with Real Probabilities

Apr 8, 2012 · News About GovTrack

Bill prognosis has gotten an upgrade. A few weeks ago I wrote about a new addition to GovTrack, the bill prognosis, and because it proved to be useful I expanded on it to provide a more detailed and numerical assessment of the future of each bill. For an example, check ...

New on GovTrack: Bill Prognosis

Mar 24, 2012 · News About GovTrack

Only a small fraction of the bills and resolutions introduced will ever be voted on. How do you know which bills to pay attention to? Now on GovTrack you can find a bill’s prognosis. We can’t predict the future, but we can highlight factors that favor a bill’s progress. Check ...

We’ve made a few “tweaks” to GovTrack

Mar 19, 2012 · News About GovTrack

Welcome to the start of GovTrack 2.0! This past weekend I replaced the site with a completely new GovTrack that lays the groundwork for many more years of innovation in legislative tracking. Let me get out of the way that there are some things missing from GovTrack 2.0 that were ...

GovTrack users want better transparency from Congress

Mar 16, 2012 · News About GovTrack

It is time for the Library of Congress to modernize the way they disseminate legislative information to the public, and GovTrack users are standing up to a call to push Congress to make this happen. I asked my users here whether they would sign on to a letter to Congress ...

Not much getting done in DC

Dec 19, 2011 · Analysis and Commentary

Numbers confirm what we already pretty much know: Congress this year isn’t getting much done. The number of bills enacted this year is lower than it has ever been in at least 30 years. If you think Congress should be passing fewer laws, then you got your wish this year. ...

Tune in to WAMU 88.5 at noon

Sep 13, 2011 · News About GovTrack

I’ll be on the Kojo Nnamdi show at noon today, which is on WAMU 88.5 in the DC area, and I think you can also listen online.

Kill Bill: How many bills are there? How many are enacted?

Aug 4, 2011 · Analysis and Commentary

So far this year we’ve had 4,288 bills introduced in the Congress. That puts our congressmen and senators on track for a banner year in terms of number of bills introduced, and probably for fewest bills enacted too. Here’s how the numbers break down so far: 20 bills have been ...

Check out the new colors

Jul 22, 2011 · News About GovTrack

In January I decided to start over. GovTrack has been doing well since it launched almost seven years ago, but the site has gotten to be such a mess in its internals that I haven’t been able to create new cool things for a long time. At the start of ...

Numerical methods for determining leadership and ideology in Congress

Dec 26, 2010 · News About GovTrack

Today I am publishing two new types of statistics for understanding the behavioral relationships between Members of Congress. The first is a new approach to the leader-follower scores, based on the same algorithm Google uses to rank pages on the web. The second statistic is an update to ...

Summer Citizen Reporter Contest

Jul 6, 2010 · News About GovTrack

Although I’m a programmer, I also consider myself a journalist. GovTrack reports on what is happening in Congress day by day — even if the reporting is just a nice presentation of a lot of raw, unedited facts about legislation. But I often lament the lack of a human touch, ...

GovTrack On The Go (For Android Phones)

Jun 15, 2010 · News About GovTrack

If you’re a mobile wonk, you’ll be interested to know about the new Congress app which lets you browse bill status from your Android phone. Built by the Sunlight Foundation () and based on GovTrack’s legislative database, the free app is constantly being improved and is very cool. Search for ...

Who writes our law?

Mar 24, 2010 · Analysis and Commentary

Today’s question comes from Gwen who asks: Who actually writes the bills that the members of congress sponsor and vote for? This is no simple question and the answer involves many different sorts of people. To get the facts straight, I turned to an ex-staffer, Marci Harris, who just recently ...

Winter Weather Updates

Feb 10, 2010 · News About GovTrack

As the northeast gets blasted with snow — here in Philadelphia we’re on our third storm in two weeks — I’ve got a few new updates for GovTrack. * Last month launched and it’s now getting integrated with GovTrack. The new site has reporting on what congressional committees are meeting ...

Cosponsors disappeared! (They’re back now.)

Jan 8, 2010 · News About GovTrack

This week we had a technical glitch that caused every bill to show up with no cosponsors. This should now be corrected.

Kill Bill: Bills not enacted after passage by Congress

Jan 3, 2010 · Analysis and Commentary

Mogy asks: Instead of just giving a number, let me break down the state of every bill proposed in Congress in 2009. As you may know, Congress operates on two-year cycles and bills don’t carry oveer from cycle to cycle. 2009 was the first ...

Recent Hearing on Nuclear Energy Legislation

Dec 20, 2009 · Bill Summary

By Jason K. Chen, Climate Intern cross-posted on the Two bills were discussed in the , S. 2052 (Nuclear Energy Research Initiative Improvement Act of 2009, M. Udall) and S. 2812 (Nuclear Power 2021 Act, Bingaman). is a bill to amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to require the ...

What’s new to GovTrack this fall

Dec 8, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Here’s an update to what’s new on GovTrack over the last few months. * You’ll now notice little buttons throughout the site that let you add or remove trackers when you see lists of bills, rather than having to click through to the individual bills. * The bill search page ...

Congressional Staff Salary Analysis

Dec 4, 2009 · Analysis and Commentary

I mentioned last post that Sunlight Foundation out of the House’s recently released electronic 3,300-page report on . Their statistics showed a wide range of salaries for the different types of staff jobs in Congress. I did some further analysis on whether staff salaries are correlated with the congressman’s tenure ...

Congressional Staff Salaries

Dec 2, 2009 · Analysis and Commentary

This week the House posted for the first time an electronic version of their master expense report. The report details the pay of everyone employed by Congress, from the Members of Congress to their staff, and other staff in Congress. The folks over at Sunlight Foundation have out of the ...

Review of Two Recent Senate Energy/Climate Hearings

Nov 26, 2009 · Legislative Recap

By Jason K. Chen, Climate Intern Hearing: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, , 11/17/09 After listening to the Senate hearing about the global impacts of climate change, I felt that the general message of all the speakers, including the senators, was that environmental policy has to be realistic. ...

Aye versus Yea: What’s the difference?

Nov 18, 2009 · Analysis and Commentary

Today’s ques­tion comes from Erika M: > > I see yea, nay, no, aye as the way con­gress­men voted. What does aye mean? > Ah par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure. There’s no mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence be­tween Yea and Aye, and Nay and No. They both mean “I vote in favor” or “I vote against”. ...

What are the different types of bills?

Nov 11, 2009 · Analysis and Commentary

Visitor WB asks: > > > I understand there are different Bills passed by congress regularly. Some with “H.R.”, “S”, H. Res” and other variations. My questions is this: What are the types of Bills and what does each designations stand for? Where is each Bill valid? Who is subject ...

House Republicans Use GovTrack to Read the Bill

Nov 3, 2009 · News About GovTrack

that House Republicans are explaining their views on the health care bill by linking people directly to the paragraphs in the bills they find important. I think that’s great. They may be using OpenCongress, but we invented that feature over here on GovTrack — OpenCongress is based on GovTrack — ...

GovTrack Merchandise

Oct 15, 2009 · News About GovTrack

I’m a wonk, you’re a wonk. We like reading legislation and we’re proud of it. Strut your stuff with . About a month ago I started a . With a $100 prize at stake, about a dozen people submitted ideas — three submitted shirt-ready images. Congrats to who stole the ...

When do bills get a number?

Oct 14, 2009 · Analysis and Commentary

Sara from Kentucky asks: > > I don’t know if I am hearing accurate information. Some of us want bill numbers listed in newspapers so we can look them up. “America’s Healthy Future Act” has no number and Baucus’s office says that it will not receive a number until it ...

Design a GovTrack t-shirt, win $100

Sep 19, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Hey, we need some cool GovTrack apparel, right? Design a GovTrack t-shirt or send me a funny expression related to GovTrack to put on a t-shirt, and if I get some good responses I’ll pick a winner and send back a $100 gift certificate to somewhere. Email your submissions to ...

Summer Site Updates

Aug 22, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Here’s what’s been happening with the site this summer: We’ve upgraded our hardware to top-of-the-line equipment so that we can keep up with the increasing number of visitors coming to GovTrack.I’ve hired a moderator (my first staff member!) to process the submissions to the section of the site. A ...

Downtime coming up

Aug 11, 2009 · News About GovTrack

GovTrack is going to be upgrading its hardware very soon now. We’ll probably be down for about a day while we get the new hardware set up. Thanks for your patience.You may have noticed that last month especially as the health care reform bill was being debated, GovTrack had ...

Markup Review – Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, July 21st

Jul 30, 2009 · Legislative Recap

Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Full Business Meeting Tuesday 7/21/09, 10:00am, Russell 253 ## Summary – Federal Aviation Administration Air Transportation Modernization & Safety Improvement Act (aka FAA program funding reauthorization) 3) An Act to Extend the Programs of SAFETEA-LU for an 18-Month Period (aka surface transportation funding ...

Our first tweet, and a preview of our latest experiment

Jun 29, 2009 · News About GovTrack

GovTrack has taken the plunge to Twitter. I’ll be tweeting from time to time as . Also, I’ve put up recommended hashtags on the pages for bills so we can more easily track the chatter on legislation happening in the twitterverse. (It’s in the blue box on the right side.) ...

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: “Afghanistan and Pakistan: Oversight of a New Interagency Strategy”

Jun 26, 2009 · Bill Summary

By Joe Walsh. National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee June 24, 2009 Witnesses: Lt. Gen. Wallace “Chip” Gregson (USMC, Retired), Assistant Secretary of Defense, Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan *All statements, unless otherwise noted, come from Holbrooke Overall comments Committee ...

Two Facebook Apps Based on GovTrack

Jun 13, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Bring your participation in government to Facebook with two new Facebook apps, RepresentedBy and Laws I Like. These apps, written by some other civic hackers, are based (in part) on congressional data shared by GovTrack. , by , lets you post to your profile a box with who ...

Delivering the H.R. 45 “Group Letter”

May 22, 2009 · News About GovTrack

In March and April we ran an experiment to see if citizens could come together to write a “group letter” to Congress. Yesterday I took a trip down to Capitol Hill to deliver the letter to Members of Congress. Our first experiment with group writing resulted in opposing collaboratively ...

Upgrading Senate technology and other recent press

May 11, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Recently the Senate decided to update its website so that it shares roll call vote data with other websites, like GovTrack, in a more technologically friendly way. I’ve been pushing this for the past couple of years, along with others, and it’s great news to finally see this change. Read ...

Filibusted.us: Check out who is stalling Senate action

May 6, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Filibusted.us is, no doubt about it, a very good site that helps shed light on how the filibuster and cloture vote are playing out in the Senate. Except, this is a very complicated topic: That’s the strict reading of what is going on. I don’t think that’s the fairest explanation. ...

Collaborative Letter Update

May 2, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Site Updates

Apr 6, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Here are a few changes that happened on GovTrack recently: Social Action links, subject terms update, Leader-Follower scores for representatives, searching by sponsorship in archival data, more maps widgets, and a new Developers section. Read on for more. Subject Terms : At the start of the year the Congressional ...

MixedInk experiment: A collaborative letter to Congress on H.R. 45

Mar 16, 2009 · News About GovTrack

Last week GovTrack launched an experiment using , the collaborative writing tool, to see how members of the GovTrack community could come together to write a joint letter to congressmen. A large problem facing Congress is their inability to keep up with constituent communication, as the rise of electronic communications ...

How GovTrack can be useful for Capitol Hill staff

Mar 4, 2009 · Using GovTrack Tips

This past weekend was very busy for me. I gave two presentations on the Hill about how GovTrack can be useful for staffers for Members of Congress. Some notes are . After that I gave presentations to a diverse group during a conference on and on . ...

Tracking Stimulus Bill Changes

Feb 9, 2009 · Using GovTrack Tips

Congress is fiercely debating the latest economic recovery legislation, : and at 700 pages (that’s like $1 billion per page!) you should be coming straight to GovTrack for the most advanced tools to read the bill. Here’s a . Also check out the site for more ...

Track your representative’s YouTube videos

Jan 13, 2009 · News About GovTrack

You may have seen the new YouTube channels for the House and Senate and the kind of intro from our congressional leaders, which Sunlight’s . Basically, Congress has entered the 21st century (finally) by starting to communicate with their constituents using video, which is fantastic news. You can ...

Site Updates in September, December 2008

Dec 20, 2008 · News About GovTrack

As GovTrack continues its fifth year and we head into the new session of Congress starting in 2009, we have a bunch of new site updates to share. Here are the major improvements made to the site this fall, some in the last few weeks: Bill Text The <a ...

Seeing the other person’s side

Nov 11, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

Sometimes I get really frustrated with politics, which has become so much about denying, oppressing, and outspending the other viewpoint rather than debate and consensus. GovTrack received this question through the bill Q&A system: > > Why does anyone think our government has the right to allow women to murder ...

What happens when the clock strikes 2009?

Nov 8, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

Now that we’ve passed election season, things are pretty much wrapping up in the legislative branch. The House has already adjourned and will start a new session on January 3, 2009, according to the resolution . The Senate is still in session and will meet this month, but without the ...

GovTrack hits 50,000 registered users

Nov 1, 2008 · News About GovTrack

We’ve hit the 50,000 mark, the number of people that have created an account on the site to configure their trackers and get email updates. More updates coming in a few weeks.

If the House version is defeated, does the Senate bill die too?

Oct 17, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

Q:”What happens to an approved Senate bill with respect to an identical House bill? If the House version is defeated, does the bill end?” This is a great legislative process question. Let me rephrase it: What are companion bills and how do they work? The usual ...

Economic Stimulus Bill details

Oct 17, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

You probably already noticed from the note at the top of the site, but just to archive it: here are some links related to the economic stimulus bill that was enacted this month (and then failed to do any good, apparently). We posted a special feature line by ...

“Writing” versus “Sponsoring”, and who decides what gets a vote?

Sep 28, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

Here’s another legislative process Q&A post. We tackle two questions in this post. Here’s the first: > > Does one know who writes a bill? Is writing a bill considered different than being the Sponsor of the bill? > There’s no such term “writing” as far as I’ve ...

Utah Senator Crusades for Bureaucratic Gobbledygook

Sep 25, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

This post by Coby Logen (a pseudonym), who blogs on government website matters at and has worked to improve government websites for the past five years, is syndicated here with permission.Thanks Coby! Senator Bennett from Utah is single-handedly quashing the most commonsense, bi-partisan bill this year–a requirement that the U.S. ...

What Does “Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably” mean?

Sep 18, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

Using the new Q&A tool, a visitor asked ( ): > > What does “Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably” mean? > GovTrack tries to answer. Read on… This is something you’ll see in the Last Action line for a bill’s ...

Welcome to GovTrack’s Fourth Year

Sep 9, 2008 · News About GovTrack

. (Thanks to for the data!) I have written a page on Tips for Commnicating With Congress . Should you write your rep? What should you include? Take a look. now include some cute pie charts , and, also, the time of day ...

Questions and Answers: Your questions, your answers!

Jul 6, 2008 · News About GovTrack

Last week I added a new feature to GovTrack called Community Q&A. It was inspired by a question I received by mail (the subject of my last blog post). If one person that has a question actually took the time to email, then there must be hundreds of other questions ...

Can representatives change their vote?

Jul 6, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

A visitor to this site asked me: > > __Q: __ > > How can I find out what a particular representative voted upon and then went back to change his/her vote? I understand that this is done very often so that the hometown folks think that he/she voted one ...

Student Loan Bailout Bills Rife with Fiscal Pitfalls

Apr 29, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

This post comes from Martha Sherwood, 2nd time GovTrack blog submitter and a legal researcher in a consumer law office. Martha works for a lawyer who blogs at . Martha holds a doctorate in biology . There are currently four bills pending in Congress to address the credit crunch in ...

Mitigating the foreclosure crisis with eased broker restrictions on loans

Mar 13, 2008 · Bill Summary

Today’s post is from Joshua Freedman, a full time mortgage broker. He owns and operates in Pittsburgh, PA and specializes in commercial and residential loans. (By the way, I edit the posts a little bit…) Over and over politicians have told us that they want to do what they ...

The Eletronic Voting Paper-Trail Debate

Mar 10, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

Today’s post comes from . The United States Congress, like the State of South Carolina, has bills pending that address the problem of a paperless electronic voting system. We blogged about the dangers of the lack of a paper trail associated with the electronic voting system used in South Carolina, ...

Student Loan Bills (A problem obscured by the mortgage mess?)

Mar 6, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

_This post comes from Martha Sherwood, a legal researcher in a consumer law office. Martha works for a lawyer who blogs at _ . Martha holds a doctorate in biology . Student loan debt is a huge and growing problem for American families. As Congress rushes to patch the holes ...

Returning to HAVA: Holt introduces Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act

Mar 5, 2008 · Bill Summary

The following submission by Mary Lou Diehl was originally posted on the website . Thanks for the submission, Mary! This bill was introduced into Congress on January 17, 2008, by Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey. HR 5036 provides reimbursements which can help states, counties and other jurisdictions to improve ...

The Plain Language Bill Is a No-Brainer

Jan 12, 2008 · Analysis and Commentary

This post was written by Coby Logen (a pseudonym), who blogs on government website matters at and has worked to improve government websites for the past five years. He has a Master’s degree in usability. We all know that government documents can be hard to understand. Tax forms ...

See you on the flip side of winter recess

Dec 21, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Congress is on break until mid January, so we’ll be going into a bit of hibernation here at GovTrack. Check back when Congress resumes mid January for the new GovTrack Community Blog , legislative analysis written by and for the users of this site. Also, a quick plug for , ...

Second Call for Bloggers

Nov 27, 2007 · News About GovTrack

I received a few encouraging replies to an earlier post about you blogging here . I want to get some nonpartisan, thoughtful analysis of legislative issues posted on the front page here. If you’re interested in blogging here, drop me a note by emailing me at the address ...

Debates giving time based on poll numbers?

Oct 31, 2007 · Analysis and Commentary

The New York Times has that breaks down the text of yesterday’s Democratic debate (there was a debate?) by speaker and shows visually the distribution of who spoken when through the debate. They took the transcript, made it visual and interactive, and the end result is a vastly ...

Want to blog here?

Oct 28, 2007 · News About GovTrack

He he.

Oct 23, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Totally not useful to anyone, but I thought I’d share— I’m confirmed attendee #9 to a conference in December, and #10 is a hero of mine, to the extent I have any heroes. Can’t wait.

Downloadable/Printable District Maps

Oct 22, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Just added a new feature: high-resolution district maps that can be downloaded (and printed), with no unreasonable copyright restrictions. To get the maps, find the district map, , and look below the map for download options. The downloadable maps use street data from which is (incredibly) ...

Simple Policy Gone Wrong & the Role of Money

Oct 13, 2007 · Analysis and Commentary

This lecture by lawyer-professor Lawrence Lessig addresses some simple policy issues that were gotten wrong by Congress, and what role money had in the failure of Congress to see the whole picture. As with any Lessig lecture, it’s quite good. Here, he is setting the stage for the problem and ...

Communicating with Congress

Oct 2, 2007 · News About GovTrack

As a politically active citizen, you may have noticed that GovTrack seems to be missing the usual one-click Contact Your Congressperson tool, instead referring you from people pages here to the home pages of official websites at the House and Senate. Yesterday, I (Josh) attended a conference in D.C. on ...

Earmaks as a return on investment

Sep 20, 2007 · Analysis and Commentary

Bill Allison at Sunlight an article in Roll Call: > > Every private entity that > > Rep. John Murtha > > > > (D-Pa.) favored with an earmark in this year’s defense bill recently has given political money to the lawmaker, according to an analysis ...

Video link

Aug 23, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Someone makes a video praising GovTrack.

Site status

Aug 23, 2007 · News About GovTrack

GovTrack has moved over to its new hardware so things should be working normally again. More or less.

Sunlight review of GovTrack

Aug 9, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Sunlight has posted . If you’re not sure how to start using this site, the review highlights one path.

Site outages and status

Aug 8, 2007 · News About GovTrack

If you’ve used GovTrack at all lately, you’ve probably noticed the chronic outages that have grown considerably worse over the last few months as traffic has increased (with some 8,000 people visiting daily now). There have been a few independent problems. One was a software bug (it wasn’t my fault!) ...

Not quite so do-nothing: House passes ethics bill

Aug 1, 2007 · Analysis and Commentary

Yesterday the House passed the Senate’s ethics bill S. 1. I’ve covered the details of the bill . All in all, it’s good progress.

Widgets for your website (and two APIs)

Jul 28, 2007 · News About GovTrack

GovTrack has had a few widgets that you can embed on your website to show tracked events or the status of bills, and, for developers, now it’s possible to use the Google Maps congressional district overlays on your own Google Maps mash-ups. There’s also a REST API for searching legislation. ...

Milestone note

Jul 21, 2007 · News About GovTrack

This month, the 30,000th user created an account on this site!

The most “do-nothing” of them all

Jul 7, 2007 · Analysis and Commentary

Does it seem like Congress is getting less done than usual this year? Well, it’s true. Congress has enacted fewer bills in the last six months than in any first-six-months period after an election going back at least to 1993. I don’t have bill data going further back than that, ...

A new ally for transparency: Larry Lessig

Jun 19, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Lawrence Lessig, someone I admire greatly, and someone I would really love to meet one day, is a lawyer and professor that over the last ten years has advocated and fought for sane copyright laws in the public’s interest, in the face of the media industry’s constant push for extensions ...

MAPLight.org

May 27, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Now, I don’t by any means mean to keep touting my own horn or anything, but as a matter of keeping readers up to date about news related to GovTrack, it happens that I keep having to point out where a bit of credit is due to GovTrack. David Pogue ...

OpenMass

May 2, 2007 · News About GovTrack

From Ellen Miller’s blog at Sunlight, a note about OpenMass: “We are delighted to point you to — a new website that takes our OpenCongress.org open source framework and applies it to Massachusetts legislation, legislators and news about issues in the state. As ...

Site Updates: New Presidential Page and More

Apr 29, 2007 · News About GovTrack

A few site updates to mention: First, I’ve created a new page for those candidates that have served in Congress, which is actually most. You can see how they line up in political leanings as I’ve sorted them based on their position in GovTrack’s . The page has been updated ...

What’s happening with transparency?

Mar 31, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Not much. The Democrats have had three months and so far we’ve seen no significant progress in transparency. Paul Blumenthal over at Sunlight . In other news, the is in the final steps of assembling our report for Speaker Pelosi. I’ve written up two sections, one recommending that the legislative ...

OpenCongress.org

Feb 27, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Yesterday launched It is basically a sister site to GovTrack, but with different parents (i.e. we’re not affiliated). Based on the that GovTrack makes available for others to reuse, OpenCongress will be focusing on collaborative analysis of legislation. I think there’s room enough in the world for two ...

New Search Feature

Feb 22, 2007 · News About GovTrack

If you use the special , you can now search previous Congresses: just add a slash and the Congress number, like H.R. 1828/108 or accountability/107 .

The Incumbency Advantage

Feb 20, 2007 · Analysis and Commentary

Just posted

Announcing “The Open House Project”

Feb 8, 2007 · News About GovTrack

It’s rare when Congress asks _the people_ for help being transparent, and so I’m particularly pleased to announce the formation of , a Sunlight Foundation-sponsored project with the encouragement of Speaker Pelosi that will be making specific proposals about how The House can better use the Internet in ...

Pages of Interest

Jan 24, 2007 · Legislative Recap

Here are some pages on GovTrack related to things in the news: : The Senate’s legislative reform bill, already passed by the Senate. : A legislative reform bill in the House that GovTrack supports. Stay tuned for important news about legislative reform sponsored by ...

New Features!

Jan 6, 2007 · News About GovTrack

Check out these new features on GovTrack: * The full text of bills is and highlights the changes made to the text during its legislative history, such as due to amendments and substitutions. * The now show a recent voting history, an ideology meter, and pages for senators show their ...

A New Congress Begins

Jan 1, 2007 · News About GovTrack

The 110th Congress starts on January 4, and the Democrats have promised a New Year’s resolution for us: Congress will be held to a higher standard of ethics and accountability. Let’s see if they keep to their promise and enact meaningful legislation for government transparency. Remember that with ...

Where Did Everybody Go?

Dec 11, 2006 · Legislative Recap

I guess House members have “senioritis”, when the last part of their final term doesn’t matter anymore. Check out the 33% absense rate in this vote on Saturday ! For a Congress meeting for such a record few days, you’d think they could at least show up.

Back for a Few More Days of Work

Nov 16, 2006 · Legislative Recap

Just a few weeks left for congressmen to pass any more legislation before this Congress finishes. Any unfinished business is cleared from the books in January, so urge your representatives to get the things done you hoped they would before it’s too late. (Meanwhile, I’m off to attend a mini-conference ...

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Oct 2, 2006 · Legislative Recap

Didn’t we just get back from vacation? Ah well, our lawmakers are taking some time off again. They return from campaigning on November 9.

Prosecuting Terrorists; Voter Identification

Sep 28, 2006 · Legislative Recap

House Republicans succeeded in pushing through 253 to 168 \[ \] yesterday and an act to require photo ID to vote, last week, 228 to 196 \[\].

Returning with new Features

Sep 5, 2006 · News About GovTrack

As Congress returns to work, GovTrack adds a new feature: are now listed for all Members of Congress.

Congress Takes a Break

Aug 5, 2006 · Legislative Recap

Americans keep working, but Congress is on a month-long break until September 5. GovTrack will be pretty quiet till then.

Minimum Wage Stalled over Estate Tax

Aug 4, 2006 · Legislative Recap

By linking a minimum wage increase with a tax cut for the wealthy in , the Republicans had their cake and ate it too (over minimum wage) by knowing the Democrats would never let the bill come to a vote. Dems put the bill on hold 56 to ...

Crazy Maps? No, Cartograms!

Jul 31, 2006 · News About GovTrack

You may notice the vote maps on this site look all crazy now. They’re “cartograms,” distorted mathematically so that every state (for Senate votes) or congressional district (for House votes) gets an equal amount of space in the image. (In House vote maps, look how big California got, or see ...

Abortion Over State Lines

Jul 29, 2006 · Legislative Recap

On Tuesday the Senate passed 65 to 34 \[ \] to prohibit taking minors across state lines to circumvent parental notification laws for abortion. The Senate is now caught up with the House, which passed in April 2005. Once they resolve their differences, some version of ...

Ethics Votes: One Passes, One Fails

Jul 18, 2006 · Legislative Recap

House Republicans failed in their push for “Marriage Protection”, 236 to 187 (2/3 needed) [] missing a two-thirds majority for passage of their proposed constitutional amendment. The Senate passed , allowing more use of stem cells 63 to 37 [].

Voting Rights Continued

Jul 14, 2006 · Legislative Recap

The House .

Immigration

May 26, 2006 · Legislative Recap

The Senate has finally passed its immigration reform bill, , at a $45 per capita cost. Senate and House members now begin a conference to work out differences with the House bill, , passed back in December, which entailed a $7 per capita cost.

Not a Winner

Sep 13, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Last month GovTrack was nominated as the entry for the United States in the e-Government category of the , which is somehow part of the UN World Summit on Information Society. GovTrack wasn’t one of the 40 world-wide winners, but I was amused by the choice of winners in the ...

Personal Democracy Forum

May 17, 2005 · News About GovTrack

So, yesterday I attended the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC. Overall I give it an “eh,” but I think it accomplished pretty well what it set out to do. It’s just that I was hoping for something a little bit different. I arrived late (thanks to Amtrak delays) and left ...

Amendments to legislation

May 2, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Some information about amendments to bills are now being tracked by GovTrack (ex: ). Any suggestions about that .

Political Site of the Day

Apr 27, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Who am I to argue with the ?

Personal Democracy Forum

Apr 13, 2005 · News About GovTrack

In case you’re wondering where the money from the ads at the top of the page goes, I’m using it to travel to advocate using technology to open up access to information about the government. Next month I’m going to attend the . I don’t know much about ...

Statements of Administration Policy Reports Now Available

Mar 29, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Thanks to a suggestion from Peggy Garvin, OMB Statement of Administration Policy PDFs are also now available on GovTrack.

Congressional Budget Reports Now Available

Mar 25, 2005 · News About GovTrack

I stumbled on Congressional Budget Office reports this morning, and now they’re available on GovTrack. Whenever a new CBO report is available for a bill you are monitoring, a new “Report Event” will show up in your tracked events (on the site, in the RSS feeds, and by email).

Review in LLRX

Mar 20, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Peggy Garvin wrote for last week.

My Trip to D.C.

Mar 9, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Last night I got back from a two-day trip to D.C. The point of the trip was to make a presentation about GovTrack and also to start some collaboration with others on expanding the political information that is freely and openly available online. Monday afternoon I presented GovTrack and some ...

Site Glitches

Mar 8, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Sorry about the site having some issues this week. I’ll fix it as soon as I get back from my trip to D.C (which, by the way, is going very well, except for Expedia botching my hotel reservation).

Daily Princetonian Article

Mar 3, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Thanks to my friend David Robinson, the The Daily Princetonian . I used to be an editor for the ‘Prince’, and I’m happy to know that articles still aren’t finished by deadline.

All Your Info in One Place — BusinessWeek Online

Feb 8, 2005 · News About GovTrack

BusinessWeek Online’s Olga Kharif uses GovTrack to show the potential of web services in posted today.

Notable Resources

Feb 4, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Here are some notable things you can find on GovTrack: the recent , and the nomination votes for and .

A New Milestone

Jan 28, 2005 · News About GovTrack

There was a short in yesterday’s Circuits section about GovTrack, and as a result the number of registered users on the site has topped 1,000! The article reached a broad audience, and I’ve gotten a few emails from people running other websites who share the common goal of seeing technology ...

Sharing, Collaborating, and Benefiting

Jan 22, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Now that GovTrack is pretty much functionally complete, I’m shifting my focus to how websites with similar goals as GovTrack can share data, collaborate, and generally benefit from each other. This is partly what we’ve been talking about on the GovTrack mail list regarding making the California-level data compatible in ...

Technorati Developer’s Contest Winner . . . is GovTrack

Jan 8, 2005 · News About GovTrack

Last night , a blog search engine, announced the winners of their first , and scored #1 for . Needless to say, this is a great start to 2005. _“Want to know the status of a bill on the floor of Congress, who misses the most votes, or who gets ...

The 109th Congress Begins

Jan 6, 2005 · News About GovTrack

The 109th Congress began on Tuesday and GovTrack is ready for the next two years of serving information for you.

Full text of legislation

Dec 16, 2004 · News About GovTrack

The full text of legislation from the 107th Congress to the present is now available right from here in text and PDF format.

Political Spectrum

Nov 11, 2004 · News About GovTrack

Check out the new page. See where your representatives are on the political map.

New Server

Nov 5, 2004 · News About GovTrack

GovTrack has moved to a faster server.