Contents
Jump to the bottom of this page.
Identifying Legislation with LegiSlate
The Legislate gopher provides quick and timely access to very frequently (daily) updated information about current legislation. Legislate is a commercial product, a subset of the larger Legislate database. As such, unfortunately, it makes only a smaller subset still available to the general public. Those with institutional access to the full legislate gopher service may view a description; those without may prefer to look at the description of the public portion.
The full LEGI-SLATE Gopher Service provides information about all bills and resolutions introduced in Congress since 1993. You can locate bills and resolutions by specific number, 'HOT Bills' category, LEGI-SLATE subject term, sponsor, chamber and type of legislation, words in the official title and words in full text. Updated daily, the LEGI-SLATE Gopher Service provides up to 17 different types of document and information for each bill and resolution:
The more limited public-access portion of LEGI-SLATE consists of those items marked with a star above; this subset, though it does not provide full information about pending legislation, does allow all users to locate any bill or resolution introduced since the beginning of the 103rd Congress by number (Gopher+ client recommended), date, sponsor and chamber and type. Once the appropriate bill or bills are identified, further information is available elsewhere.
The initial menu, once one has chosen the appropriate Congress (103rd or 104th), offers the following options:
If you had heard, for example, that Representative Charles Schumer (D-NY) had introduced a resolution condemning the NRA, you could find it easily by following any of several alphabetically arranged trees under "Sponsor"--by house, state (N.Y.), or last name (Schumer) and quickly come up with
H.Con.Res. 69 by Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)
Resolution Condemning Certain Language Used by
Representatives of the National Rifle Association
Topical searching may be done either via keyword and subject-heading automated searching, or by a topically arranged list of "hot bills." Note that the bills listed by LegiSlate as "hot" do not correspond to other lists of hot legislation, e.g. that provided by the Thomas site.
Bills in the news lately include the NII/WhitePaper bill, the Telecomm Bill, the Line-Item Veto bill, and the long-awaited Anti-Terrorism bill. What has become of them, anyway? Searching under "Hot Legislation," one finds a menu of topics (Welfare Reform, Budget, etc.); "Telecommunications" quickly yields the Telecomm Bill:
S. 652 by Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD)
Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Pub. L. 104-104, approved 2/8/96)
If you were hoping to influence that one, you're too late. :-)
The Line-Item Veto can be found under "Line-Item Veto": but which bill is the right one?
H.R. 2 by Rep. William F. (Bill) Clinger, Jr. (R-PA)
Line-Item Veto Act (Contract with America)
S. 4 by Sen. Robert Dole (R-KS)
Line Item Veto Act of 1995
S. 14 by Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM)
Legislative Line Item Veto Act
Sometimes "Bill Status" will tell you this; sometimes you may have
to have recourse to further information about the major and minor
actions on a bill, information not supplied by the public version of
LegiSlate. In this case, it is fairly simple: the first bill mentioned
yields a long series of inconclusive actions, and information
about companion bills:
H.R.27 by DUNCAN, JR. (R-TN) -- Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 1995
H.R.678 by PORTER (R-IL) -- Legislative Line Item Veto Act
S.4 by DOLE (R-KS) -- Line Item Veto Act of 1995
S.14 by DOMENICI (R-NM) -- Legislative Line Item Veto Act
S.4 appears to be the active bill: it was passed by both houses and sent to
conference.
The Anti-Terrorism bill is easily found too: under "Anti-terrorism," where one quickly learns that the Senate has passed its version (S.735), which has supplanted the House version (H.R. 1710), and that the Senate version has been passed by the House as recently as this week. The bill has gone to conference. Any influence you wish to bring to bear will have to be on the conferrees (listed on CR H-2304), or on any member of either house to reject the compromise. Some of the issues involved are suggested by two recent articles cited:
03/14/96 -- (Article No. 249972) House Votes to Remove Controversial
Provisions From Anti-Terrorism Bill
03/15/96 -- (Article No. 250081) House Pares, Then Passes Crime, Terrorism
Measure Clinton Calls It Too Weak to Be Effective
The NII bill is apparently not considered "hot," but it can be found by searching for "NII" in bill text or title, a search that yields:
H.R. 2441 by Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-CA)
NII Copyright Protection Act of 1995
S. 1284 by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT)
NII Copyright Protection Act of 1995
These are companion bills. The latest major action in the Senate was on Wednesday, November 15, 1995:
Hearings adjourned by Senate Committee on the Judiciary; the latest action in
the House was on Thursday, February 8, 1996: Hearings adjourned by Courts and
Intellectual Property Subcommittee. More recent information can perhaps
be garnered from a Washington Post story from last week (available only
in the full version of LegiSlate):
03/12/96 -- (Article No. 249796) Virtually Nowhere
One may also, of course, download and read the full text of the most recent
version of the bill, in case one wishes to comment directly on specific provisions.
