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THOMAS, a service of the Library of Congress (both and web), is the major site for legislative information. Aside from links to other sites, its chief contents consist of Congressional documents: the text of bills, amendments, and resolutions, the text and daily index of the Congressional Record, and some information about the legislative process.
If we attempt the same searches as with LegiSlate, the Line-Item Veto bill, the Anti-Terrorism Bill, and the Telecomm Bill, we soon find differences:
By subject
Using the topical option, we find that Hot Bills, to Thomas, does not include "Line-item Veto" or "Terrorism" as
topics; Thomas does have the category "Telecommunications," and adds the
category "Intellectual Property"--though the NII bill is not listed under
that category, presumably because it does not qualify as "hot" by Thomas standards: it has not seen floor action this week.
Pursuing the Hot Bills subject headings, we find that Telecommunications links to the
Telecomm Bill, as expected, but also (like all bill searches) includes
a link to the LIV, the
Legislative Indexing Vocabulary Thesaurus. Thorough searching of Thomas would appear to require familiarity with this tool.
Searching instead by popular title of hot legislation, again, there is no
"anti-terrorism" bill but there is a "line-item veto" bill, linking to the same three bills uncovered by LegiSlate, which is reassuring.
Easiest of all, if one knows the Bill Number, a search is quite straightforward. S.735 (AntiTerrorism) appears immediately.
Thomas provides a list of "hot" bills, amendments, and resolutions subdivided by type, cumulated from the beginning of the 104th Congress,in the form of a list of links:
By Title
By Number
By Type
By latest week
If you know that the bill saw action this week, check out the hot-week section. Results are quick. It proves to be one way to find the Anti-terrorism Bill:
In the House:
H.R. 2685: A bill to repeal the Medicare and
Medicaid Coverage Data Bank
H.R. 2972: Securities and Exchange Commission
Authorization Act of 1996
H.R. 2276: Federal Aviation Administration
Revitalization Act of 1995
H.R. 2703: Comprehensive Antiterrorism Act of 1995
H.R. 1561: American Overseas Interests Act of 1995
(State Department Reauthorization Conference Report)
H.J.Res. 78: A joint resolution to grant the consent of
the Congress to certain additional powers
conferred upon the Bi-State Development Agency
by the States of Missouri and Illinois
H.R. 3021: Debt Ceiling (Conference Report)
H.R. 3019: Omnibus Appropriations Continuing Resolution
(Conference Report)
The results include a good list of CR pages and printed amendments--
but not so good in that it does not say what happened to the bill, or what its relation to other bills is.
If phrases or individual words are very distinctive, they can serve as a quick and efficient means of identifying appropriate legislation, using the full-text search facility. Seeking the NII/White Paper bill, for example, readily accessible by no other means, one need only search for the acronym "NII" to get there immediately.
2 items retrieved.
Items ranked by relevance to query
Those items having the largest concentration of relevant terms
will appear first in the list. It is not necessary for all
terms to occur in a given item.
1 . NII Copyright Protection Act of 1995
(Introduced in the House) [H.R.2441]
2 . NII Copyright Protection Act of 1995
(Introduced in the Senate) [S.1284]
Searching bill summaries gives the same results, yielding the familiar "STATUS--COMMITTEES--COSPONSORS..." described below. In the case of summary searches, however, at least in this example, the further information listed there is very scanty--consisting only of the introductory remarks from the CR! No record of hearings, etc.
Furthermore, searching for a general term ("anti-terrorism") yields unworkable results unless you are careful to limit the search to bills that have received floor action (67 hits, even then). There is no easy way to the real meat of active legislation.
Note also that our previous search for Schumer's resolution against the NRA cannot be conducted by searching for Schumer as sponsor, since only BILLS and AMENDMENTS sponsored by Schumer are listed under his name. A keyword search under NRA or National RIfle Association, however, yields a summary of the Resolution.
A great deal of information is available about bills, on Thomas, once the correct ones have been identified. Picking a particular bill, for example the line-item veto bill, passed as S.4, we find:
S.4
SPONSOR: Sen Dole , (introduced 01/04/95)
RELATED BILL(S): H.R.27
HOT LEGISLATION
An Act to give the President item veto authority over
appropriation Acts and targeted tax benefits in revenue Acts.
TITLE(S):
POPULAR TITLE(S):
Line-Item Veto bill
Contract with America bill
SHORT TITLE(S) AS INTRODUCED:
Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 1995
SHORT TITLE(S) AS PASSED HOUSE:
Line Item Veto Act
SHORT TITLE(S) AS REPORTED TO SENATE:
Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 1995
SHORT TITLE(S) AS PASSED SENATE:
Separate Enrollment and Line Item Veto Act of 1995
OFFICIAL TITLE AS INTRODUCED:
A bill to grant the power to the President to
reduce budget authority.
OFFICIAL TITLE AS PASSED SENATE:
An Act to give the President item veto authority
over appropriation Acts and targeted tax
benefits in revenue Acts.
STATUS
SPONSOR: Sen Dole , (introduced 01/04/95)
RELATED BILL(S): H.R.27
CHRONOLOGY:
10/25/95 Motion to instruct House conferees
passed House, roll call #736 (381-44) (CR
H10773-10779)
09/07/95 Motion to instruct House conferees
passed House (CR H8608)
09/07/95 Conference scheduled in House (CR H8605)
06/20/95 Conference scheduled in Senate (CR S8717-8718)
05/17/95 Measure passed House, amended (Inserted text of
H.R. 2) (CR H5097)
05/17/95 Measure considered in House (CR H5090-5097)
05/17/95 Measure called up by unanimous consent in House
(CR H5090)
03/23/95 Measure passed Senate, amended, roll call #115
(69-29) (CR S4484)
03/23/95 Measure considered in Senate (CR S4409-4486)
03/22/95 Unanimous consent agreement in Senate to
consider Measure on Mar. 23 (CR S4326)
03/22/95 Measure considered in Senate (CR S4301-4358)
03/21/95 Unanimous consent agreement in Senate to consider
Measure on Mar. 22 (CR S4293)
03/21/95 Cloture motion on amendment 347 filed in Senate
(Second Motion)
03/07/95 Reported to Senate from the Committee on
Governmental Affairs, S. Rept. 104-13 (CR S3603)
02/27/95 Reported to Senate from the Committee on the
Budget with amendment, S.Rept. 104-9 (CR S3221)
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD PAGE NUMBER(S):
01/04/95 Introductory remarks on Measure (CR S97)
01/04/95 Full text of Measure as introduced printed
(CR S97-98)
03/20/95 Full text of Measure as reported in Senate
printed (CR S4187-4189)
03/20/95 Full text of Dole, etc. amendment 347 printed
(CR S4203-4204)
03/21/95 Full text of Daschle, etc. amendments 348 and
349 printed (CR S4281-4283)
03/21/95 Full text of Byrd amendments 350-354 printed
(CR S4283-4284)
[Etc.]
DIGEST [supplied]
COMMITTEE(S) OF REFERRAL:
Senate Budget
Senate Governmental Affairs
COMMITTEE(S) REPORTING:
Senate Budget
Senate Governmental Affairs
COSPONSOR(S) [supplied]
AMENDMENT(S):
S.AMDT.347 - S.AMDT.348 - S.AMDT.349 - S.AMDT.350 - S.AMDT.351 -
[Etc., under each of which may be found something like this:]
S.AMDT.404
AMENDS: S.4
SPONSOR: Sen Hollings , (introduced 03/22/95)
To provide that entitlement and tax legislation shall not
worsen the deficit.
TEXT OF AMENDMENT: CR S4387
STATUS OF AMENDMENT:
Mar 22, 95 Proposed by Senator Hollings to Amendment SP 347.
Mar 22, 95 Motion to table SP 404 agreed to in Senate by
Yea-Nay Vote. 52-46. Record Vote No: 111.
COSPONSOR(S):
Sen Kerrey - 03/22/95
Sen Exon - 03/22/95
SUBJECT(S):
HOT LEGISLATION:
Hot legislation--Budgets
INDEX TERMS:
Appropriations
Actions and defenses
Appellate procedure
Authorization
Balanced budgets
Budget deficits
Budgets
Congress
Congressional budget process
Congressional committees (House)
Congressional committees (Senate)
Congressional conference committees
Congressional oversight
Congressional reporting requirements
Congressional veto
Congressional voting
Constitution
Constitutional law
Deficit reduction
District courts
[Etc., using the Thomas subject-headings list discussed above.]
